Airplane adventures

We're back home now from Christmas, and to start off with, I'll tell you how our flight was.  We would have taken pictures, but no one wants to pull out the camera when they haven't slept in 24 hours and feel like death.  I'm much more positive about it now that I've slept.

12:00 p.m. Calgary time: Arrive at airport.  We opted for a super-cheap Air Transat flight to London Gatwick, followed by a quick hop to Amsterdam with British Airways.  Why?  We've spent the last year and a half always half a leg behind, because if you fly with the big airlines, it costs nearly double the price of a return ticket to book a one-way ticket.  No, I don't understand it either.  So we would book our ticket back to Europe at Christmas, and have the next ticket back to Canada already purchased.  It was getting annoying, and stopping us from taking advantage of seat sales.  But if you fly one of the cheap airlines, the one-way ticket costs half the price of the return ticket, which it ought to do in a sane world.

12:30 p.m. Calgary time: Drop off checked baggage.  We paid slightly extra for what Transat calls "Option Plus."  That meant we got 10 kilos each of extra checked luggage (which we needed), seat selection (although as the plane we were on was a 3-4-3 configuration rather than having some rows that were 2-4-2, we didn't get a row to ourselves), priority boarding (which is just nice), free blanket and neck pillow and headphones (which you would otherwise pay for), and free champagne (which is just entertaining).  Check three suitcases, weighing 23 kilos, 27 kilos, and 15 kilos.  Be very pleased that we paid for the extra 20 kilos, as it allowed us to check a suitcase consisting entirely of books.

1:00 p.m. Calgary time: Security in Calgary.  My shoes set off the metal detector, which is bizarre, because I often fly wearing those runners simply because they've never before set off a metal detector.  I really should put the Kleenex in my pocket rather than my purse before the security line, because I always cry in the security line.

1:30 p.m. Calgary time:  Try to figure out why the plane hasn't shown up yet when boarding is supposed to start shortly.  Realize that the check-in lady wrote the wrong gate number on the tickets when a Lufthansa plane shows up.  This explains all the Germans at the gate.  Find the correct gate and continue waiting there.

1:50 p.m. Calgary time: Board plane.  The priority boarding and the blanket pack and other perks were totally worth it, especially considering that we got to keep the (impressively) good-quality inflatable neck pillows.  Not sure I'd pay for them for both legs of a flight, but the flights were so cheap and we had so much luggage that it was worth it for the one-way.

2:15 p.m. Calgary time: Flight departs, impressively on time.  The leg room on Transat wasn't too bad, although as I'm barely five feet tall, I only really have cause to complain on Ryanair.  About the same as Air Canada or Lufthansa, though, and slightly less than KLM, who need to accomodate tall Dutch people.

Hour one of flight (about 3 p.m. Calgary time): I like that the long-haul planes all have USB ports in the seatbacks now.  I also like the personal screen, because I can never see the shared screen.  You can really see the price difference there: the big airlines all have at least fifty and probably closer to a hundred movies to choose from, while Transat had maybe ten.  And yay free champagne!

Hour two of flight (about 4:30 p.m. Calgary time): Dinner shows up.  Again, not quite as good as the major and more expensive airlines, but fine.  The flight attendants insisted on us drinking all the free alcohol to which we were entitled, which is apparently a 200 ml bottle of champagne plus two more 200 ml bottles of wine or beer.  That's nearly a full bottle of wine each, which is especially bad because alcohol hits your system faster on a plane.

Hour four of flight (about 5:30 p.m. Calgary time): Attempt to sleep.  I think Stefan managed an hour or so.  I didn't sleep at all, but that's no surprise.  I rarely manage to sleep on airplanes.

Hour seven of flight (about 9:45 p.m. Calgary time): Commence descent to London Gatwick airport.  Endure half an hour of brutal turbulence and feel enormous sympathy with the lady behind us, who made good use of the bag in the seat pocket.  I don't think I've ever been so happy to land, it was that rough a descent.

5:15 a.m. London time (10:15 p.m. Calgary time): Land at Gatwick, which is one of the least well-mapped airports I've ever had the privilege of visiting.  Seriously, the signs were just awful.  Plus, we landed in the south terminal, which appeared to be constructed entirely of plywood and unpainted drywall.  I think they're renovating, but still.  Add seven hours for the time change: good thing I already changed the time on my iPod to London time.  Pass through UK customs quickly, because hey, we're carrying Canadian passports and we're not staying in the UK longer than a couple of hours anyway.

