We got word on Wednesday that we\u2019d have another evacuation flight on Sunday. This was a blessed amount of time to prepare, and we needed every minute. We were able to email confirmations on Wednesday, run a phone bank on Thursday to confirm passengers, and firm up the manifest on Friday. It even took working all day Saturday to solidify our passenger list of 250 as many Americans in Liberia turned down our offer of a seat, opting to either wait it out or or wait until the \u201cnext flight.\u201d Unfortunately, we are not a travel agent, and a \u201cnext flight\u201d is uncertain.<\/p>\n
John and I left for the airport Sunday morning at 6:00 AM. Processing passengers went as well as could be expected (although hot as heck), and we had a finalized manifest of 250 ready by noon or so. We took a lot of precautions to guard ourselves, and tried to create as much distance as possible between us and passengers. \u00a0 The flight took off an hour or so behind schedule, but compared to earlier flights, it was amazingly fast. John and I were back home before sundown – a success in our minds.<\/p>\n
We were surprised by a \u201ckudos cable\u201d to Embassy Monrovia from the Secretary of State, lauding us for our efforts to repatriate Americans from overseas. He cited the consular team\u2019s innovative use of a preregistration process for the flights, allowing a smoother airport process. Better than official recognition were the many emails we\u2019ve received from passengers after arriving safely back in the U.S., thanking us for getting them home.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We got word on Wednesday that we\u2019d have another evacuation flight on Sunday. This was a blessed amount of time to prepare, and we needed every minute. We were able to email confirmations on Wednesday, run a phone bank on Thursday to confirm passengers, and firm up the manifest on Friday. It even took working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6031,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions\/6031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}