I was on a flight from Athens to Montreal, on Olympic Airways in 2004 on an Airbus 340. That’s my first really long flight. It was a night flight, so after a while people tried to sleep. There was some middle aged guy in front of me who actually stood up from his seat and stood in the aisle, and proceeded to put on his pajamas. I could also smell the shoes, although I’m not sure if it was his or some other passenger’s. Its not a good feeling, seeing that…
It got depressing watching other people doze, so after a while I tried to find a place to sleep myself. There was a row of 4 empty seats just ahead of a bulkhead and near the lavatories. I thought it was a good idea to lay down there and try to get some sleep. That wasn’t so great. Although I did get some short low-quality sleep, I was constantly woken up by the slamming lavatory door, and had to put up with the occasional smells coming out of it. On top of that I had my wisdom teeth removed 2 days before, and it was aching a bit…
I can safely say that was the worst flight ever, although I can’t really blame the crew for it…
The way back was much better. I was accompanied by a friend, and knew what was waiting for me, so I had bought a book and made sure to get served as much wine as I could. Unfortunately, Athens was closed because of bad weather, so we were diverted to some regional airport. We were stuck there in a small duty free area, on airport benches for hours. The company offered to move people by train and to provide hotel accommodation. Most took it. I could have, but as my friend did not have a European passport and we were just transiting through Athens, he did not have the right to leave the airport! I stayed with him 2 days, sleeping on an airport bench.
As soon as the airport opened again, he bought himself a ticket back home on another airline. As for me, I took the hotel accommodation offered by the company, and I slept like 14 hours straight… best sleep ever…
The airlines provided me with a flight back home the next day.
Tagged as:
delay & cancellation,
hotel,
odor,
olympic airlines,
weather
It was about 5 or so years ago when my wife and I decided to travel to Korea to visit the family and have a nice long vacation. We booked a flight with Air France from Frankfurt to Seoul via Paris. Everything was fine in Frankfurt; we boarded our flight and touched down in Paris not long after leaving Frankfurt. The time to get to our connecting flight was a bit short but we didn’t worry too much because the gates were supposed to be close to each other.
After landing in Paris we found out that for some reason, without information, we had parked at a gate on the other side of the airport and that we had a long walk ahead of us to get to our next flight. Charles de Gaulle Airport is not a small place as we discovered soon and it seemed to be in the middle of construction because we entered and exited 3 understaffed makeshift security check points. Nobody seemed to care as we repeatedly stated that we were late for our flight, we weren’t the only ones…
As we finally came running to the gate the plane had already left. The staff there just gave us a condescending look and told us to go downstairs for arrangements. We waited in line for about 30 minutes until a bored agent just handed us a few pieces of paper and told us where to wait for the transfer to the hotel. Hotel? The guy next to us, a Korean business man, nearly lost it at the news that he had to stay over night to get the next flight and so did I. The bored unfriendly staff just told everybody that there was nothing they could do and that we had to stay at the hotel.
So we waited outside and were picked up by a small bus to transfer to the hotel which was apparently owned or exclusively rented by Air France for people missing their flights as this was very common. The place was decent; we spent the night and enjoyed the breakfast and were transported back to the airport the next morning. We got on the plane and expected to be served food and drinks, as we were used to from prior flights with other airlines, but nobody showed up.
Dehydration and starvation kicked in and so I walked up to the kitchen section of the plane to find the entire flight crew sitting there chatting and having a good time. After I asked for food and drinks the FA looked a bit puzzled and just pointed me to a corner where they had positioned a few carts with all sorts of sandwiches and beverages, self service. What an experience; it’s one thing to get bad service but getting nothing at all is totally new to me.
On the flight back home we knew how things rolled and immediately grabbed what we could get from the kitchen section to have enough for the flight before they ran out again.
Survival flying with Air France.
Alex
Tagged as:
air france,
hotel
In the winter of 2000, my mom, dad, sister, and I flew from San Diego back to Michigan, where most of my extended family lives. My parents were raised in Michigan and this winter was the most snow they had seen ever. The day it stopped was the day we were going to leave, flying out of Grand Rapids to DFW and on back to San Diego.
