I am currently at Geneva airport waiting for my flight to Gatwick.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed because on my two previous visits to Geneva last year my return flights were both delayed by two to three hours.
On each occasion EasyJet was the culprit and this time I was going to go with British Airways until I compared the prices - £160 with EasyJet, £500 with BA.
How ironic then that Alex Deane, who I bumped into in a pub in Geneva on Monday evening, should have had the following experience a few hours later, and all thanks to BA and its contracted airline Stobart Air.
Alex posted the full story on Facebook and I hope he won’t mind me reprinting it here:
Tonight, even boarding the flight from Geneva to London (9pm Geneva time, 8pm UK time) was delayed by over an hour; once on the plane we sat in it on the tarmac for another half an hour.
In that time, I learned that the lady in front of me dealt with her fear of flying by vomiting copiously into a series of paper bags. She was both tidy and extraordinarily productive in this regard. The smell was overpowering. The flight was overheated. The little blower thingies overhead didn’t work.
This was whilst we were still on the ground. Only once we were belatedly airborne, 90 minutes late for a 90 minute flight, was it revealed that there was no alcohol onboard.
The significant delay in departing meant that the pilot and crew knew we wouldn’t possibly make it to London City before it closed (at 10pm UK time), but they still kept up the charade that we’d make it and didn’t say we’d been diverted until just before we landed - at London Southend.
It was announced that we weren’t to worry; there would be transport outside the terminal for us to go into town. Then it was announced that there wouldn’t be transport for us, but that we should get the train into town and claim the cost back. The last train, it was announced, would leave at 11.15pm.
We got off the aircraft at 10.50 and entered a customs queue to end all customs queues. To say that there was no chance of getting a train is to state the obvious. To say that the tempers in this absurd queue were short is generous. But it moved at a better than expected pace and no fights broke out. Not to spoil things but this good old hardy spirit of the Brits no matter how late it is and how much vomit we’ve smelt is the highlight moment of the account.
So thereafter, in hope of a cab, I queued again, this time in the dark outside Southend airport at some time after 11.30pm, two hours after I was supposed to be home, waiting on a process which seemed wholly dependent on, controlled by, and significantly slowed down due to, a maniacal high vis vest wearing clipboard wielder who, when I ultimately had my audience with him, insisted on me taking a big taxi and the family of four with a pushchair in front of me getting into a diddy one because that was the order in which we had presented ourselves. There was no arguing with him and that’s how it was.
And so, for the merest fixed price of £140, I find myself rattling towards home in a cab-cum-removals van as it nears midnight. Home is yet some way off.
Compared to that tale of woe a two or three hour wait is nothing to complain about. Indeed, in terms of flight delays and the knock-on effect, I’ve lived a fairly charmed life.
I do remember a six-hour delay at Bologna in 2015 which was annoying because the Ryanair flight was due to leave at 6.30am and we’d arrived at the airport two hours in advance.
I recall too an eight-hour delay caused by a combination of snow and ice at Heathrow. My flight to Glasgow was due to take off at 2.30pm but we didn’t board until 8.30 because of the weather and a backlog of aircraft waiting to take off.
Even then we sat on the plane for the best part of two hours while ground staff ‘de-iced’ it, a practice that seemed to involve a man with a broom vigorously brushing the top of each wing.
I’m a nervous flyer at the best of times so that didn’t help but having waited that long I was grateful simply to take off.
The most frustrating delay I’ve experienced took place in Toronto. I was flying to New York and checked in, as always, in good time.
Thereafter we waited, and waited, until eventually we were told that the scheduled flight was cancelled and we would have to transfer to a later flight.
The problem was, every item of luggage that had been checked in had to be sought out and reclaimed and we had to go through the whole process - including security checks - all over again.
Hours later we boarded our new flight and noticed the aircraft seemed a little hot and stuffy. Having taken our seats we were then told there was a fault with the plane and we would all have to get off.
This time we were told our luggage would be sent on to New York on the next available flight - not necessarily the one we would be flying on - and we could pick it up there, should we ever arrive.
Eventually, some eight hours after we arrived at the airport, we bid farewell to Toronto by which time I was regretting not going by train, a slow and laborious journey of eleven hours that nevertheless had the virtue of being punctual. (Thankfully our luggage was indeed waiting for us when we arrived.)
As for fellow passengers vomiting, I’ve been spared that horror - while flying, at least. One day I may write about my experience on the Scrabster-Stromness ferry that connects Scotland with the Orkney Islands. That was a truly stomach-turning experience.
But now, I’ve got a flight to catch.
PS. My daughter, who was with me in Bologna, has reminded me of the far worse delay she endured when flying home from New Orleans for Christmas 2017.
Booked on Norwegian Airlines for the second leg of her journey, a two-hour layover in Boston became a two-day ordeal that included an overnight stay and a lot of waiting. At one point we thought she might not make it back for Christmas at all.
By coincidence she is flying to New Orleans tomorrow for Mardi Gras 2019 which is on Tuesday (March 5).
I wish I was going!