OMG the Flight

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The Flight………
OMG what can I say…….. & we thought the day we running so smoothly no trouble with traffic on the motorways parked he car nice & easy found the check in desks & sat waiting for them to open as we were ahead of schedule even bumped into an old work colleague who was on our flight & had a good catch up. Then the check in desks opened & it all went down hill from then……….

As we had already checked in online & I’d printed the boarding cards out we to the web check in bag drop queue & it was at this point things started to go wrong. The lady at the check in desk picked up a “Long Lay” ticket & put it on our case & informed us that was because we had a long wait in Doha airport me & John both looked at each other with puzzles expressions & asked her what she ment? At which point she told us of your connection in Doha wasn’t until 830am local time the next morning. Finally the penny had dropped for What “Long Lay” ment.

I then I asked her what she was talking about as I’d only booked a short change over of 2 1/2hrs & we were then told nope your wait is over 6hrs!!!!!!! At this point we were both totally confused & told her he lady to hang on a second while I found the email with our E-tickets just invade I had made an error & she was correct. It was then she noticed our boarding cards for our connection were a different flight number & the penny dropped. Another lady from the airline came over & said our flight had been cancelled & we’d been moved to the next flight over 6hrs later. We were not a bit happy at this point.

We then had to take our case back & go to the customer service desk so they could re-issue our tickets on the new flight. The lady informed us they will try & sort something out in Doha for us & would call me before our flight left Manchester. Back to the check in desk again we go to the same lady who at this point couldn’t say sorry enough. We proceeded to check in then & went threw to airport lounge for a few drinks & await the phonecall letting us know what they were going to do.

The countdown to the flight taking off was 3hrs so we didn’t worry about the phone call as we had ages to wait. So I thought while I had time to wait Id send my email off to Qatar as the customer service desk had instructed me to & given me the email address to complain about not being informed of our flight being cancelled & messing up our plans. Still the phone didn’t ring so I did a bit of googling on what the airline are legally obligated to do with you on such a long delay & then I called Qatar as if not heard from them & we were boarding in 30mins.

The lady I spoke to in their customer service department was less than helpful till I started quoting the civil aviation act of 2005. It was at this point she started being helpful & told me not to worry something would be sorted when we landed in Doha. As we boarded the flight the check in lady also told us customer services had sent an email to Doha & don’t worry. Well that made me worry we were boarding an 8hr flight with a 6hr delay & no idea how we’d even get a drink never mind a bite to eat as we’d only told our banks to allow transactions in UAE & nowhere else & typical us we never have more than a couple of pound in cash!!!!!!!

So after a long unhappy flight wondering what we were gonna do for over 6hrs in an airport with no cash we finally landed in Doha at 0030 local time boarded the bus that was waiting at the bottom of the steps & dropped us off at the arrival doors. Qatar staff were waiting at the bottom of the esculators to great us we asked were do we go to find out information & were told top of the esculators turn right. So off we went still feeling down but when we arrived at the top of the esculators we were greater by a young man holding a card with our names on it. Shocked by this we approached him showed him out boarding cards & passports as requested & were told they had moved us to an earlier flight with Etihad leaving 2hrs sooner, right away our moods improved. We were told to just have a seat for a few mins while they transferred us which we were more than happy to do. Then a lady came over to us with our boarding cards & a voucher informing us to go grab a drink & food on the them as the transfer will take a bit to do then come back when we’re ready. Delighted by this news off we went for a drink we were both dying for 1. After being gone for about 40 mins we headed back upstairs to collect our passports & new boarding cards which were very happy about to then be told we will be taken to the business/1st class lounge were we can wait until our flight is ready to depart which is were we are waiting now.

John is fast asleep on the sofa & I thought I’d post a blog on here. Fingers crossed the rest of our break runs smoothly now

March 11, 2015

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