Change In Plans

Greetings from snowy Amsterdam!

We were lucky in our trip around the world to have very few big travel snarlups: Kathmandu to the Maldives, emergency turnaround halfway between Sydney and Queenstown, a missed flight in India (that saved us from a terrorist attack).

Part of that good fortune was because we were chasing summer around the globe, and had minimal weather-related delays.

At the moment, we are en route from Cape Town to Nashville, but are stuck in Amsterdam. Our overnight flight landed nearly three hours ago, but we are sitting on the runway, within sight of the airport. The snow has stopped, after maybe 6 inches of accumulation, but all is chaos.

Apparently, no planes are leaving, so the gates are all occupied, so no planes can disembark. For some reason (unexplained), they can’t deplane us somewhere and send us to the terminal by bus. Also, they can’t empty the planes at the gates, move them off, and let us get to a gate.

Instead we sit here. And sit, and sit, and sit. My perception of the Dutch being highly organized and functional is eroding rapidly. You would think this is a problem that has occurred at least once before in Amsterdam. It’s a small snowstorm, for heaven’s sake.

So, we are indefinitely delayed, while sitting on board. Kids are watching movies, I am half watching ‘Inception,’ which is baffling. Maybe it requires full attention. Not much risk of us missing our flight to Atlanta, I guess, but we have been told that no trains and buses are running either. KLM’s ineptitude and lack or preparation is shocking.

Postscript: we have now been waiting for nearly five hours on the runway. Twice we have been told by the purser, “in the next half hour,” but they were false alarms. Up until now, everyone on board has been calm and co-operative and patient, but this “all part of life’s rich pageant” thing is no longer sustaining me. Plus, it is starting to stink in here (or maybe that’s just me). Grrrrr. Can’t we get some South Africans to get this situation organized?

Post-post script:
At some point in the last 24 hours we plumbed the 5th or 6th circle of travel hell. It may have been when the gypsy cab driver spat on my feet, after we told hime we did not need a ride. It may have been while the 20-minute train into Amsterdam was stopped for 45 minutes in the middle of the night, about 100 meters from Centraal Station. We definitely hit a low when we clawed our way to the front of a several-hundred passenger queue at 6:30 this morning, and the agent had no record of our recently made booking from Amsterdam to Detroit.

We did make a good call by finding a (one-star) hotel in town last night after our flight was eventually cancelled. Being cheap, I wanted to wait for some of the promised “thousands of comfortable beds” that several passengers said never showed up. We made another good call (literally) by asking our wonderful brother-in-law, Jason, to book us a new flight through delta.com. Many people waited 5-6 hours in customer-service lines in the airport, only to be turned away when the agents went off duty at 11pm.

Incidentally, according to a recent study, the Dutch are physically the largest people in the world. The largest of the Dutch must be police officers, and several hundred of them were deployed at the airport this morning, as tempers have definitvely started fraying. Huge cops, automatic weapons (that Zola immediately identified as MP-5s or “skinny poppers”), angry crowds: we need to get back to South Africa, where are calm.

Many other comedic adventures ensued. Our hotel room was a large basement closet, that smelled of smoke and had a prison-style window high on one wall. We got ripped off badly by a taxi driver who sped off when I questioned him on the fare. We got booked onto the wrong Detroit flight, which was then promptly delayed by three more hours, late into Saturday afternoon. None of us have changed clothes, bathed, or brushed our teeth in three days. Our luggage is nowhere to be found.

India charmed us onto a flight to Atlanta, which is only three hours delayed. We are sitting on the runway, ready to go, but I don’t want to jinx it. Hard to believe that a six-inch snow storm created this much havoc in one of the world’s busiest airports. Everyone has more or less kept his/her sense of humor (Dad occasionally excepted), but we are ready to be in Nashville!

Greetings from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg!

As an American, it is difficult to describe how completely South Africa goes on vacation when mid-December rolls around.  Schools are out, government offices close, construction workers go on leave (”builders’ holiday”), business activity just stops.  Phones go unanswered, e-mails get immediate “Out of the Office until January 10th” responses.  It may be like summer holidays in Continental Europe, but feels even more comprehensively switched off.

Every family that is mobile flees Johannesburg for the beaches of Durban, Cape Town, or Plettenberg Bay.  Traditionally, the start date of the exodus was 16 December, a public holiday in the old South Africa (Day of the Vow) and the New South Africa (Day of Reconciliation).  Traditionally, also, many people drove from the highveld to the coasts: loading up the staion wagon, attaching a little trailer for the luggage, and setting off on the highway.

Things have changed.  The holiday exodus now seems to start about a week earlier, once schools are out.  Also, rich South Africans have gotten richer, so driving 16 hours seems like an unnecessary pain in the neck.  Tout le monde flies, and therefore, every seat on every flight to Cape Town has been full from Monday to Friday.  This brings me to the point of this post.

I had a full day of meetings scheduled today in Johannesburg, but they all cancelled.  “Let’s pick this up after the holiday!”  Compliments of the season!” 

I also had a full day of meetings in Cape Town, which I had thought I would miss, but suddenly was able to attend.  I lucked into a seat on a 9:25 flight, and would have been in the office in Cape Town by noon.

The incredibly bad and frustrating 1Time airline had a “change of equipment” on the 9:25 flight, so half the passengers got bumped.  I was in that unlucky (or unearly) half, and threw a completely inappropriate shouting and counter-slamming temper tantrum at the counter.  Normally, I am not like that, but twice in a row, 1Time has cancelled a flight when I was in a hurry (Memo to self: don’t fly 1Time!).  Hello Ugly American!

The temper tantrum had the desired effect, though, and they jumped me to the front of the list for the proverbial “next available flight,” again on 1Time. Every seat on every flight for the other airlines is full, so this felt like victory.

In my ill-tempered excitement, I left the notebook which records every important element of my professional life sitting on the check-in counter.  I only discovered this 15 minutes later when I was buying a cup of coffee.  I had to make the walk of shame back to the scene of my temper tantrum.

I said to the agent, “Uh, I was here a few minutes ago, and I think I, uh, left a notebook.” She said, coolly, “Yes.  I remember you.”  Long story short(ish), the agent had “No idea where the notebook went.  No idea.  Next!”  Divine retribution.

Eventually, I found the notebook at the “flight controller’s” desk.  When I set down the hot and full cup of coffee on his desk to pick up the notebook, my hand brushed the cup and knocked it over.  If this were TV, it would have spilled everywhere, making an awkward situation worse.  Fortunately, the coffee lids in the Johannesburg Airpirt are made of stern stuff, and disaster was averted.

In future, I will try to be a nicer person under pressure.

Hours go by.  I took the Gautrain back into Johannesburg and met friends for breakfast, and then came back to the airport, ready to go.  Further divine retribution: the 12:45 1Time flight to Cape Town is now listed as “indefinitely delayed.”  I asked the flight controller what that meant, and he said, “It means there is an indefinite delay in the departure of the plane.”  Ah ha!

As noted above, there are literally no seats on any other flights on any other airlines.  Like Schrodinger’s Cat, I am in a state of limbo.  Unlike Schrodinger’s Cat, however, I can treat myself to lunch at Nando’s and make a few phone calls.  It could end up being a long day.