Amy's Good Travel Karma Goes Bad

I have always considered that I have "good travel karma". I travel alot - in the first 6 months of this year, I travelled 62,000 miles - and I rarely am plagued by delays, lost luggage or cancellations. In fact, I was just talking to a colleague last week about my good travel luck, while she complained about hers.

So you can imagine how frustrated I was Thursday night as I tried to get to Prague.

My flight was scheduled from Heathrow's Terminal 5 at 6:20. I arrive in plenty of time and treat myself to Gordon Ramsey's Plane Food restaurant. After that I go into the nearest bookstore, for my usual supply of a magazine or book. At Heathrow, the gate is not assigned right away, it is published on a screen about a 1/2 hour before you need to go to the gate. At the time my gate should have been displayed, the message displayed instead is "See Airline for information". I make my way to the suggested area as an announcement declares that all flights between 5:00 and 6:30 have been cancelled! It turns out the central Air Traffic Control, which directs the flights for Heathrow, Gatwick and Stanstead has had a systems failure.

I make my way to the directed point for customer service to rebook my flight. I stand in line for 2 hours and move maybe 10 ft. We are finally given a sheet of paper that provides a phone number to call, which i take advantage of.

I have to make it to Prague that night. You see, my niece, Emma, was in transit by car pool from Dresden to Prague to meet me for the weekend. I had no way to contact her, she has no mobile phone to call me. I explain this to the reservations agent and eventually, after 1 hour, she manages to book me on a flight on another airline that might leave Heathrow that night. By this time, all flight sup to 8:00 p.m. have been cancelled - this flight is scheduled to leave at 9:30. I decide to take my chances and take it, knowing that if that flight is cancelled too, my chances of leaving before Friday afternoon for a weekend trip are slim.

I call the hotel and explain my situation - and tell them my overriding concern is to ensure that my niece is let into the room they have for me. I have to say, they were exceptional.

I have to make my way, in less then 1 hour, from Terminal 5 to Terminal 2, get my new boarding pass and find the gate. I didn't need to rush, however, because it turns out that flight is delayed by another hour and a half.

the flight finally takes off about 11:00 at night - which gets me into Prague at 2:00 a.m. This is bad, because all the public transport stops at 2:00 and taxis are notoriously bad in Prague. So I call my exceptional hotel and they send one of their staff to pick me up. By the time I check in, it is after 3:00 a.m. and I have been travelling for 11 hours for a trip that ordinarily takes 2 hours.

I've mentioned the hotel was exceptional. Turns out they booked me into a suite on the club floor, which provided us access to a free breakfast each morning in the stunning lounge. Now, I'm not talking presidential suite here, but it was two separate rooms - living and bedroom, as well as a bathroom bigger then the one I have at home (London or Ottawa), a king sized bed (unheard of in Europe!) plus views over the hillside. I have no idea if this is because they took pity on me or if it was just a part of the corporate plan I booked the hotel through. I've checked in though, and so my weekend is not ruined.
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But does my bad travel karma end there? No - remember, I still have to get back to London at some point.

Due to a comedy of errors, I end up having no idea what airline or what time I am flying out on on Sunday. So Saturday night, I use the free Internet access to get the local number for the airline I think I am booked on, based on the last information I had. I ask the lounge concierge to help me, because I'm pretty sure the English on this airline's customer service might not be great and I expect to need an interpreter. She calls - and the airline says they have my name but no other information. I need to call the original airline. But here's the problem - it's a British airline, and has no local number in Prague on weekends, and the only number available on weekends is good only if you are in the UK - which is hardly helpful when you aren't in the UK on a weekend.

So I have a brainstorm - I'll call my husband in Ottawa - they are 6 hours behind, and surely there will be weekend service in North America for this airline. Colin agrees to call them, et voila! calls back to tell me my booking reference number and departure time. Which, considering it was three hours earlier then I had thought, was a good thing I managed to get it sorted out.

Of course, that flight ended up being delayed by an hour. And then - after the quickest trip ever through UK customs - I get on the Heathrow Express train into central London. Usually, this trip takes 20 minutes from Terminal 5. Tonight, of course, it took over 1 hour, due to a faulty train on the track in front of us.
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I sincerely hope this ends my bad travel experiences for awhile....I much prefer my previous good travel karma - Come back! I miss you! I'll never take you for granted again!