5:45 a.m. London time (10:45 p.m. Calgary time): Claim checked luggage and try to locate the shuttle to the other terminal, which was outside security.  Oh well.  The shuttle must be brand-new: it was very fancy, with colour-changing LEDs and screens that told you how many minutes, and sliding doors into the cars.

6:00 a.m. London time (11:00 p.m. Calgary time): Haul luggage over to a bench and start trying to take some weight out of the 27 kilo suitcase in order to meet the 23 kilo limit on British Airways.  Take it up to the counter and have it weighed: nope, only 25.5 kilos.  BA lady informs us (presumably so that we wouldn't stand at her desk while we tried to lower the weight) that there are a few free scales near the back of the check-in area.  They're clearly used to this, so we commandeer a scale and the area around it to move things around, and manage to get it down to 23.5 kilos, which is fine.  The non-discount airlines are often not too picky about their allowance: when I moved out here, KLM happily took my 24 and 26 kilo suitcases, despite their 23 kilo limit.  The book-filled suitcase now becomes carry-on, as BA has a very generous carry-on allowance of 23 kilos plus a briefcase/laptop/etc.

6:30 a.m. London time (11:30 p.m. Calgary time): Pass through security without setting off any alarms this time.  I really wish airports would have more tables immediately after security, so you could rearrange your stuff and people wouldn't hold up the line by doing it on the conveyor belt.  If there's one thing you remember while flying, it's that people are idiots.  You could wait five more minutes to get into the terminal to make that phone call, and you don't really need to recline your seat before take-off, and you can move your stuff along in the security line so that you don't hold up everyone else.

6:45 a.m. London time (11:45 p.m. Calgary time): Realize that we're starving and hunt down sandwiches after security while waiting for the gate to appear.  For some stupid reason, both Gatwick and Heathrow in London don't post the gate until they're just about ready to board the plane, which means you get to hang around the main terminal until just before boarding, and then sprint for the gates, many of which are at least a 15-minute walk from the terminal.  Brilliant planning.  I think the problem is that both airports run more flights than they were intended to run, and so they don't have the space to have you wait at the gate.

7:30 a.m. London time (12:30 a.m. Calgary time): Find a bench to park our stuff and take turns exploring the shops, if only to stretch our legs.  Convince Stefan that he does not in fact need an 8-foot-tall Harrods bear dressed in a doorman's outfit, and that it would probably not fit in the overhead bin.  It cost 1600 pounds, about $2500 Canadian.

8:25 a.m. London time (1:25 a.m. Calgary time): Gate appears, conveniently located a 15-minute walk away.  The walk takes us past a hallway decorated with giant ocean and beach photos, complete with a loudspeaker playing soothing ocean noises (no pirates, though).  Go up the longest escalator ever to a walkway that passes above the lane where the airplanes taxi, because clearly they've already expanded this part of the airport to include more gates.  That part plays soothing tropical bird noises.  Go down an even longer escalator to the brand-new fancy gates, which were very nice, if very far away.  Wait.

9:00 a.m. London time (2:00 a.m. Calgary time): Continue waiting.  Wonder when boarding will start, if the boarding time was 8:50 and the plane plans on taking off as scheduled.  Gate clerk makes an announcement that the flight has been delayed and that the captain will be coming out to speak to us shortly. That's never a good sign.

9:15 a.m. London time (2:15 a.m. Calgary time): Pilot comes out and informs us that there are severe thunderstorms in Amsterdam and that our current landing slot moves our take-off to 11 a.m., and that he hopes to start boarding in about an hour.  He then hangs around for a good twenty minutes talking to everyone.  Flights are still landing in Amsterdam, but with more time in between them than usual and only on one of the four big runways, because the winds are too severe on the others.  These short-haul flights always take the brunt of that kind of cancellation, because you're not going to tell a transatlantic that's already in the air that it can't land, but you can cancel a 45-minute flight that hasn't left yet.

10:15 a.m. London time (3:15 a.m. Calgary time): Still waiting for boarding, but at least they let us keep our gate and didn't send us back to the main terminal, only to have to make that hike again.  We did get to watch the baggage handlers unload and refuel a plane, because we were sitting next to giant windows.  The baggage handlers hop right up into the hold!

