The alarms had been going off for several days, although I could hear them from a distance without thinking that they were alerting me directly.
More and more people were talking about Viva Air;
they commented on the absurd changes that the airline had unilaterally made to their trips.
After paying for an afternoon flight, they received a notification that they would now have to travel at dawn.
Poor things, I thought, not too concerned as long as my flights were still intact.
I arrived in Santa Marta on Friday morning, very early.
My 6.26 flight had left on time, the same as my girlfriend's, who was traveling a couple of minutes later from Bogotá.
Viva's crisis was still a buzz around us, but she still wasn't messing with us.
We were going to a wedding and concern about the arrival of all the guests began to grow, since in Medellín there were already demonstrations around the airport and there was talk that several flights had been cancelled.
Still, they all came.
Late, staying up late or with changes in itinerary, but we were all ready to disconnect a bit from reality while we danced (minus the roles, of course) in a wedding on the Tayrona beach.
The vows were spoken, the words of the closest spoken.
The beach saw us dawn without worries.
And Sunday arrived, the day chosen by many to return to their cities.
Meanwhile, I, who was returning on a flight to Medellín on Monday at six in the afternoon, began to hear the alarms loudly, which this time did alert me directly.
His itinerary has undergone some changes, a text message warned me.
On Sunday night, convinced that I had a good 24 hours left near the sea, I saw how the Viva crisis knocked —finally— directly at my door: my flight had been canceled and rescheduled for seven in the morning on Monday. .
With the hotel paying for one more day, we made the decision to voluntarily change the flight to leave on Monday at 10:22 pm to Bogotá.
in crescendo
.
And then, on Monday, everything started to collapse around me.
We arrived at the Santa Marta airport on time and it took a few minutes for us to begin to lose faith: the waiting rooms were full, strangers from all over the country talked to each other and told each other their tragedies: some had been waiting since 10 in the morning a flight that did not arrive so they could return, others had had to accept a hotel voucher to wait for a flight the next day (which, of course, did not arrive).
The alarms were already deafening.
While Twitter was flooded with news, Viva, around 9:45 p.m. tweeted a statement that left me in a cold sweat in the Santa Marta heat: the airline reported that it would suspend all its operations from 10 p.m. that Monday.
10 pm.
22 minutes before our flight took off.
Already with a bit of anguish, we saw how the screen in room two announced that the Viva flight to Bogotá would no longer leave at 10:22 but at 11:09.
That delay was, for us, a confirmation: we were not going to be able to leave Santa Marta that night in a yellow plane.
Meanwhile, several passengers in room three complained louder and louder because Viva had overbooked the last flight to Medellín and about 10 people had stayed in Santa Marta, without a hotel, without any certainty and with a rage that now carried them to repeatedly insult the Viva official who seemed to be more entangled than the very directives of his airline.
The passengers on our flight were infected with anguish and began to insult the officials at the counter in room two.
The collective fears were increasing: the plane will not arrive so we can go to Bogotá;
if it arrives, it will not take off;
If it takes off, there are still passengers from other canceled flights in the room and not all of us will fit on the plane.
People stood in line when nothing had been announced yet.
We were all anxious to be an exception, to be able to travel on an airline that had already suspended its operations.
We wanted to leave Santa Marta, but, above all, we wanted to avoid Viva's fall.
Against my own fear, the plane arrived and we were asked to line up to board and leave.
The boarding would be by groups from one to four.
It started with one, and I had four.
The famous Murphy's law.
I'm not going to leave, I'm not going to fit in, I'm not old or a child.
They are going to leave me.
Group one passed, group two, three and four passed.
"Welcome, Jamie."
They gave me a number with a red
sticker
: you have to hand it in when you get on the plane.
My head, too scared, convinced me that the red
sticker
meant that at the gate they would notify me of the inevitable: the flight is overbooked and we need you to stay in Santa Marta.
But not.
I handed in the number with the
sticker
and got on, sat down and rested.
The flight attendants had swollen eyes.
Perhaps they had cried, or perhaps they, too, had had their schedules inexplicably changed.
The flight was full and silence replaced the claims of the waiting rooms.
We were on our way to Bogotá, still very afraid: no one would feel calm when traveling on a plane belonging to an airline that was supposedly bankrupt to the point of having to suspend its operations at any moment.
We arrived in Bogotá after a smooth flight.
Perhaps I had never felt such a relief to arrive in my city.
But this time it was different, the alarms were heard again in the distance, like someone walking away from a fire.
We had avoided disaster and, from now on, we could say that we had managed to get on, against all odds, on the last flight from Viva de Santa Marta to Bogotá.
Jaime Sanín
is a lawyer and public affairs consultant.
He is an amateur
marathon runner and cyclist
, as well as passionate about literature and social media.
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