SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017
Our 6:00 am taxi takes us to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. so everything was going well. We’re tired, but that’s OK.
We get to the airport three hours ahead of our 9:30 am international flight as prescribed and get on a long line to wait for the American Airlines ticket counter to open. Then wait. And wait. They are standing there but the counter is not open so the line just keep growing.
Baggage checked, through security, grab a coffee and folks are lined up at the gate to board. Then the fun begins:
- Our 10:20 am flight is now delayed to 1pm.
- now delayed to 3 pm
- now delayed to 10 pm
- now it’s back to 3 pm
- now it’s back to 10 pm
- now it’s tomorrow morning!
It’s mechanical and YES, we would rather not fly on a broken aircraft.
Everyone lines up to get hotel assignments and to re-book flights. While I wait on line, like a few other travelers, Rosie is on the phone with American. Arrangements change several times and we get booked on an unscheduled flight for early the next day. We think that this will be the repaired aircraft. We hope that the missing part arrives.
There is a sea of people trying to catch a shuttle to one of the several airport hotels. We eventually arrive at the hotel and receive meal vouchers, bring our bags to the room, dig out the phone chargers and go to hotel restaurant for dinner. It opens at 6 pm. People are waiting for the doors to open. At 6:20, I go to the front desk to ask when the restaurant opens. She says, “At six. It’s at the end of the hall.” I say, “Yes, there is a group of tired and hungry people waiting by the doors.” The front desk calls the restaurant and soon the doors open. The buffet is not yet completely set. I interrupt a staff group chit-chat to ask for a wine list. We get the list. I interrupt someone to ask if we can order some wine. The buffet is as complete as it will get. Does everyone here eat all of their food raw?
While we ate dinner our phones charged in the room. The dining room is full of people in same situation. We hear from fellow travelers that the flight has been cancelled. The desserts were OK but the three self serve coffee machines produced something weak, even by American standards.
Back in the room, Rosie get the message from the front desk that we have been re-booked on United connecting through Newark. But they did not give her the new United PNR (passenger name record). It takes American 15 minutes to look up the United PNR. We try not to unpack, but we need clothes that we did not expect to need. We repack, wash and blow dry a few things and hit the hay.
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SUNDAY, MAY 21, 2017
We receive our 4:30 am wake-up call. Breakfast buffet opened at 5:30 am. Shuttle back to Schiphol is at 6 am. The United flight to Newark goes smoothly. We get our luggage and go through US Customs. We get pulled into a line for additional agricultural screening. Time is ticking and we have a fairly quick connection. We again go through security for our flight to DFW. The next flight goes well also. Philip picked us up at the airport. Thank you!
Now two big vacations crossing the Atlantic have had American Airlines problems. In 2012, we spent four days without luggage in Ireland. It’s not the mechanical problem that upsets us. It’s the bumbled response and lack of proper communication. Our phone messages only came through for half of the changes. If we had relied on those we would have missed more flights.
Thank you, United for getting us home safe without further delays.
It’s good to be back in Texas. It will take us several days to recover from a seven hour time change. We are too tired to do much tonight. Tex-Mex will have to wait for tomorrow.
Rosie gets to hug her fur babies tonight!