We get to the airport for a late afternoon flight to DFW. Right at the gate, they are offering travel vouchers plus $200. My sister wanted to fly back to Michigan that summer with her best gal-pal, so the offer piqued the interest of my sister and mom. My dad and I had tickets the next night to the Holiday Bowl, and did not need the vouchers, so we were flying no matter what. They raised the dollar amount a little bit more, and my mom and sister were hooked when it reached $400 plus the vouchers. They would not fly that night, but go the next night into O’Hare and fly first class from O’Hare to San Diego. My aunt came and picked them up as my dad and I flew on to San Diego, flying in a sardine can (we are both 6′5″) from Grand Rapids, MI to DFW.
So my sister and my mom arrive the next afternoon at Grand Rapids and as they take off, in another sardine can, snow begins to fall. They get into Chicago without delay but the snow is coming down hard.
They board at the normal time and are sitting in first class and ordering the drinks. They watch the plane get de-iced three times and finally the FAA comes aboard saying that the flight was cancelled because the flight crew would be up in the air past the amount of time they were legally able to be. At that same moment, O’Hare closed due to weather. Because it was the airline’s fault that the flight was canceled, my mom and sister got put up in a nice hotel… with no luggage. The luggage had traveled with my dad and me.
Fast forward to the next day and my sister and my mom board their flight to San Diego, not in first class, in the back of the plane, in their same clothes from the night before (after some bath tub cleaning in the hotel room).
Their flight was supposed to come in at 8:30pm and I started tracking it online around 7:30 to be able to tell my dad when to go pick them up (we do the circle the drop off and pick up, we don’t do parking lots.). I tell my dad to leave about a half hour before. Right as the garage door closes, the flight path does a quick curve up to Los Angeles, not the gradual slope down from Chicago to San Diego. This was the era before cell phones, so I could not call my dad back.
Probably at the same time, on the flight, the pilot comes over the PA to say, “We’ve been fogged out of San Diego, we are being diverted to Ontario!” My sister (15 years old) yells out, “We’re going to Canada?!” to the amusement of those sitting around her, including my mom. (Just in case you are still confused like my sister, there is an Ontario, CA that is about a 38 miles inland from LAX.) They would not wait the fog out, but take buses down from Ontario, a 3 hour tour.
So my mom and sister arrived 2 days after my dad and I did, for travel vouchers and cash, but not riding first class.
Tagged as:
baggage,
delay & cancellation,
hotel,
weather
On Dec. 22 6:30am we checked in on flight 613 in Bangkok scheduled to fly out 8:15. The plane was basically empty. We departed from the gate, got on the runway only to hear the captain say we were returning because of engine problems.
After a 3 hour wait they said the flight was being cancelled and we would return to the gate. In the terminal the attendants just kept insisting that the airline would address all our needs including connecting flights and travel.
By 2pm they finally got us to a hotel and we got a meal after a 6 hour wait (this would end up being our only meal in 12 hours). We sat a the hotel till 17:30 when they called us up and said we would return to the airport, where they would check us on the next Qatar flight at 8:30 pm. When we asked about what to do about our train tickets from Athens to Bulgaria which we would now miss, they said “all will be taken care of in Doha.”
We arrive in Doha before midnight and now start dealing with managers who could care less about our problems. They insisted that their only obligations were to get us to Athens and we should be happy that they just get us there safe, no matter how late we arrive. We spoke to 3 managers; they all insisted there was nothing they could do but we could present our case in Athens to the Qatar staff.
The following morning at 7:30 we depart for Athens and arrive in Greece now 20 hours late. On arrival we find we have no baggage. How much worse can it get?
When we explained our story to the Qatar staff, there they listened with empathy (for the first time). They tried to phone the train station about our train tickets but couldn’t reach them so they encouraged us to go ourselves and try to get on the train, insisting that our tickets could still be valid. When we arrived at the station, surprise, surprise, there was a big sign saying due to the Christmas holidays all trains are sold out. As a matter of fact we couldn’t reserve a seat until Dec. 29. Now we were stranded in Athens.
That evening we managed to book a flight to Sofia for Christmas morning.
The next day (24th) we returned to the airport to see if our bags had arrived, which they did, but one of them had holes in it from the trip. The Qatar staff said that this was normal and there is nothing they could do.
Now we had lost our patience with this airline. We finally arrived home 3 days late, lost our train tickets, had to buy another flight out of Athens and had a damaged bag. All this and the answers they kept giving us was, “Sorry, we wish we could help you but we can’t!”
We have now sent a complaint to the airline and also to several papers hoping that we can get some kind of justice.
Tagged as:
baggage,
delay & cancellation,
holiday,
hotel,
qatar airways
