We’ve
gathered up a couple of life-times of flight miles so me and the Fam are going
to Italy on Spring Break. (8 days of
touring & 2 days of flying bliss)
And with this mountain of accumulated miles, all four of us are flying
“Business Class”…very nice. The seats
are more like personal size pods placed in a large spacious lounge area. Each Pod has a Hi-Tech chair with 17
different points of adjustment. If
you’re a yogi or contortionist, you’re in 7th heaven.
So before
the trip I was told that there are fabulous “deals” to be had in glass and
leather goods. Needless to say, we overpaid so many times I lost count. At times I felt like we were wearing signs
that said, “Will Pay More.”
At the Rome
Airport they also have a clever way of trying to ensure you will not collect
your VAT Tax back. They send you on a
multi-terminal chase where nobody is really quite sure where you’re supposed to
go. It’s a great game where they’re
hoping you’ll give up in fear of missing your flight. We’ll have none of this. We’d rather miss our flights “Business Class”
than not get our $ 150 dollars in VAT tax back.
We get our
VAT tax back and now race to the terminal for our Flight. Drum Roll… this is how our ride home went
down:
Some
history: We started out months ago with four Business Class Direct Flights from
NYC to Rome and back…all using mileage…lovely.
About 4 months ago we got a call from the Airline. Seems they’ve cancelled our flight home, it
no longer exists. We’re told they can fly
us direct from Rome to Los Angeles and then fly us from LA to NYC. I asked the person on the other end of the
line, if he was pinching himself to keep from laughing while giving that
offer. Too quickly he countered with,
“Well we can just cancel all your flights if you like.” I turn the situation over to the Mrs. and now
we’re flying from Rome to London, changing planes and then London to NYC. Not great, but what can you do.
About a
month ago, we get another one of these mysterious calls from the airline. Seems they’ve cancelled another flight of
ours out of Rome. The Mrs. fixes this
too…we’re now flying from Rome to Chicago (11 hours), changing planes and back
to NYC. You can’t make this stuff
up…but it gets better.
As we arrive
at the Rome airport and check in unloading our luggage the girl behind the counter
ask us if our son had requested, “Not to have a Business Class seat.” Bizarre question, but we assure her; no he
definitely wants to sit with us in “Business Class”.
We get to
the end of the line at the gate and people from the airline approach us asking
us to come with them to the counter…I’m thinking maybe we’ve won a prize or
something. This is
not the case. They have terrible news
for us, which they seem less than broken up about. Seems that two of our four Business Class seats
have a “life vest” issue and no one can sit there. We volunteer to wear our life vests during
the flight but unfortunately that will not be acceptable. After the required amount of raising of the
voices and challenges, we realized they held all the cards…and we still needed
to get home. (Personally I couldn’t deal
with another $400 spaghetti dinner.) We’re the last four people on the plane
and they close the doors behind us.
Sure enough
the two front seats that were ours are empty.
Then an interesting set of events happened. They announce over the PA system that they
have a couple of flight attendants that are retiring today and this is their
last flight home. They wanted to make it
special for them. Sounds nice. Right
after that announcement one of the flight attendants comes up to me and my son
sitting in business class and says she just wanted to let us know that a flight
attendant is going to be sleeping in one of the seats we had. She goes on to say, she can sit there because
she works for the airline, but we can’t.
I tell her if my wife finds out you’re going to need to get the Air
Marshall. It gets better. She comes back about 30 minutes later and
says, “Someone got sick near another stewardess’s jump seat, and that
stewardess is going to need to take our other “Business Class” seat.” At this point my wife is dragging both flight
attendants by the hair out of our seats, and the Air Marshall is on her back
trying to take her down…at least that’s what I’m envisioning. Fait Accompli.
More Fun –
We land in Chicago tired, pissed, irritable, and late. We’re now the family from the movie Home
Alone running through the Chicago airport trying to get through Customs and
make our connecting flight back to NYC.
We have Priority Tags on our luggage because we’re flying “Business
Class”, but literally, our bags are the last ones off the conveyor belt. When we finally get our bags and run to
another check point, someone from the airline tells us that we have a shot at
making our flight, but that our bags will never make it on the plane. She asks if we want to reschedule our flight
home…more screaming and yelling…we decide, no, we’re going to try to make this
happen…the Gods have to cut us a break sooner or later…or so we thought.
It was good
that Chicago’s O’Hare airport is like the 2nd largest in the
nation. We’re now on our fourth jammed tram
ride trying to get to our terminal and depart. We explode off off the Tram, blowing through
anyone in our way as we race to our gate.
We’ve been up for about 24 hours now and running completely on
adrenaline…and spite. Again, large
airport, running on empty…can feel my heart starting to pound…like out of my
chest…so glad I made the decision to give up physical exercise. We reach the gate and no one is there…confusion
and depression set in. We look at the
board and it says the flight is delayed 30 minutes…Eureka! This extends to about 90 minutes. We then get on our plane and are ready to
go. Then the pilot gets on the air and
tells us that they can’t find the workers who tow this plane out of the gate…he
says, “They must be on a coffee break”,…Really?
Coffee break is over, we get towed out to the runway, and now that we’re
2 hours late…we’re number 73 in line to take off.
We avoid a
crash landing; baggage again is last off the plane, as I get my final reminder
of why I’m a homebody who prefers “Staycations.”
