Hi Phil, maybe we have been there at the same time -
My first tour there was the last day AAI stayed at the Sheraton, I always stayed at the Le Meridian, played a million games of pool there in the bar. (that's the bar overlooking the pool, not the front bar!)
Were you there during any one of these events I was involved in:
1/ airplane returns to Lagos after a TOC fire warning/shutdown on #4, due to maintenance error, I was woken to crew the second try to JFK.
2/ following delayed departure Lagos-JFK due rectification work, we crew arrived at the airplane to find that the entire passenger load had 'self boarded', without any supervision at all! (they couldn't understand what the delay was all about, and the gate was not locked!). As a result, of course, the departure was further delayed as we had to search the entire airplane!
3/ taxiing off the apron area at JFK, towards the departure runway, we were advised by ATC that they did not have our flight plan (even though they had issued our airways clearance prior to push & start only a few minutes earlier!), and we would not be able to depart until another was lodged. We were tight on fuel, so we got clearance to enter the non duty runway and shutdown all engines, until the problem was sorted, which took them about 30 minutes. Otherwise we would have had to return to the gate and take on more fuel, etc, etc, etc. Once sorted we just restarted all 4 and departed!!
If you know of any of these minor occurrances, I was there!