Summary
I can’t even…
Details
Our schedule lets us get up at an OK time. We both had a good night’s sleep. Like prisoners on death row, we’ve resigned ourselves to our fate: we’re headed home (just kidding, we’re excited to see family, friends and our own house again). We wash up, dress and do one final repack, carefully padding stuff and balancing the weight. Downstairs we have one last “oh, so, Italian” breakfast.
We’re shuttled over to the airport on time. It’s just us in the van, how chi-chi! Due to yesterday’s delay we don’t get charged for any of these airport shuttles, nice. That saves $22 total. We’re makin’ money!
We get to the airport at 10:30 am. At the British Airways desk they see us approaching and ask when our flight is… ah, 1:40 pm, check-in will start at 11:40, grrrr. Time to go sit and wait.
While waiting I have postcard I’m wishing to mail from here. I have a French stamp but not one that works in Italy. Luckily there’s an Italian Post office on the airport’s ground floor. It’s easy to find. Unluckily, today is “Italy Day” (like our July 4th). As such, the office is closed.
At 11:40 we’re in line to check in. In front of us is a family of three speaking French. Maybe they’d be willing to take my postcard! I could add my French stamp and they could just drop it in the post when they get home! I interrupt and inquire (in French) if they’re going to France. “No… London”. Yes, of course, we all are, but after that, back home to France, non? I ask hopefully. “No, home to Dubai”
We have a nice long talk, some in French, most in English. Isn’t there a post office in the airport? Have you asked at the magazine shop? They feel bad they can’t help.
The weight limit for our luggage is 32 kg per bag. Ours are full of wine bottles and other jars of this and bottles of that. In the end we don’t even get to 28 kg, and that’s for the two bags combined!
Through security and duty-free we enter the rarified air of the British Airways lounge. On the flight over from the U.S., so we could sleep, I had apparently sprung for business class. I assumed our trip was business class the whole way, but we checked and we’re in “cattle car class” (coach) to London and premium economy to Austin. Frugal it is then. But with my American status and the fact that we’re flying BA, we’re admitted to the lounge. Nice!
In the lounge we sit and read and such. Given Karen’s recent episode on ‘Girls gone wild”, we avoid the well-stocked liquor section. I do have soup, veggies, hummus, mini-sandwiches, etc.
At 40 minutes before our departure we don our masks, head to the gate and wait (and wait and wait). Finally our boarding passes and passports are rechecked, yay! And we’re ushered into the area for “wait here for the bus to the plane”. After an hour we get the PA system equivalent of “Psych!” Thunderstorms here and in London have summed to equal “You’re not leaving any time soon”.
We go back to the lounge and lounge. Eventually we go through all the steps and are on the plane, raring to go. Just waiting for the plane engines to start.
As we’re waiting we watch the online counter for “Minutes to make your connecting flight to Austin”. It goes from 90 minutes to 50 to 5 to negative. We’ve been in this boat (well, plane) before and quickly make an inexpensive hotel reservation at Heathrow. Thinking is: If we need it, we’ll be happy to have it. If we don’t need it, that means we’re on a flight to Austin, and we’ll be happy. I then have a third thought: we might still be here in Milan. Fuuuuuck!
Online we can see that there are serious thunderstorms both here and in London. “We’re not the only flight disrupted (look out the window)”, we’re told by the pilot. “You’ll see lots of BA planes just sitting there.”
Eventually the launch is scrubbed and we’re bussed back to the terminal. We have to go through immigration just as if we were coming from Russia. It takes forever. We re-collect our bags and head for the BA lounge (back through security, again).
An email from BA apologizes for the cancelled flight and indicates what other flight we’ll be on this evening (to get to London) and tomorrow (to continue on to Austin).
At the appointed time we go through passport control (again) and wait at the gate. Eventually they check our papers and get us on the tarmac bus. And we wait and wait. OK, everyone back in the gate area, no joy.
Apparently you need at least four things to fly: a plane, a crew, a departure window from Milan and an arrival window into Heathrow. Due to the bad weather at either end, getting those last two, at the same time, was looking like a tall order.
Eventually we’re on the plane and ready to go. [fill in your own “and we wait and we wait”].
The pilot comes on the PA and says “The thunderstorms here are simply too dangerous for us to take off… the flight’s not going tonight… but we did give it a good try, eh, everybody? We can feel good about that, eh?” he say, cheerily.
There are not a lot of good feelings on this plane. Also, by the way, it’s too dangerous for us to even get off the plane. The heavy rain and lightning are too perilous for us to walk down the metal stairway back to the buses. We’re trapped.
And when are we flying out now? Is the flight canceled? Or not canceled but just delayed, to still go, but not til mid-morning? No one knows. Indecision is the key to flexibility. Schrödinger’s plane.
An hour later the storms have mostly finished and we are let off the plane. We’re told that inside there’ll be BA reps to help us arrange for overnight lodging and rebooking as appropriate. Into the terminal we go and back through the painfully slow immigration process.
Around midnight at the airport we get through immigration, into Milan, for the third time today, even though we never left. We recollect our bags for the 2nd time today and head for the ticket counter. We’re told there are people there who will help us get new routings and a hotel for the night.
At the ticket desk there are three groups of people, those who got the word and are moving on, those who are getting the word, and those awaiting to get the word (us). The two men just ahead of us have gotten the word and wish more of the BA reps time to vent. I want to say “Shut the fuck up and move along!”
We then get the word: the flight is still on, it’ll just take off tomorrow at 10 am and we’re on our own to arrange a hotel and get there (and back tomorrow). But we will miss our connection to Austin. “Call BA, we’re not authorized to handle that”.
We relocate away from the BA to find a quiet place where we can sit and make a call to find a hotel. We find such an area but under most of them are people already trying to sleep.
Hotels.com suggests a nearby hotel. We look up the phone number and call (via Google Voice). They have a room and tell us how to get a free shuttle the 6 km over there.
The hotel looks great and the room better. I spend 30 minutes (now it’s 1am) on the phone with a British Airways rep in India to change our flight. They propose a later flight to London and a flight to Austin. I say the 10 flight (we’ve been told) we have is fine, just change the London to Austin leg. Done!
Alarm set for 6:30 we crawl into bed. At best we can get five hours of sleep.
Photos
