Tuesday, August 12, 2008

As if we aren't delayed enough yet ...

Monday morning, August the 11th, 07:00AM. My radio turns on, I wake up with today's latest news. First item: a strike of one of the bagage handling companies at Brussels airport. It doesn't sound good at all, but after a quick look on the internet, flight UA951 to Washington isn't cancelled or delayed. Not yet. My mother had to catch a flight too that day, to Bari with Myair.com. Her flight took off with "only" 1 hour of delay ... not that much after all, if you saw how the situation at the airport got worse hour by hour.

When we arrived at the airport, we could already check in our bagage, but they informed us about a delay of about 2 hours. Once we passed the security posts, the delay changed to 9 hours. Estimated time of departure would be 09:00PM. Well, that doesn't sound bad after all, we wouldn't be able to catch a connecting flight to Phoenix any more that day, but after an night stop at Washington it wouldn't be a problem to catch a flight to Phoenix the next day. We were able to go to SFA and wait there for some hours until we had to go back to check in again ... . But instead of checking in again, we went back to reclaim our bagage and to go home. They just CANCELLED our flight. The COO of our school tried to change our flights for today, august the 12th, but that wasn't possible anymore. We will leave sunday the 17th. What a shame, but nothing to do about it. Although people on a strike mostly do have a reason, imho this strike is irresponsable. But that's Belgium I guess?