I fly a lot, so it\u2019s not surprising that I should have my share\nof flying disasters. Tonight I\u2019ve just had another. The picture above is the\nview standing outside Madrid airport at 0241 on a Monday morning waiting 20\nminutes for a shuttle to a nearby hotel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was flying to Montevideo to visit Uruguay\u2019s vineyards,\ntravelling with Iberia via Madrid. I boarded the 1845 from Heathrow\u2019s terminal\n5, but it had problems with its auxillary power unit, and the pilot tried three\ntimes to start the engines off-stand, and failed. Then we went back to the\nstand where there\u2019s the facility to start the engines from a start cart. But by\nthis time some of the passengers were freaked and decided they wanted to leave\nthe plane, which causes more delay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end we were four hours late and I missed by\nconnection. The 2355 flight had departed, and the next one is 2355 the following\nday. To Iberia\u2019s credit they had a new boarding pass ready and they\u2019ve given me\na decent hotel for the night, but I lose a day of the trip (and I only got to\nmy hotel room at 3 am).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The previous disaster was October last year when I was\nflying out of Moscow\u2019s Domodedovo airport with BA. We were sat on the tarmac\nfor 6 hours while they tried to rectify a problem on a new 787, before being\ntaken back to the gate. I was automatically booked onto the first flight in the\nmorning via my BA app, but the problem with Moscow is that the BA crew don\u2019t have\nvisas for Russia and can\u2019t leave airside, and we passengers mostly had single\nentry visas which we\u2019d used up. It was pretty chaotic, because Russia doesn\u2019t\nallow electronic boarding passes, you need to leave airside with an emergency\nvisa in order to pick up your new boarding pass. I ended up sleeping the night\nin the lounge with Daniel Pi of Trapiche who was sharing the same flight. I did\nget \u20ac400 compensation, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prior to this, a disaster of my own making when I lost my\npassport in Penticton and missed a flight to Toronto. That was in July last\nyear. It cost me CA$713 for a new flight, after I\u2019d found my passport. Without\nfinding my passport, I\u2019d have been in a spot of proper bother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In August 2018 I had a disastrous 24 hours in Newark Airport,\nwaiting for a new flight to Rochester. United had diverted our incoming flight\nafter the airport was closed for two hours because of a storm, with dreadful\nknock-on effects for local connections. It was chaos. No compensation here,\nthough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had a Vancouver-Toronto (I think? It was in Canada) flight\ncancelled in July 2017: we were all in our seats and the last person to board\nwas rather out of breath, and promptly collapsed and died in the aisle. It was\npretty grim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in November 2015 I was flying to Australia, and the BA\nflight was cancelled, and we were all put on the same flight the following day.\nThey were going to provide us with hotels, but wanted to feed us with the plane\nfood (much cheaper, it was already on board), but it takes about an hour to\nheat the food up, so we were stuck on the plane. I was living close to the\nairport, though, and was allowed to leave and come back the next day. Lost a\nday in Sydney, but got the maximum \u20ac600 compensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But apart from this, my flying has been relatively trouble\nfree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key thing is even if flying disasters are unfolding\naround you, they are almost always out of your control, and it is pointless\nworrying about something that you can\u2019t change. So you just have to keep a level\nhead, refuse to give into stress, and hope for the best outcome, doing all that\nyou can do to make it happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I fly a lot, so it\u2019s not surprising that I should have my share of flying disasters. Tonight I\u2019ve just had another. The picture above is the view standing outside…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24465,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24463\/revisions\/24465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}