In a previous post I discussed our excellent American Airlines business class flight from Charlotte to London as we were en route to Greece. In this episode I hinted how our flight ended on a sour note, so in this post I wanted to talk about what happened. Specifically, we mixed up. Let me know beforehand that this wasn’t specifically anyone’s fault – if you are a frequent traveler you just have to go with the flow and make the most of every situation and there is no need to get out of shape. How smoothly flight operations run is usually a miracle, especially when you consider the complexity of the whole thing. Sometimes things go wrong. I think we just hope it doesn’t happen when we go on a very special trip with our mothers on an already very long day of travel. But we’re blessed to be able to take this trip in the first place, so it wasn’t a big deal in the end. I still wanted to share what happened because it was almost funny how many things went wrong at once. Our itinerary was probably too good to be trueWe flew from Tampa to Charlotte to London to Athens on a single American Airlines award ticket (with the last leg on British Airways), and then we had a separate ticket from Athens to Chania on Aegean Airlines. It was a long day of travel – about 27 hours door to door – but it seemed like the best option:
Unfortunately not everything went as planned … First our jet bridge broke …The winds across the Atlantic did not work in our favor, and despite a punctual departure, we landed about 20 minutes late. We had 1 hour 50 minutes left, which should have been more than enough time. After all, we were already at Terminal 5, and in the distance I could even see our connecting plane! Look as we pulled into our gate in London Heathrow The seat belt buckle went off and we waited for the jet bridge to approach the plane, but … it didn’t. The jet bridge just didn’t move for about 10 minutes after which the captain announced that there was a problem with the jet bridge and that they are working to fix it. He said hopefully it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes. Our uncooperative jet bridge At this point the captain informed us that it was determined that the jet bridge was indeed broken. He explained that they would get stairs and buses and get us out through the tail of the plane. I’m not sure how this is more efficient than just pushing back and going to a different gate (presumably they have some spares right now and that would also solve the problem of getting on the plane when it leaves again) but what whatever. Suffice it to say it was a total cluster. About 20 minutes later, some buses showed up, although there were still no stairs. See you guys! Then it was another 20 minutes before they got up stairs. At this point we sat at the gate for about an hour. Eventually they started putting people on buses to the terminal, but they were limited to about 20 people per bus to allow the distance. Since the stairs were in the back of the plane, we were on the very last bus. That took another 40 minutes. Ordinarily, I’d think that’s a pretty cool point of view Everyone did what they could individually, but the collective incompetence and lack of coordination among the ground staff was incredible (and there’s no point in even describing it). In the end we arrived at the terminal at our scheduled departure time for Athens, so unfortunately we had a wrong connection. We went to the transit counter where the next round of fun began … Then American Airlines’ systems failed …We went to the British Airways transit counter in Heathrow Terminal 5 and explained that we had a wrong connection and needed to be rebooked. The agent was friendly and tried to be helpful. Heathrow Terminal 5 transfer desk After a few minutes of typing, the conversation went something like this:
Great, we cut the connection and American systems were down for an hour and they didn’t know when they would be back up. At least the agent was nice compared to one of the other agents who faced a passenger on our flight who dared to book a British Airways route on a separate ticket. The British Airways agent literally laughed in the customer’s face when he asked about rebooking on the next British Airways flight:
Anyway, we sat on the floor in the transit area (as there is hardly any seating) and about 30 minutes later the British Airways agent found us and told us he could rebook us as American systems are still there failed. I thanked him for his help because he could have just taken the “not my problem” approach, but he didn’t. It pays to be nice to the front line staff. Then there was a rebooking adventure in the Aegean …I had purposely booked us flexible tickets with Aegean Airlines from Athens to Chania in the event of a bad connection. Suffice it to say that it was practical. While sitting at the bottom of the transit desk at Heathrow, I tried to rebook our flight on Aegean, seeing that the last flight of the evening had only three seats left. Our transit counter view while waiting The Aegean website claims you can easily make changes online and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to rebook this flight and even issue boarding passes with just a few clicks. Well, at least I was impressed until I got “Standby” on my boarding pass, which wasn’t what we were hoping for. On the previous page, it appeared to be a confirmed change. I called Aegean hoping an agent could help. After waiting for more than 30 minutes, the (friendly) agent claimed that there was a “technical error”. She said she was on the other line with the “technical department” and asked if she could call me back in a few minutes. Wow, a call back? This is great service and I wish more airlines would! Unfortunately, I hadn’t received a call back over two hours later (despite being told it would take minutes) and our reservation still didn’t reflect the change. I called again, spoke to someone else, and explained the situation. Again he promised to call me back after speaking to the “technical department”. As we were about to board our flight, I was almost ready to just book a new itinerary because the risk was too great. Three new tickets cost less than the night we would lose at our hotel if we didn’t make it to Chania that evening. He assured me the tickets would be reissued and when I went to check-in at Athens Airport we were confirmed the flight even though the reservation was not updated online. Angry. Glad it was confirmed because the flight ended up being oversold and they were begging for volunteers. Flying within Greece is not a lot of fun! Bottom lineIf you travel enough you will no doubt run into some operational issues, which to expect. I think we all hope that our “special” trips aren’t the ones that have these problems, but sometimes it just works that way. In this case, we had a bad connection at Heathrow due to a broken jet bridge and it took about two hours for everyone to get off the plane. Things didn’t get much better when we got off the plane, from American’s systems to the awful Aegean rebooking. Luckily my mother was a great sport and we’re lucky we made it to Chania that same day, even if it was a very long journey. Traveling these days involves many logistical risks and challenges, and in this case a three-stop route was our best choice so we can’t get too upset about it. Now we are in paradise so everything will end well! Via https://globalconnekt.com/grrr-our-unfortunate-london-heathrow-mismatch/
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