My June trip, was to join a 12 night Baltic cruise. I usually book my own air to join cruises, but this time, for the first time ever, I decided to let the cruise line do it. They did not give me my flight info until about 3 weeks prior to departure. But about two weeks before that, I received an email from Air Canada, to advise me that my reservation was changed on the return to one day later, account they canceled their flight from Copenhagen to Toronto on the day we disembarked the ship. We were then to connect to Miami. The entire booking was thru Air Canada, but the going portion was on TAP Portuguese Air from Miami to Stockholm connecting in Lisbon.
I immediately called my travel agent, and forwarded this email to her, asking who was going to pay for food and lodging for the night in Copenhagen.
I also asked if I could change the routing to go via Toronto instead of using TAP. She told me she would contact the cruise line air department, to see what they could do. A couple of days later, she told me she spent hours on the phone discussing it with them, but they told her “air arrangements haven’t been made yet, and wouldn’t be until three weeks prior to cruise”, despite my already seeing it direct from the airline.
About three days later, I received another email from Air Canada, telling me about another change in my reservation. I was now booked on Turkish Airline on the night of my disembarkation, from Copenhagen to Miami, connecting in Istanbul!
So Air Canada, though booking me, wouldn’t even be carrying me either way.
This really upset me, and I forwarded the email to my TA, and again she went to bat for me, but the cruise line, (NCL) would not change it, unless I paid considerably more. So I reluctantly accepted the arrangements.
So departure day came, my stepson drove us to the TriRail station in West Palm Beach, and we took the train to the Miami airport. The TAP flight was posted as “On Time”, so we checked our bags thru to Stockholm, and settled in the boarding lounge. Around about the time for boarding, a storm hit the airport, causing the ramp to shut down for about an hour or so. We finally took off, and arrived Lisbon about 90 minutes before our connecting flight to Stockholm. However, we were in the back of the A-350, and lost almost 20 more minutes deplaning down to the ramp via stairs and then waiting for a bus to take us to the gate. When we got to the gate, we noticed people rushing to the passport control. When we got there, we were dismayed to see a long line ahead of us. After watching how the line moved, I calculated that we might have trouble making our connection, and so I asked an airport employee, and she assured me we would make it. When we had about 30 minutes left, I saw on a monitor that our flight was boarding. The rate the line was moving, clearly showed we would not. I asked another employee, and again was told we would make it.
We cleared with only 22 minutes to go, and our gate was at the other end of the airport. There were no airport employee’s there to help us, so we moved as fast as we were able to, finally arriving at the gate 14 minutes before departure, only to be told: “The flight is ‘closed’”. We begged them to let us board, to no avail. We were told to go to the misconnect desk, which was way back, the way we had come.
Once there, we faced a long, slow moving line. While in line, I saw that TAP only had one daily flight to Stockholm…so we were looking at other options. About an hour later it was our turn, and the agent booked us on their afternoon flight to Copenhagen, with a connection on SAS to Stockholm.
The flight boarded on time, but as the bus got to the plane, and the first two passengers ascended the steps, a maintenance worker popped out, and shooed them back aboard the bus, because the crew wasn’t aboard yet.
The bus driver returned us to the terminal. Just as I began sweating about the new connection, I received an email from SAS that our flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm had been cancelled, but we were rebooked onto the next one, leaving an hour later.
At that time, we reboarded the bus, and the crew was waiting for us on the plane, an A-321. The Captain apologized for what had happened, and said that the crew arrived just minutes after we left.
We finished boarding but still sat there, as they were waiting for “Operation’s, to clear a write-up”.
We finally took off and when we landed, as soon as we turned off the runway onto the taxiway, I witnessed something that I have never seen before…passengers began getting out of their seats and grabbed their overhead bags, and made their way up the aisle, while the plane was still taxiing! Just ignoring the orders of the flight attendants…
We only had about 30 minutes to make our new flight, but fortunately, this time it was only two gates away.
We boarded the SAS A-319 and had an uneventful flight to Stockholm.
We went to the carousel and guess what? That’s right… no bags.
We looked for help but a cleaner told us the baggage agent had just “gone to lunch”. He finally appeared and we filled out the lost baggage forms. We suggested that TAP might have sent our bags on the missed flight, and might be holding them, but he assured us they would not leave them on that flight, without us. We decided to check at TAP’s office anyway, but the TAP agent told us it was now SAS’s responsibility to trace.
We departed the baggage claim, and were relieved to see our transfer driver still waiting for us. We arrived to board our ship 8 hours later than scheduled.
Fortunately, the cruise itinerary had us spending the first night, overnight in port…
PS Our bags arrived on board at Visby, two days later. NCL did take care of us, as well as compensated us for our experience.
),we returned to the Lounge and waited, and waited and waited. Finally after about 3 hours, someone went to the Desk and was told that the Flight was Cancelled due to "Mechanial Problems" and that we would be Transported back to Town and put up @ a Hotel for the night and given Pesos for ":Expenses".
