Category: airlines

Posted on

Storm Ciara

I was up at 06:00 on Sunday 09 February 2020, shut down and closed my house and a friend David McErlean dropped me at Carcassonne airport in the southwest of France  around 08:00.
Initially RyanAir couldn’t land at Carcassonne because of poor visibility but after about an hour they did, we boarded and they closed the doors.  Then the pilot told us because of the delay we had lost our landing slot at London’s Stansted airport in England and would have to wait for a new one. Forty minutes more and we left with the pilot warning us that because of the storm the ride would be bumpy as we neared England.

I took a nap for an hour, the flight lasts 1 hour 50 minutes, broke out my very large ham and strong cheese sandwich on some thick wedges of whole grain bread and realized the pilot had not exaggerated and what woke me was the plane intermittently gyrating all over the place.  And further proof was the pale faced people around me holding up a hand to indicate they needed a sick bag, RyanAir is as you know a low cost carrier and you have to request one. If you graduate to two bags they also provide a larger plastic bag to place them in. I noticed one poor man turning and turning the bag desperately trying to find the opening until a neighbor already equipped with a bag showed him how to tear off the top. I put my sandwich away.

Some time later the pilot announced if it appeared we were flying around in circles, that due the storm and high gusting winds we were in fact flying around in circles as planes were stacked up waiting their turn to land and we were number six in line. At this news a gentleman across the aisle, a two bagger groaned. But eventually and after a last minute roar of one engine to correct a sideways lurch the pilot got us on the runway and we all applauded. Not as significant as sacrificing a lamb but our hearts were sincere.

We left the plane and walked to the terminal in the heavy wind and rain, RyanAir is a low cost carrier, and then traversed many corridors and stairs to reach the immigration counters. This is now completely automated, on seeing a green arrow you enter a closed pen through a gate which closes behind you, hold your passport on the reader in one of the very long line of readers, look into the camera and if you match something somewhere in the computer cloud the gate opens and you enter the UK. At the random customs check I inquired of one of the officers “what happened to all the border officials who used to sit in the many glass enclosures where you slid them your passport through the little slot.” He told me they were all working somewhere else.

I started down the stairs to the train platform where you catch the Stansted Express to London Liverpool Street station only to be greeted by signs saying the train line was closed because of the storm. I inquired for how long and was told until they removed the fallen trees and repaired the power lines. 

I went back upstairs to the huge bus park, bought a ticket and waited with hundreds of other passengers until I finally got on the bus with stops including mine at Liverpool Street station. We had an interesting one hour plus ride to London with the driver fighting the gusting, buffeting high winds all the way. Did I mention since arriving at Stansted there was a constant driving rain and swathes of the UK countryside and many towns were now flooded.

After a ten minute walk with my backpack and pulling my suitcase in the rain I reached Liverpool Street station, purchased an Oyster travel card and took the Tube, Metropolitan Line to Wembley Park station where the rain had lessened somewhat. I asked one of the station staff to point me to the Holiday Inn which he did, saying it was a 10 minute walk and recommended I leave immediately before the storm returned. Two minutes into what was a 15 minutes plus walk the rain and wind returned and I arrived at the hotel drenched, checked in took a hot shower, made a cup of tea and finally ate my delicious sandwich.

And my best friend Mel ? who I travelled to London and this hotel to meet – his flight from Dublin was cancelled because of the storm, but with luck he will arrive tomorrow.

And so it goes,

PS One translation of Ciara, a Gaelic word, a dark haired girl with brown eyes. 

Posted on

Arrived

I finally got my suitcase Monday afternoon, I was sure my underwear would not appeal to Ms Quinn in New York, so now all is well in the mutual lingerie department. I am safely installed in Silver Spring with Jessica and her family.

My son and his family arrive tomorrow the 19th from Boston and will stay for 4 days, this year they will spend Christmas Day with his wife Adrienne’s family in the land of the Bean and the Cod where the Lowells talk only to Cabot’s and the Cabot’s talk only to God. So we will have our family Christmas on the 23rd.

On Monday we will be celebrating Hanukkah with Jessica’s husband Mike’s family, I have decided to forego Kwanza on the 26th but still need to make plans for 25 Jan. and the Chinese Lunar New Year which will probably be spent with my ex-wife’s Vietnamese-Canadian family in Vancouver.

Yes please post my recent effort to my web site and I look forward with great pleasure to finding an apartment in Kerrisdale and whiling away my days working on and sometimes redacting my paragraphs on my travels and the people I have met along the way.

Time to go admire my grandchildren in the bath.

Posted on

An Ongoing Bureaucratic Experience

I just spent a week in Killarney sharing it with my best friend Mel of 50 + years and his wife Evi who has a colon cancer which has metastasized to her liver and bones. She is unsuccessfully part way through the first of the trio of medical protocols normally on offer for these conditions; poison, burn and cut. So a salutary moment to reflect on our shared times and experiences together on this earth and the very real possibility that it was the last time Evi and I will see each other. And keeping banality in mind, since I am drastically allergic to their cat,  so an experience heavily clouded by Zyrtec.

