Stroke by lightning

A bit before landing in Amsterdam, there was a bang and a flash of light. This got everybody quiet, even more when we were told that it was lightning. Apparently we should not worry as lightning cannot damage the aircraft.

Really?

We landed a bit later but couldn’t disembark because there were still risk for lightning strikes and people were not allowed on the ground. Net we waited for 15min.

The lightning strike may not have damaged the aircraft from Singapore but seriously disturbed the traffic in both Schipol and Zaventem airports. Once we arrived at the gate for boarding, we were told the aircraft was still in Brussels, i.e. 1h20 delay.

Around 11am we were told the flight was simply cancelled. Now what?

While KLM service has always been good to me so far, today I was disappointed by how they managed this flight cancelation. We were told to pick up our luggage and go to the train station to take a train to Brussels. 

There was one woman only to handle the whole crowd of obviously unhappy people. It would have been much more efficient if they had issued all the vouchers in one go, taken all of us to the luggage belt and then to the station. Instead, individually we all went to the counter, asked for our vouchers and what to do. Of course many people complained and this poor woman had to deal with this even though she cannot be blamed for the weather.

Once we got our vouchers, we rushed to get the luggage and to the station. While I was queuing at the counter, Wolfram had already figured out the train schedule. The trip takes 2h40min (!!!!) and if we were lucky we could get the noon train.

At the station, we had to queue at the train ticket counters as we couldn’t use our boarding pass with the automatic machine. The line was huge. Again, it would have been smarter to have KLM deal with the train and issue a train ticket for everyone altogether.

While standing in this very slow line for international travel, I noticed that the counters for the Netherlands also handled Belgium and Luxembourg. We divided ourselves in two lines and luckily things worked out well. We got tickets (2^nd class despite us flying business… KLM could have thought of that), we grabbed a sandwich and rushed to the platform. The scary part is when the lady at the counter wanted to keep our boarding passes. She needed them for the exchange; we needed them for claiming our miles voucher not to say our expense report. Now how do we manage that dilemma? She made copies for us.

3 minutes before the train was due, an announcement mentioned it would arrive on platform 5 or 6. So precise…

Train left the station for what felt the slowest train drive ever. We stopped in many cities of the Netherlands before the border: namely Den Haag, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Roosendaal, then in Belgium: Antwerp, Mechelen and finally Brussels. It felt more like a local train than an international connection. The best part was when we had to wait for the “train conductor” in Antwerp. Apparently he was delayed on his way to us.

Eventually, we reached Brussels, got the car and drove back home, some 3.5hrs later than planned.  The good thing about this very long trip back home is that it kept us awake for most of the day. Seems, there is indeed something positive in everything.

It’s good to be home… finally.