The second-to-last day of our honeymoon, my husband and I discovered the Air France strike. Which is to say, our flight home had been canceled.
Almost everyone who has flown has at some point or another dealt with plane delays, but this was my first outright cancellation. Luckily I'd taken an extra day of vacation from work to recover from jetlag, so we had some flexibility getting home. And hey, extra time in paradise: we weren't complaining!
DH undertook the effort of getting us re-routed, and--with 3 hours of phone calls, including time spent trying to get through--managed to get us on a flight the day after our original flight, going through Munich and New York instead of a one-layover straight to NC. A bit hectic, but we'd be getting home.
Here is where I shall note to any intrepid travelers: if you plan to fly out of Italy, make sure your following layover has an extra hour or so built in beyond the minimum you think you'll need. Let's just say Italy does things on its own time, and as the kind staff at the Munich airport helped us hurtle through twenty minutes late on an already tight connection, we got more than a few knowing winks and nods. "Every day, those Italian flights..." may have been heard at one point.
The bright side is that we got to the plane just in time, and they even kindly put our baggage back on the plane for us. Of course, they'd already given away our seats, but this was to our benefit, as we got upgraded to premium economy. That extra knee room makes a huge difference on a 9-hour flight.
And when we got off the plane, they offered each disembarking passenger on the plane a chocolate. German chocolate lives up to its reputation. We even managed to get through customs and onto our next plane in plenty of time!
The long story short is that everything worked out well, people in airports will try their best to help you as long as you're patient and polite, and that it's a good idea to give yourself an extra day for 'jetlag recovery'... you might just wind up spending it getting home.
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| Ravello, Italy: Paradise. |
DH undertook the effort of getting us re-routed, and--with 3 hours of phone calls, including time spent trying to get through--managed to get us on a flight the day after our original flight, going through Munich and New York instead of a one-layover straight to NC. A bit hectic, but we'd be getting home.
Here is where I shall note to any intrepid travelers: if you plan to fly out of Italy, make sure your following layover has an extra hour or so built in beyond the minimum you think you'll need. Let's just say Italy does things on its own time, and as the kind staff at the Munich airport helped us hurtle through twenty minutes late on an already tight connection, we got more than a few knowing winks and nods. "Every day, those Italian flights..." may have been heard at one point.
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| Jetting home |
And when we got off the plane, they offered each disembarking passenger on the plane a chocolate. German chocolate lives up to its reputation. We even managed to get through customs and onto our next plane in plenty of time!
The long story short is that everything worked out well, people in airports will try their best to help you as long as you're patient and polite, and that it's a good idea to give yourself an extra day for 'jetlag recovery'... you might just wind up spending it getting home.
Glad it wasn't as much of a misadventure as it could have been!
ReplyDeleteHeh...One of my friends did a semester in France in a program with foreign exchange students from multiple countries. The teacher very quickly learned that she had to tell her students different start-times for the next day based on what country they were from. German and US students got the actual time. Italian and I-forget-which-other-nationality students were given the earliest fake start time.
XD That's hilarious. Shows just how much culture impacts the perception of time! I hearing that in one country, arriving 'on time' to a party was almost rude because they expect you an hour later. Can't remember the country, though.
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