On Saturday I flew from Kerry to Dublin and after a quiet night at an airport hotel on the 15th, the next day presented myself at the Aer Lingus check in counter with my boarding pass, Irish passport and US ESTA visa obtained as on all previous occasions at on the US Department of Homeland Security web site. From Dublin there are so many Irish people traveling to and from the US that you clear US immigration and customs at the Dublin airport. Ahh said the young lady this visa is not valid and we cannot let you board the flight. Why so I inquired, well she replied your passport number contains a 0 and you have entered an O on the visa application, or maybe it was vice Versace. The 0 in the Proton Mail system has a bar through it, the Apple Mail does not.

Well I asked can I speak to one of the US immigration officers and see if we can resolve this minor mistake. Sorry that is not possible we cannot process you and she reversed the luggage belt and presented me with my suitcase. So what do you suggest I do I inquired. Well she said you could reapply for the ESTA visa now on your mobile phone. Indeed I could I told her but if I confused a 0 and an O on a computer at 77 years of age do you think I will do better now stressed and using a smart phone, and anyway we both know it takes 3 days to process the visa application.

OK I said this cannot be the first time something like this has happened can you inquire with your manager how we resolve it and off marched Emma with her tight bureaucratic smile in her green Aer Lingus uniform. Five minutes later she was back with her frigid and now winning smile in place and said no we cannot let you board. Fine I asked and where do I find the manager and she pointed to Gate 56 where trundling my suitcase I presented myself to the lady in charge.

Yes she said Emma told me about your problem but you see if we let you board and you are refused entry on arrival in the US then we become responsible for your return trip. Indeed I replied but you do notice I have purchased a return ticket. This is true she said but we have made an exception in the past and it resulted in problems for us. Well I said far be it for me a paying customer to cause a problem for Aer Lingus so lets pretend we never met and I will return in a minute. I walked away, fished my Canadian passport from my backpack, returned said good day and presented it to Mrs manager who then printed and gave me my boarding pass and checked in my suitcase.

I arrived at Dulles airport some 7 hours later but my suitcase did not. The young lady representing Aer Lingus at the baggage carousel checked my baggage tag and pointed out that it was made out to a Ms Suzann Quinn and had no doubt as indicated arrived safely with her in JFK in New York. Looking for a bargaining chip I inquired do you know if Ms Quinn’s suitcase is here on the carousel. No she said and and presented me with a copy of my lost luggage complaint form. Touché Mrs manager.

Yesterday morning I called the Aer Lingus lost luggage number in Dublin and consulted with a confused young man in Mumbai who told me his name was Juan. He assured me he had copied down all my information but when I asked him to read back the luggage tag number, it must have been time for tiffin, he hung up.

My second attempt speaking with Curtis, still sounding like Mumbai, was more successful and I am assured my suitcase might possibly arrive soon.

This morning Tuesday I spoke with Natasha again evidently in Mumbai and she assures me my suitcase is still somewhere on the east coast of N. America. I explained to Natasha that as there are limitations to the amount of liquids you can carry on to the plane the bulk of the essential medications to treat my eyes are in the suitcase and that soon I may be obliged to present Aer Lingus with a substantial financial claim for urgent medical services.

Years ago I read an interesting case study where these back office workers in India are obliged to adopt a name which serves the area from where a call originates and also attempt a suitable accent. They also because of their work tend to socialize together and become “fractured” on returning to their parents home in the evening. But that is another story.

Reflecting briefly on your description of Melody’s unfortunate experience with the California bureaucracy, an initial conclusion.

In any critical encounter with a bureaucracy I presume the person facing me is expected as part of their successful annual performance appraisal to have failed or found fault with a number or percentage of the cases encountered in any measured period so I prepare accordingly. Ready to cede a few considered points while attempting to win my objective. The World Bank audit team sent to my office by Mr. Vu to review the totality of the VSAT project comes to mind. It is also a Tierney truism that the lower the bureaucrat is in the power structure the more likely they are to want to wield the small power at their disposal and therefore they require delicate handling.
Unfortunately I think Melody met such an unsympathetic and evidently also ill informed bureaucrat.

So a jet lagged poorly thought out and unhelpful conclusion. Fate sent Melody to a small minded and incompetent bureaucrat whose salary and pension very much depend on people paying taxes and the “system” designed by bureaucrats is failing her.

But keep in mind, I think it is called the Kansas Syndrome, whereby if I remember correctly a group working on a project will collectively agree decisions that individually they find unacceptable. So good luck trying to design a perfect bureaucratic system.

link.springer.com/article/10.1057%2Fpcs.2014.4

Abstract This paper explores white working- and middle-class Americans’ paradoxical support for policies that have contributed to their thirty-year economic decline while benefitting the wealthiest people in the country. Their habit of identifying with the aggressor has caused them actively to be engaged in their own economic descent. In the words of Jesse Jackson, “They’re turkeys at their own Thanksgiving.”