10:30 a.m. London time (3:30 a.m. Calgary time): Sad pilot walks back out from the plane.  No announcements in quite a while, which is not a good sign.  And indeed, the flight has been cancelled entirely.  They've already rebooked us and will automatically retag our baggage for the new flight, which will take off at 3:05 p.m.  In theory.

11:00 a.m. London time (4:00 a.m. Calgary time): Wander back to the main terminal, where BA hands us each 10 pound food vouchers, which barely covered lunch (although to be fair, we opted for an actual restaurant rather than a premade sandwich place).  How very generous.

11:15 a.m. London time (4:15 a.m. Calgary time): Find a bench and park our stuff again.  Two backpacks, one laptop bag, and one carry-on full of books does not make you particularly mobile.  Take turns lying down for a bit and then taking another walk around the terminal.

12:30 p.m. London time (5:30 a.m. Calgary time): Decide we've put off lunch for long enough and use our ten-pound vouchers at a pub to have fish and chips.  Has anyone been daring enough in Britain to attempt the "mushy peas" they always have as an option with fish and chips?  They sound completely unappetizing to me, so I always opt for the garden peas instead.

1:30 p.m. London time (6:30 a.m. Calgary time): Finish lunch and realize there's still an hour to kill until they figure out our gate time.  Also realize that, according to our original schedule, we would have been home by now.  Find another bench.  More walking, which I think is helping us stay awake.  Stefan naps for about half an hour.

2:00 p.m. London time (7:00 a.m. Calgary time): I've now been awake for 23 hours.  Stare blankly into space for a solid twenty minutes, because I've been too tired to read since we landed, and I'm now too tired to even play games on my iPod.

2:45 p.m. London time (7:45 a.m. Calgary time): The gate should be posted, but it's not.  Another flight to Amsterdam, on Easyjet, was supposed to depart at 2 p.m., but it doesn't have a gate yet either.  Not a good sign.  Stefan asks the information desk, who tell him that their best guess for departure time for the 3:05 flight is now 5:47.

3:00 p.m. London time (8:00 a.m. Calgary time): Nap on a bench.  I only slept for half an hour, but it was the best half hour nap ever.  I felt far, far better when I woke up, too... just that little bit I needed to get me through the rest of the day.  We weren't the only ones parked on benches: there were quite a few benches taken up by napping people attempting to get to Amsterdam (and I think a few other airports along the northern coast).

3:45 p.m. London time (8:45 a.m. Calgary time): Stefan wanders over to ask the desk again, and she tells him a gate number, which soon appears on the boards too.  Not along the fancy skywalk this time, but down a spiral ramp which was also quite excellent.  No one has a chance to sit down at the gate, either, because they started boarding as soon as they posted the gate number.  They're clearly determined to get this one in the air, especially since it's a packed plane.  Good thing they only had two half-full flights to Amsterdam that day.

4:15 p.m. London time (9:15 a.m. Calgary time): Plane is fully boarded and the captain comes over the loudspeaker.  Fifty minutes until take-off, he says, but he's pushing back from the gate anyway, because he thinks they may move it up... and as he speaks, they do, and we need to be off the ground in fifteen minutes.

4:20 p.m. London time (9:20 a.m. Calgary time): World's fastest security speech, followed by the fastest and most impressive display of airplane taxiing I've ever seen.  Usually they taxi at a crawl, but this guy was motoring.  We even passed another plane on our way to the runway: he stopped, and we swerved into the left-hand lane and around him.  We must have been high-priority, just so we could get into the air before Amsterdam cancelled that slot again.

4:30 p.m. London time (9:30 a.m. Calgary time): Take off.  I strongly suspect they were waiting for one of the really experienced captains too, because they knew the landing conditions in Amsterdam would not be wonderful.  He barrelled down the runway and took off at a much sharper angle than normal, but still very controlled.

4:45 p.m. London time (9:45 a.m. Calgary time): Drink service.  This is about all I remember of the flight... I think I slept, or at least dozed, through the rest of it.

6:20 p.m. Amsterdam time (10:20 a.m. Calgary time): Begin descent into Amsterdam, and add an hour for another time change.  This is how we know the pilot was a particularly good one: there were a lot of adjustments as we descended, and quite a bit of circling to get the best angle.  There should have been a lot more turbulence, but we felt almost nothing.  He came onto the runway at a sharp angle again, and barrelled through the taxiing here too, in the dark.  Just wonderful.  I may be biased, though, because he got me in the air when all I wanted was to go home.

