We awoke to an overcast, rainy day. By 9:00 the rain had tapered off and some blue sky was visible, but the mountains were still heavily shrouded. Human nature being what it is, this was satisfying. We did not miss by a day an opportunity to see what we were unable to see the past two days.
After breakfast we returned to the room to pack.
It is so much easier when going home. There are no worries about what to take. All you have to do is put everything in the suitcases. We bought only a few small souvenirs so space was not as issue. The biggest question was which bag would carry all the dirty laundry.
Sprinklings of rain and sometimes small showers persisted periodically throughout the morning.
We left the hotel at noon. The transfer to the airport was uneventful. We said good bye to our guide Jamie and bus driver who was also named Jamie.
Our flight took off about 30 minutes late but made up most of the time once airborne.
While taxiing to our gate in Boston, we saw fire and thick black smoke near some fuel storage tanks near the international terminal. Based on the following Boston Globe story, it was fortunate that we were inbound rather than outbound since the SATA flight to the Azores that night was almost certainly effected.
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Fire at Logan Airport fuel pump causes delays
A fire that engulfed a fuel pump at Boston Logan International Airport Tuesday afternoon forced the cancellation or delay of about 15 percent of the flights out of the airport, and may lead to more delays on Wednesday, a Massport official said.
Fire investigators have not determined the cause of the fire, which sprung up around 5 p.m. in one of the airport’s 12 fuel pumps, but the blaze does not appear to be suspicious, said Edward C. Freni, the airport’s director of aviation. No injuries were reported.
Firefighters had the fire under control within a half-hour, Freni said. But the underground system that transports fuel to the planes remains off while engineers assess the damage.
“This is very unusual, it’s catastrophic as far as airport operations are concerned,” Freni said at an evening press conference at Logan.
Citing security concerns, Freni would not discuss
the threat the fire posed to sensitive facilities such as the large
tanks that store fuel and are located close to the fire scene.
But several flights, including many international arrivals, were forced to divert to other New England airports to refuel before carrying on to Logan.
Freni said engineers had not yet determined the cost of the damage or how long the fueling system will remain shut down, but he tentatively predicted that operations would return to normal Wednesday.
“We recommend that anyone with travel plans tonight or tomorrow contact their airlines,” he said. “We do feel that there will be some impact tomorrow.”
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Everyone in our group cleared immigration and customs without incident, so we were on the bus and leaving the airport at 6:00 PM. We arrived at the New Bedford Whaling Museum at 7:10. Annoyingly, the bus drove right by the museum the first time necessitating it to loop back to offload us. Thanks to Kathy Reed being there to meet us, we were home about 7:50.
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