Welcome to travels with Todd

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve written more than once about both the joys and the frustrations attending air travel in the 21st century. One of the joys is that I can cross the Atlantic Ocean in a mere eight hours, more or less – a journey that required 16 days for my paternal grandfather to make in 1916. The frustrations can be myriad. From overcrowded planes and airports to mechanical or weather delays, this means of travel seems to have become increasingly less predictable.

As Margot Channing said.

It started innocently enough. I was at dinner when I saw the first text from Delta telling me there would be a 40 minute delay on my flight to JFK from Frankfurt. I was attentive to that but unworried. If it held to that schedule, the flight would arrive at 15:15, still leaving me more than an hour to connect to the flight from JFK to DCA. I thought it was a little tight but, since I’m in Global Entry, I pass through Customs and Immigration quickly and I travel with just a carry-on.

The situation became mildly confusing when I received a paired message from Delta at 20:56. The first informed me that my JFK – DCA flight would be delayed by 228 minutes. I wondered how they knew of a nearly four-hour upcoming flight delay more than 20 hours before its scheduled departure but shrugged it off as a possible data entry error.

The message it was paired with told me my departure from Frankfurt would be delayed an additional 25 minutes to 12:55 making its expected arrival 15:40. I thought that wouldn’t matter since my connection was now delayed until after 20:oo. So, I finished packing, set my phone to do not disturb as I do nightly, and went to sleep anticipating an easy morning and planning to arrive at the airport between 10:00 and 10:20.

Like most men my age, sleeping through the night happens only occasionally and I was unsurprised when I awoke at about 04:30 needing to use the toilet. I knew it was 04:30 because I looked at my phone to gauge the time. I also saw a text notification and my swipe down revealed that it was yet another from Delta. This one told me that they had rebooked me on a pair of KLM flights. First I’d travel to Amsterdam and thence to Dulles.

Now things were getting interesting. (And, I learned a lesson: Don’t put my phone on DND the night before my departure. I might not have heard the text ping if I’d been deep in REM sleep but, then again, I might have heard it.) I went to KLM’s website and couldn’t check-in online. It was beginning to feel a bit like Tirana redux. I’d have to get to the airport and check-in at the KLM desk to obtain my boarding pass. While it wouldn’t be quite the same as the rush I’d needed to make from the Metro station in Brussels to reach my train to Germany, a leisurely morning was out of the question. Fortunately, as the Google Maps screenshot shows,

the lovely Main Frankfurt Station,

[From European Route of Industrial Heritage]

that was the largest in Europe when it opened in 1888, was less than a kilometer from the hotel and the train ride to the airport takes about 15 minutes. Still, calculating backward from the 10:15 departure, I needed to be out of the hotel by 07:00. (My estimate went like this: Boarding will close at 09:55. Leave the recommended two hours to pass through immigration and reach the gate (7:55). Ten minutes to check-in and receive my boarding pass (7:45). Ten minutes to walk from the train to the KLM Ticket counter (7:35). Fifteen minutes on the train from Hauptbahnhof to the airport (7:20). Ten minutes to buy a ticket and wait for a train (7:10). Ten minutes to check out of the hotel and walk to the station (07:00)). Perhaps I was being overly cautious with those guesses but Delta added a new layer of confusion with another text while I was enroute to the airport.

The street cleaners had been active early Sunday morning so I had to deal with wet sidewalks for most of my walk to the train station. Luckily, it was both early and Sunday so I encountered few other pedestrians. But, “Tropeço frequentemente” so I walked cautiously. Having done the reverse Friday, I was better equipped to handle the ticket buying process and had only a short wait for either the S8 or S9. (I didn’t note which I took.) But on that three stop 10-minute ride, Delta informed me that my original flight was now delayed by 75 minutes and I’d been rebooked on yet another flight from JFK. I was now booked on two international and two domestic flights.

The train arrives at a building called the Squaire – that’s the long silver building at the top of the photo below – with the terminals at the bottom. (The photo is a little deceptive. I think you’re only seeing Terminal 1.)

[From Wikipedia – Attribution not required]

After a short walk from the Squaire, you enter the airport at Terminal 1. I decided my best choice was to go to Terminal 2 because it’s here that I’d find the ticket counter for KLM. Terminal 1 belongs almost exclusively to Lufthansa and its partners and subsidiaries.

[From Wikitravel By Sven Teschke, Büdingen – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0]

As I was standing in line to reach the ticket counter, I received a text message from KLM that the flight had been canceled. This time I was the one taking an inordinate amount of time at the ticket counter. We settled one bit of confusion and she told me she had booked me on a United flight directly to Dulles. She then directed me back to Terminal 1 where United had its desk.

I showed my proof of identity to the passenger traffic controller in front of the United desk and gained admission to that, mercifully short, line. However, when I reached an agent, she told me that KLM had made a reservation but hadn’t purchased a ticket so she couldn’t issue a boarding pass. She suggested I return to KLM and off I went back to Terminal 2.

Once I got through the KLM line again the new agent told me he couldn’t help me any further and suggested I talk directly with Delta. For this, at least I could remain in Terminal 2.

[From Wikipedia By Konstantin von Wedelstaedt]

Still, I felt I’d been bit batted about and this last bordered on being a sockdolager to my equanimity. I had no idea whether I’d be on any flight that day. As I was explaining my dilemma and confusion to the gatekeeper to the Delta ticket counter, a woman walked over and asked, “Are you Mr Carton?” I was so distracted by the sudden appearance of a choir in my brain singing the Hallelujah Chorus that I neglected to ask her how she knew to expect me. She told me she could book me a business class seat (a slight downgrade from Delta One) on a KLM flight directly to Dulles departing at 13:10 if I was willing to sign off on the change in class and final destination. I was.

I made my way back to Terminal 1 and to the Lufthansa check-in where they issued me a paper ticket. (Since I’d eschewed riding the airport train between terminals, I’d walked about 5km in the airport alone.) It was barely 10:00 by the time I’d passed through security and immigration and landed in KLM’s lounge.

As I was passing the time in the lounge, I met J from Texas who’d also had an interesting morning. Her flight had also been canceled and rebooked. The big difference was that she had started her morning in Luxembourg. Even more astonishingly, she hadn’t been able to find a train that would get her to the Frankfurt Airport in time to make her rescheduled flight.

The cab driver she’d engaged to take her to the train station volunteered to drive her the full 220km and two-and-a-half hours. Her trip wasn’t entirely without incident but that’s her story not mine.

My story ended with two passengers on the Lufthansa flight falling ill. A pair of nurses onboard and the cabin crew attended to them but they required transportation in an ambulance when we arrived at Dulles. As for me, it had been a very long day and I was happy to be home, to take a couple of bean and cheese burritos from my freezer, and zap them in the microwave for my dinner.

All that remains is for me to reveal the songs from this trip. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey and will return for my next travel adventure wherever that may take me.