I went to Thailand with Carli and her family (thanks for letting me tag along, Kim and Jeff!) for summer vacation. A couple of days before we left, Carli said there was supposed to be a typhoon in China (where we had a layover) but we couldn't find anything about it on the weather channel and the airline never mentioned anything so we were not terribly concerned.
Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:20am and since the airport is a 45 minute bus ride away we were up bright and early. We arrived at the airport with time to spare, headed to the check in counter, and heard that there was in fact a typhoon in China and if we would please "wait" to hear more details.
Wait? For how long?
The woman at the counter didn't know. She said maybe the flight would leave late or maybe it would be cancelled. We just needed to wait.
Wait. Uh-huh.
We told them that our final destination that day was Phuket and wanted to know if we would arrive on time. They checked the computer and said we were going to Bangkok.
Yes, we knew, with that airline but we had another flight booked to Phuket from Bangkok.
Ah, well, we would probably miss that flight but when they knew our boarding time they could give us a "certificate of delay" to show the other airline. Hopefully, after seeing that they would change our flight free of charge.
Uh-huh... So when could we get that?
Not right then because they didn't know our departure time.
Oh, that's right. Plus the flight still could have been cancelled. We asked if they had any idea when we would be able to leave.
They hoped around 2 (it was about 8:30 when we were speaking to them) because the airport in Shanghai was closed.
So we wanted to know if we would make it to Bangkok that night.
Yes.
Could they get us onto another flight out of Shanghai since we'd obviously miss the one we had?
No, no, no, no, no. That would have to be done at Shanghai.
But it was the same airline?
Sorry, impossible.
Right...
Any chance we could have just been rerouted?
Rerouted? They looked at us like we were crazy. (I say "they" because the supervisor had showed up a while back when our questions looked like they might make the girl who was originally helping us, cry).
The supervisor disappeared for a moment to see if we could be rerouted after laughing again at the idea. (Seriously, it was like they couldn't wrap their heads around the prospect of keeping the starting point and destination the same but changing the way to get there).
She returned to say that with our tickets it was impossible and we would just have to wait.
Wait. Right, back to that again.
We sat down to wait. I checked my email and oh? There were two emails from the airline saying, what's that? there was inclement weather in Shanghai and our flight time would be changed. How nice of them to send the email after I'd already left for the airport.
So we waited and waited and waited.
Finally, they made an announcement that we would leave at 2:15. Just five hours later than scheduled. We headed through security and to the gate. But hey, what about the certificates of delay? I went up to the boarding counter and asked the woman there about them.
What? She didn't know what I was talking about.
I explained the situation to her and told her the ladies at the front told us once they knew the departure time for our flight they would give us proof that we had been delayed. As if the fact that there was typhoon in the city we were supposed to land it wasn't enough.
Still clueless, she called the front and Ohhhhhh! There, it clicked. She put down the phone and ran away to fetch our proof on paper. When she returned, she had the three pieces of paper and apologized as she handed them to us. She hadn't understood what I was talking about.
So we boarded the plane and were off to China. Oh, and the plane departed after 2:15 but when you've been waiting for 5+ hours what's another 20 minutes?
Right?
....
right?
I wish I could say the adventure stopped in Shanghai and reason restored itself but this was not the case. Stay tune for part 2 where we still don't actually make it to Thailand....
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