Well I'm off on my next trip and I decided that it makes more sense to continue adding to this blog than it does to start a new one. So although this is my Afblogistan, this is going to have nothing to do with Afghanistan.
It's been close to two weeks since we've had any snow in Ottawa. So why is it that the day I need to travel we get a heavy snowfall warning? On top of that, when i woke up Thursday morning I felt like ass. Some kind of bad chest cold and a throbbing headache. My big concern at that point was that my ears would block and i wouldn't be able to fly. Luckily the sick seems to have contained itself to my lungs so I'm good to go, but still not happy about it.
Anyways even though the weather has been crap all afternoon, I was checking my flight status and as of around 6:30pm (my flight was scheduled for 9:45pm) the plane was on schedule. Well I went to the airport and checked in and got settled to wait for my flight. What I then learned was that the whole flight tracking system was down "worldwide" as one Air Canada employee explained to me. What this meant was my flight was actually delayed and had been for some time, I just had no way of finding out.
The story I was told was that the flight got all the way in from Toronto and then had to turn back because of the weather. Well I have it on good authority that Porter had managed to land their flights from the big stink without any trouble. Oh Air Canada, my home and native carrier, truly you disappoint me and all thy sons as well.
Well I don't have much time to make my transfer in London, I think only and hour and a half between flights, and since the delay was an hour and a half I decided I should look into doing something about rerouting. I found an Air Canada agent and was told that I'm not the only one that is delayed (well duh, but i am the only one asking you to do something about it at this very moment) and if I was going to miss my connection I would be rerouted while I'm in the air on my flight to London. Really? Without me doing anything? Air Canada will just figure out that I'm supposed to transfer over to Singapore Airlines and that I'm not going to make it in time so they'll automatically just put me on another flight because gutter watching over me like some kind of guardian angel? That sounds wonderful... And yet somehow unlikely. Well this agent didn't seem like she was going to be much help so I decided to wait until someone showed up at my gate and i would talk to them.
Well before that happened, the flight got delayed again, about 2 hours from the original departure time. Not a big deal, I can't miss my connection any worse. It is what it is. Anyways, I did go talk to the gate agent and she pulled up the flight info and insisted that the flight would arrive in London at 9:35am and since my connection wasn't until 11am I would have lots of time. Hmmm... That doesn't seem right either.... Maybe I'm too trusting.
After checking my travel docs I realized that 9:35am was the original arrival time for the flight. Yeah... I'm pretty sure we're not going to make that arrival unless the pilot knows some kind of shortcut that he's been keeping under wraps from the rest of the world. Oh well... The plane was boarding, I might as well get on and just see what happens. I'm in no rush to get anywhere anyways and I can think of worse ways to start a vacation than an accidental layover in London while I wait for the next flight. Maybe I'm just a little bitter because nobody actually seems interested in helping, they just seem to want to deflect the problem so that they don't have to deal with it themselves.
I'm writing this as I sit on the plane so I'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess.
ps. What fresh Hell is this? Stuck between a baby and a snorer on the plane! Unexpected twist.
pps. I think i might have just seen Harry Potter's adoptive family (what were their names?). Brits are funny.
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