Saturday, December 19, 2009

Chaos in Zaventem

It was snowing hard in Bucharest so we left the city center 2 hours before our flight to make sure we would be on time and despite it took us double the time to reach the airport we were on time.
Given I wanted to be back on Friday night and not start my vacation by flying back from Bucharest to Brussels, I was flying via Munich (no direct flight on Friday night).
At boarding time, our gate was still boarding the previous flight. Obviously we would be late. And we were. We landed in Munich with 1 hour delay and I was really wondering whether I would make it for the next flight.
Let's for once praise the German organization and Lufthansa: a separate mini-bus was waiting for the few passengers with a "very" short connection, took the few of us to the terminal for passport control and drove us all the way back to where we landed to get on our next aircraft (i.e. the one standing next to the previous one).
While I was already running the stairs picturing in my mind an aircraft full of angry passengers because they have to wait for one late passenger (me!) when the flight attendant told me "don't rush, we've got time"
Me: "I'm late"
Her: "we're late, 1 hour late, so take your time" with a big smile
Reality is that Belgium being under snow as well, Zaventem airport was struggling and couldn't deal with us now.
So we waited and finally took off and landed in Zaventem.
I was then struck by the chaos in the airport. It was past 11pm, at that time usually the airport is nearly empty, only those passengers from the late coming flights around. Tonight it was packed with people, tired people who obviously have been waiting there for quite some time.
The best, if I may say, was yet to come. The luggage.
My luggage was supposed to be delivered on belt #2, but the screen kept on saying "baggage delayed". I waited there with the passengers of easily 20 flights, keeping an eye on the screens hoping it would now move to green. Luckily for me, I spent all this time on the phone with Wolfram who was waiting for me in his car, somewhere in the cold snowy airport.
After 1 hour waiting, my flight disappeared from the screen. No more "Munich" in the list :(
I started to walk around hoping it would be on another belt. But no luck. Actually I found tons of luggage everywhere, unattended. Seems like they were brought there and left for people to come and get it. Applause on the organization.


And indeed, after 30min, my suitcase arrived.
After queuing at the baggage counter I found out that my would arrive on belt #2 in the next 15-30min. It's just automatic that after 1 hour, flights don't appear on the screen as they should have been delivered...
If I think of it, door to door, this trip was 9 hours... one more hour and I would have arrive in Beijing :)
PS: while the luggage's team was clearly overloaded, the Starbucks and other bars were still open for people to have a drink and relax while waiting. It's 1am and I'm buying Wolfram a venti Vanilla Latte. That should help forgetting the long wait.

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