Airports bother me!
Why is it that the main building is called a terminal? We are already scared before we even get onto the flight.
But that is not the motivation behind this posting…
Recently, for the first time ever I missed a flight and it was the circumstances around that “incident” that has made me put fingers to keyboard (I cannot actually say pen to paper as that does not happen any more. Well certainly not in my office)
So let me unpack the drama…
My wife and I were set to fly to Richards Bay and I, in my wisdom, had decided to use the cheaper (not that it turned out that way) off-site long term parking.
We arrived there in time but then had to wait for the shuttle to get us to the dreaded “terminal” building.
This seemed to take forever as it has three stops before the domestic drop off point.
Needless to say that we arrived at the check-in counter 5 minutes late and no amount of begging would get us past this point.
We were told that there was another flight that was only closing in 20 minutes but this turned out to be full.
So we had to buy new tickets as well as change our car hire as we were now going to fly to Durban and not Richards Bay!
I have to say that the guy at the ticket counter was really helpful (unfortunately I did not get his name) and my wife and I had a good laugh about the whole incident.
We decided that we had not been late for the first flight, merely early for the second. But how early we only realized once we sat down to have something to eat and drink. We had been told that the flight was at 12, a 2-hour wait. It turned out that the flight was only leaving at 3, now 5 hours away! You can only people watch and go to the toilet a finite number of times before the whole exercise becomes really boring. But we took turns to comment on the size of a lot of the passengers…really large and to keep making sure that our flight was not delayed, as several others were.
Eventually our flight was called and we were able to board without much fuss…almost an anti-climax to the morning we had just had!
What did we learn from our extended sojourn at ORT?
1] If you are going to use the long-term parking allow yourself an extra hour
2] Don’t sweat the small stuff…and it’s all small stuff. We missed the flight and that was our fault. There is no reason to get angry with the check-in staff.
3] Talking nicely gets you further than loud words
4] Check the contract on your hire car…we were charged an extra R500.00 for picking the car up in Durban and we were not informed of that
5] King Shaka airport still has teething problems...
5] LAUGH! And we did, lots! I thought I would be stressed by missing the plane, but I was not…maybe I am growing up
But the fun was not over yet!
During the safety briefing we were given, our attention was directed to the fact that the the plastic cover that you remove to get to the emergency handle (probably worth R50),
once removed had to be placed in the seat pocket before opening the door!
We all exchanged looks, but our in-flight person was being dead serious!
How can we remember this bit of trivia when we have crashed and there might be fire and smoke?
But, as they say in the TV ads, that was not all.
Nope, we were then quizzed by said in-flight person on what we had just been told!
A sort of mini pop quiz!
If we failed, would we have been moved? Could we have re-taken the exam?
And then, just to round off all the fun we were having the captain does his welcome speech…
I DON’T NEED TO KNOW WHICH RUNWAY WE ARE USING OR IN WHICH DIRECTION WE WILL TURN ONCE WE REACH CRUISING ALTITUDE.
Get me up, fly me to my destination and land the plane safely…is that too much to ask?
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