Back to the battle with Aer Lingus.

Posted on

Travel Light or Wait Forever For Your Stuff

I boarded the plane in Paris yesterday, unloaded my things for the flight, it takes 12 hours to get to Saigon, and at the the last minute an older man, older than me that is arrived and took the window seat. We exchanged pleasantries, the plane took off and we started talking. I asked if this was his first visit to Vietnam. No he replied I first arrived in early 1951 as a nineteen year paratrooper in the French Marine Commando Brigade. I did the mental calculation and of course continued with the conversation.

He told me they used to jump from Dakota aeroplanes but it took time to get the 12 man “stick” out the side door of a Dakota so he preferred a German plane WWII plane I think he said a Dornier where they could jump more quickly from the rear. He said there were quite a few Germans, excellent soldiers, some from the Russian front, some former SS, serving in the French Foreign Legion. His “stick” would land bury the parachutes and patrol looking for the enemy and set up ambushes. Late in 1952 it was their turn in the barrel and his group was ambushed and he was shot in the leg. He was evacuated, first by friends carrying him and then by vehicle to Danang, where I lived from 1966 for 5 years when the US was trying the same thing.

After that he couldn’t jump, he said parachutes were more basic then, but was still a commando so they would go on a mission, inserted to set up landing zones for big groups to jump in or on other special operations. He was finally transferred back to France with his unit in 1956.

He had remained in the navy long enough to get a pension but said he did not like it much, there was no real esprit or camaraderie compared to life with the commando brigade. He kept in touch with surviving old comrades talking to and exchanging emails a couple of times a year. He had been elected twice to some local political office but believed politicians, nearly all of them, were duplicitous, untrustworthy and interested only in themselves. He prefers the people he had previously fought against in Vietnam and met subsequently on his travels.

He had decided to visit Vietnam 30 years later, first in 1986 when he figured enough time had passed since the Americans had departed and things should have stabilized. He visited nearly every year since. I asked if at 87 he was not worried about health problems on his travels ? He told me that a couple of years ago he had a heart attack in Phan Thiet, but the local Vietnamese doctor was good, injected him with something to ease the situation and externally massaged his heart until he stabilised. He was flown back to France and now has a pacemaker. He showed me the little health card he needs to get through airport security.

He had suffered a couple of strokes but that was in France so no crisis. He was pretty phlegmatic or even fatalistic about death and dying, maybe due to his earlier youthful career of jumping from aeroplanes, looking for armed people defending their country to attack. Never a winning idea unless you are in the business of war. But he mentioned how touched he was at the reaction of his 5 daughters, he had been married I think three times, now to a Vietnamese lady he met in Paris, when they thought he was dying. He showed me two photos of him with the two daughters with his Vietnamese wife. One did her doctorate in the university of Saigon and translates books between French and Vietnamese, the other is working in Japan.

It became a little difficult to hear him clearly after lunch, oddly enough after he put his hearing aids back in place. But in periods when we were both awake I continued talking to him, I found him fascinating.

I asked where he was staying in Saigon, thinking maybe we could meet and he told me he never made reservations. He would take the number 8 bus from the airport to the bus depot in town and then ask around until he found the next bus to Cu Chi where he has some friends from previous visits who owned a small hotel. How long was he staying in Cu Chi ?, no idea but when he was bored he would take another bus or taxi to the next place. How about his suitcase ? he didn’t have one, only the small, very small carry on bag in the overhead, I saw it, and a small shoulder bag with his passport and papers. Did he get his spending money from ATMs ? no he was seldom in a big city, he had 4K in a money belt and would keep on travelling until he had a reason to return to France.  He had bought his airline ticket at his local LeClerc supermarket with a one month return date but for €60 he could change the date once he had decided. I told him the last time I changed my return date from Vietnam they charged me €300, he showed me his receipt including the €60 option. So much for the Internet.

I asked him what he loved about Vietnam ? he told me the people, the way families stay together, the climate, the food, how safe it was, yes there was crime but not much, and for him it was very inexpensive, he would buy a pair of shorts and trousers and a pair of sandals at his first stop and leave them behind when he left. How long did he plan to continue visiting ? currently he thought until he was 90 but he would see after that.

We landed, I handed him his bag from the overhead, we deplaned and walked, slowly to the immigration counters. He went first. The immigration officer spent a while flipping back and forth looking at all his many visa entries for Vietnam, he had also made it to Cambodia, not really too far by bus he said. Finally stamped it, handed it back and he strolled away, looked back and waved, and turned away heading for the next number 8 bus.

I went downstairs and waited forever and impatiently with the other 300 plus people for our suitcases and our “stuff” while Loisel was flying down the road again to Cu Chi and …….

Shopping for TET this morning.

A small popular shop specializing in things from North Vietnam. The customer pulls up on a motor bike, shops and the owner’s son boxes it up and tapes it down, about a metre high on the back of the bike and the customer wobbles off among hundreds of other motor bikes