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Published: September 23rd 2007
On the Crapometre scale, today was off the charts. I can’t believe how many things went wrong for us today - hopefully, that’s it until the end of our trip, which isn’t much longer. Maybe we should be thankful that nothing that bad has happened to us yet - I mean, what’s one rude French guy?
The first part of our crappy day started at 5:30am when we had to get up to catch our shuttle to the airport. Our plane left at the very early time of 7:25am, so we had to make the effort to get there - this wasn’t an issue, in fact, it was nice walking around the hillside in the semi-darkness, to our pick-up point. The sun was just coming up, and we savoured our last few drops of Santorini air.
At the airport, we waited in line with everybody else - and as we finally reached the desk, I felt as though I was going to faint, or be sick, or both, so I rushed off to the toilet - and FAST! When I got back, Iz was arguing with the lady, who was telling him our flights had been cancelled. WHAT THE? She explained to us that the cancellation had occurred because we hadn't bothered to reconfirm our flights.
We tried to explain to her that we had in fact RE-CONFIRMED our flights, as we had been instructed to do, at Athens airport (which meant that they weren‘t cancelled), but she was having none of it, and we were asked to leave the line. The people behind us were glad to be moving forward finally, as we had been pleading our case for some time.
At the Olympic Airlines ‘Help’ desk, another lady told us there was nothing she could do except put us on standby. We tried to tell her that we had done the right thing, and that the flights had been re-confirmed from Athens, straight after we had been told to do so, but she was having none of it. We sat and waited while everyone else made it onto the flight - except us. There is no worse feeling than knowing that you have followed the rules, and still end up being in trouble!
Sitting at Santorini airport for the 5 hours between flights was not a fun experience, and it was definitely the first time I have got the big waterworks going on this trip. I just couldn’t believe that after doing everything we were asked, these people were capable of stuffing things up so badly. The incompetence! We basically had to sit, and wait, and hope that one of the three other flights leaving the island, would have 2 seats free.
To cut a long story short, we ended up having to pay an extra 131 Euro EACH to get on to another flight, as the Olympic flights were fully booked for the rest of the day. Enter drama number two...Aegean Air managed to lose Izzy’s suitcase (the second time this has happened in three days) on the 40 minute flight from point A to point B. We got to Athens, but there was only the one suitcase - AGAIN!! Can you believe it! This is after losing it on the way over! What do these people do - sleep as the bags go by? How can you fuck up loading the luggage on a forty minute flight, one way flight, with no connections?
I am afraid that these experiences will taint my memories of Greece, and I won’t be coming back anytime soon. To lose a suitcase twice, and have flights cancelled on us - NOT HAPPY JAN! Good Riddance to Greece is all I can say.
Will we get Izzy’s luggage back before we leave London - who knows? At the moment we are waiting around for our Heathrow flight, and hoping his case shows up before we leave, but after ringing twice already, things don’t look good. I think his bag is on one of the Charter flights to Norway, which means we won’t see it for a while. At least we’ll be packed light for China if things don’t show! And from now on, we WILL be splitting our clothes and luggage in two - lesson learnt!
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Jack
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Typical Olympic Air
Olympic Airlines also screwed us around by cancelling our flight out of Crete due to "weather conditions". Surprisingly all Aegean Air flights operated OK throughout the day. Meant we had to overnight in London near Heathrow at horrendous prices. If going to Greece, don't fly Olympic ! Sorry guys, perhaps warning you before you left might have prevented some grief. P.S. All well here and I am now a father !!!