6am flights are of the devil.

Unfortunately, there is exactly one flight per day from the US to Morocco, and it is operated by Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan national airline. The plan was for the three of us, coming from different parts of the country, to fly into JFK and hop on the 6pm flight to Morocco, arriving at 8 the next morning.

Barry was the first to arrive, landing at 2pm or so. Being the restless type, he left the airport and went for a quick visit to New York. I arrived at 3pm, dead tired from the 3am wakeup call necessary to get to the airport on time. Deplaning I was treated to a prime example of New York hospitality when tried to find out where I needed to go to get my connection.

I made my way over to the international terminal, and found the Royal Air Maroc counter to be deserted, with a sign directing passengers to return two hours before boarding. I wandered over to the food court, ate some god-awful Chinese food, and walked back to the checkin counter, where people were starting to line up.

The first sign that something was up was when the agents came out and huddled up for a good fifteen minutes before opening up. I heard some murmurs that the plane was late. Like, really late. Like, still in Morocco late.

About this time Barry showed up, fresh from Times Square. I told him what I knew, and he got in the back of the line.
When the first group was called to the counter, it was clear things were sideways. Two of the passengers just sat down on the floor, while the others were talking heatedly to the agents.

I was 5th in line and it took 15 to get to the front of the line. When I got to the desk, I was informed that the plane was indeed still in Morocco, and that the departure was delayed until 7am the next morning. They'd be shuttling us over to a Holiday Inn, and would pick us up at 3:30am to make the flight. Oh, and our checked baggage would have to stay at the airport. Go go Royal Air Maroc.

I told Barry what was up and went off to wait for Clare to arrive.

Half an hour later I see her, we hug and I tell her the bad news. We go back to the check-in counter to see Barry was getting close to the front of the line. Clare cut in and they went to check in, where they got the same story as I did. However, the agent didn't like Clare's two backpack system, and told her she'd have to check one of them, even though she'd flown Delta with them just fine.

Hilarity ensued as Clare scrambled to shift her essentials into one bag. Eventually the agent took pity on Clare and let her by with the two bags.

As you can imagine, a 767-load of people is not easy to move from one place to another, lacking one of the aforementioned wide-bodies. The hotel shuttles were packed and infrequent, but eventually got us to the hotel.
We checked in, dropped our bags at our rooms and headed down to the hotel restaurant. Overpriced, overbooked, and entirely underwhelming. At least they had beer, which made Barry happy.

After dinner we went off in search of a nightcap, wandering down the road to a gas station. We secured a couple of tallboys (and donut holes!) and headed back to the hotel, where we socked in early in a vain attempt to get some sleep before the flight.