Welcome to a tragic story, played in multiple acts. It involves cries, tears, angers, but eventually, all is good. So American movie, not French.
The story starts like this: I had to do an unplanned trip to Canada, for work related topic. I ended up booking a 10 days trip, which was already challenging due to personal constraints.
The initial plan is by Friday 7th of march, I was supposed to board a plane at 8pm and get saturday morning via a direct flight to my home place Zürich.
I diligently checked in, checked in by bag and realized I didn’t have a seat: I had a SBY code, which I learnt meant Stand By. After some consultation, I learnt it I would fly only if the plane was not full (it was) and if people didn’t make it.
How did I end up like that? I did nothing : just booked a Swiss ticket, which was codeshare Air Canada and got unlucky. My ticket was not cheap or anything…
After getting to the airport early 4 pm and waiting until 8pm, then last call, it was clear: I was denied boarding.
There starts the awesome story: customer service was supposed to rebook me through Dublin, but decided to book me throuch NYC. Asked if I had an ESTA, thought I had one, luckily they checked and found in their system I was good to go through US. I was not thrilled about a change in US and a 5 hours wait time, but beggars can’t be choosers.
After 1 full hour at consumer service, I ended up with 2 boarding passes and a request to fetch my bag from carrousel 10, because I would have to recheck next day due to different requirements (having to go through Us security)
As I had already passed security, I had to go through immigration again. Having not directly landed, I had no electronic paper and had to go through the queue, behind a few hundred peoples. Who doesn’t love queuing for 1 hour in the evening to go back to starting point?
Having cleared security, I headed up to baggage claim to grab my bag, only to not discover its absence. Back to another customer claim desk, and I learnt that my bag was actually on board the plane to ZRH, the one I was denied boarding into (despite having bought a full price ticket, remember) and in direct violation of FAA regulations
It was past 9pm. I was pissed off, with smelly clothes and no toilettry or change. Luckily, a wonderful colleague of mine came to grab me, offered me dinner and a wonderful evening paired with a guest room and one of his spare t-shirts (since I couldn’t get my bag)
After a small night: I got a call form my wife and surprise, according to ZRH airport, my bag had never left Toronto… In front of all of this, I decided to get early to the airport, like 11am, to be sure to have a chance to identify the fate of my bag.
After some discussion, discovered that my bag was probably not lost and rerouted to the new flight via NYC. Happy about this great news, I headed toward security, then the hour long queue to the US custom…. and ended up rejected! Seemingly, my ESTA was not discovered and/or expired or tied to the wrong passport (perks of carrying 2 citizenship, you have to remember where you attach your ESTA).
Anyway, I was not about to be a loser : time to grab the phone, and apply for new ESTA. Many clicks and struggles later, application was submitted and… not approved. I was a lucky winner, needing to having my application review by human, which can take up to 72 hours. It was a saturday afternoon, after another try with customer officers, one hour of waiting and a nervous breakdown, it was time to accept the reality : I would not be flying through New York City!
Time to exit security (hint: there is no official way to do that and you have to negotiate), back to the customers desk, only to hear that all flights were full… and that they couldn’t succeed at mutating my ticket.
Only option : call help from free phone in the other side of the airport. Did that, talked to a guy, only to learn he was unable to do anything. My checked in bag was the problem, the ticket couldn’t be mutated because it had components already in flight… Remember, it’s Toronto, basically headquarters to Air Canada and I wa on the phone. It was 13, time was flying fast, mental energy was sinking even faster. After some anger on the phone (for which I must apologize to the poor operator), I was back to square one : booked in a flight taking off in 2 hours, that I couldn’t reach, with a checked in bag somewhere.
After some discussion with my wife, tried one last chance : went to international counter (no the US one), found the highest ranking operator (the one for senator senior something). After happily cutting the line, I ended up talking to a wonderful japanese lady, who managed to rebook with a flight to München Germany (where I have no problem transiting through), and a correspondance to ZRH after a one hour lay over. She even went above and beyond and called bagage management with a description of my bag and confirmed they had found it, and rettaged it.
Time to head off through security to Europe (not the US gates this time), where I got cleared after 2 random checks: before and after security, my laptop was scanned for explosive. Luckily, I have cool stickers on laptop, but not C4! (fun fact, I’m travelling with 2 laptops, ipad, phone and ereader, meaning lots of fun through all my security checks)
As of now, 24hours later, 1.5 nervous breakdown, a burger and a beer later, I’m waiting for my flight to Munich will board in 3 hours and maybe, who knows, the adventure will be over and Ill be sunday afternoon at my place…