3 hours ago
5
A couple of days before I was due to take a trip to New York with my mum in February, the city was hit with the worst blizzard it had seen in years. Unsurprisingly, our flight was cancelled. Our travel agent managed to reschedule the holiday for later in the week – our journey out would now connect in Reykjavík, Iceland. The holiday was rescued … or so we thought.
The flight to Iceland went without a hitch until the final moments, when the pilot informed us that a mini-blizzard was passing over Keflavík international airport and we would have to redirect to a domestic airport 15 minutes away. We still had hope that we could make our connection, but after several hours on the tarmac that hope died.
Instead, we flew back to the international airport, and after waiting for an hour in arrivals, we were shepherded on to a coach and told we would be taken to a hotel for the night – the driver had yet to be informed which one. Another hour passed. Then, an airline representative darted on to the bus and told the driver the name of the hotel. “But that’s two hours away!” replied the driver.
Once we set off, I used the last of my phone battery to look out for an email about a rescheduled flight that we had been promised by ground staff. No such email came. An hour into the journey, we stopped at a petrol station, where the driver made a call, then announced that the bus had broken down. The replacement was an hour away.
The replacement eventually came and we set off once more. I continued refreshing my emails, downloading the airline’s app to see if there was any update. There was! We would fly the following day. We could sleep soundly that evening – when we finally got to our hotel.
Our troubles were far from over. After arriving at the hotel, I stepped on to black ice and fell over, hard. Feeling deliriously tired and confused about why I was on the floor, I stayed down. The people around me screamed, thinking I had passed out. I was hoisted back to my feet by a kind woman who could see that I was not unconscious, just a woman who had given up. I was escorted by my worried mother to the check-in queue at the hotel, where it was evident that something was amiss. The receptionist had not known we were coming and didn’t think he had enough room for us.
A well-organised woman from Boston took control. She passed out paper and instructed everybody to write down the number of people in their party and negotiated with the receptionist, who worked out that we could, in fact, all stay.
Our bus arrived promptly the next morning, and we made it to New York that day. A fitting end to the saga would come after the holiday, when I attempted to complain to the airline about its lack of communication throughout the ordeal. I was informed that it had sent me several emails. When I asked for evidence of this, it sent correspondence with somebody else regarding their flight from Paris to Boston. When I pointed this out, I was told it considered the case closed.
