Airport Chaos: The Saga Continues
Going to Heathrow made the most sense at this point. I could not get trough to anybody either by phone or online. In addition, there was always the possibility that the airline would say that—as I wasn’t available at the stipulated check-in time—no alternative arrangements could be made.
It is better to take care of these things in person. I took an extra water bottle and prepared to camp in the terminal for the night.
There was no congestion on the way; nothing like the chaos at Makassar Pelni passenger terminal once we got there. In fact, everything looked almost normal, aside from the presence of extra police vans and many fluorescent jackets.
We got as far as the entrance. One of the jackets handed me a piece of paper with the freephone number printed on it which I had tried all morning to reach, and the list of required precautions for check-in, which I had also read a dozen times.
“Please leave the airport,” she said. “There is no booking desk here.”
Typical BA. They don’t even attempt crisis management. All she would say is: “The government has imposed restrictions and as a consequence, we have cancelled all short-haul flights for today. Please phone this number or visit BA.com.”
She said this about 3 times, then we decided to go to Terminal 3 for the Scandinavian airlines check-in, but there was no booking desk there, either. No flights today, and as for tomorrow: Inshallah.
***
A bit of a fraccas ensued as connecting the phone next to the computer stopped the modem working and it took a few minutes before it stopped being confused, after which I encountered another one of Plusnet’s periodic network errors.
Did they all have it in for me?
15:45. Miracle of miracles, I got trough on the freephone number (the voice on BA’s usual number, also on the sheet of paper, merely advised that the system was grid-locked with callers). At first, the freephone number was occupied as usual,so I set it to ‘hands-fre’e and went into the kichen, when a voice barked out to “hang up the receiver, now!”. I did, but I forgot about the handsfree and a few minutes later it sounded as if a car-alarm had gone off indoors. I disengaged it—and the phone started ringing.
A monotonous voice was about to reel off the entire list of check-in instructions again, then thought better of it and said: “…for further information, please press one”. Then (can you rate it?) there was an appeal for spare-cash donations to UNICEF to be made ‘on board of the flight’. Grrr. Then, an actual human being spoke to me. And he was nice. There is a special inflection these people use to calm down agitated passengers. Either that, or it’s because I had taken a chill-pill. What it boiled down to was that there was very little he could do for me. I qualify for a refund and he recommended I look at alternative arrangements in the meantime.
15:52. Back online (these errors are ubiquitous, but never last long. I’m waiting for one of them to interrupt me when I’m making a payment/submit an article online). Easyjet took bookings for a single flight from Stansted to Copenhagen at 18:15 for 181 quid. I’m back in Tadley—I can’t make it.
Ebookers showed up two flights with BMI tomorrow, both at over 500 quid.
There are no other flights until Saturday, and BA could not re-book me until Monday.
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