We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Wandered down to the gate half a hour before boarding. 90 minutes later, we were still sitting there.
We had a passenger on a stretcher who needed to be set up in his own set of seats first. This accounted for most of the delay.
Once we did get on board, the pilot moved us away from the terminal only to then say that he was having trouble starting his number 4 engine. Another 20 minutes later, we are moved back to the terminal to allow the engineers better access to see where the problem might be.
They finally find that the starting motor on engine 4 is seized and needs replacing. Cue a further hour's delay whilst a replacement part is found and the necessary engineers are brought over.
We finally took off just over 3 hours late.
Journey back was quite rough as we flew along the east coast of the US. They are experiencing severe ice and snow storms there at the moment and I guess we were getting the edge of it.
Still, unlike the flight out, the inward flight was 150 minutes shorter due to the jet stream.
Poor guy waiting for us at Gatwick (with our lost door key!) had been there since 7:30 that morning. We got to him just before 1pm.
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