6:30 p.m. Amsterdam time (10:30 a.m. Calgary time): Land in Amsterdam and taxi to the gate.  Yay!  Happiest landing ever, and certainly more deserving of a fanfare than Ryanair.  Still rainy and quite windy, but the worst has nearly passed.

6:45 p.m. Amsterdam time (10:45 a.m. Calgary time): Walk through the airport to passport control, noticing that it's awfully empty.  We heard several flight delays and one cancellation (to Geneva) over the PA.  Our Dutch apparently isn't as rusty as we'd anticipated.

6:50 p.m. Amsterdam time (10:50 a.m. Calgary time): Passport control.  I was a touch worried, because I'm still waiting for my renewed residence permit, and the current permit expires next week, but no problem.  Several people in front of us were having trouble, and the guy next to us was on a cancelled flight and was going to be stuck in Amsterdam for the night rather than just having a stopover as he'd expected.  He clearly wasn't the first person in that situation the passport guy had seen that day, either.

7:00 p.m. Amsterdam time (11:00 a.m. Calgary time): Baggage claim, and we could see our luggage the second we stepped out of passport control.  Amsterdam's airport is always incredibly fast, and with so many cancelled and delayed flights, I think the baggage handlers didn't quite have enough to do.  Yesterday we got from landing to the exit in under 40 minutes, and once I did it in like 25, and that's with checked baggage.  Part of the reason is that in European airports, you only go through customs if you have something to declare, which we didn't, so you just go through a "Nothing to declare" door.  That assumes that someone's working: when we landed in Eindhoven after returning from Italy in February, it was Sunday, and the "Something to declare" office was closed.

7:05 p.m Amsterdam time (11:05 a.m. Calgary time): The non-secure part of the airport was packed, and the restaurants looked insanely busy.  I think a lot of people were stuck in Amsterdam last night.

7:13 p.m. Amsterdam time (11:13 a.m. Calgary time): Get to the train area and check the monitor (which is how I know the exact time).  The train to Eindhoven is running five minutes behind and will depart in two minutes.  Finally, some good luck!  Load into the elevator, scan our train cards, and onto the train with a good minute to spare.  I even manage to correctly answer a guy who asked, in Dutch, whether the train I was boarding also stopped in another nearby town, without even thinking about it.

7:15 p.m. Amsterdam time (11:15 a.m. Calgary time): Train departs, with us and all our various suitcases on board.  We got so used to hauling all of it around that we were getting quick with the counting.  Forty-five minutes from landing to train: I love flying into Amsterdam.

8:45 p.m. Amsterdam time (12:45 p.m. Calgary time): Train stops in Eindhoven, which happens to be its last stop, and ours.  I assume the train ride was fine: I slept intermittently for much of it.  Haul suitcases down the stairs, because for some bizarre reason, the platform escalators only go up and there are no elevators (or at least, none that you can use unless you're handicapped).  Remember to scan train cards again, because if you don't scan out when you get to your destination, it's a 40 euro penalty on your card.  Much faster than buying tickets, though... if we'd stopped to buy tickets, we never would have made that train and it would have been a half-hour wait.

8:50 p.m. Amsterdam time (12:50 p.m. Calgary time): Grab a cab, because there's always at least a dozen of them waiting at the station in Eindhoven.  Always.  Maybe they disappear when the bars close on Saturday night, but I doubt it.  It's an eight-euro ride to our house, which we learned last year, and worth every cent.  Stefan tips a euro and the driver is incredibly confused by this: they tip for considerably fewer things here.  I always tip my hairdresser, because I'm used to tipping hairdressers, and she's always surprised by it too.

9:00 p.m. Amsterdam (1:00 p.m. Calgary time): Home sweet home.  A full seven hours late, we've finally made it.  Good thing we thought to make sure there was a frozen pizza in the freezer before we left, because if we'd had to order out, we would have been fast asleep before the delivery guy showed up.  The TV channels have completely changed in our absence: apparently the TV company renumbered them, but thankfully, they sent a list.  We get the TSN feed of the bronze medal game, so we watch most of the first period, and part of Top Gear (which is such a good car show that I love it, despite having no interest whatsoever in cars).

10:15 p.m.: I've now been awake for 30 hours straight, with only a couple half-hour naps in there.  Time for bed and a solid thirteen-hour sleep.