First, a recap on our previously missed flights. The first of these was a flight from London to Rome in 2003, our first trip together. We didn’t allow enough time to get to Heathrow using the Tube and arrived at check-in after the flight had closed. British Airways happily rebooked us onto a later flight, although I gave up my business class ticket to secure a seat.
The second missed flight occurred when we were stranded in Antarctica in 2011. LAN happily rebooked us on alternative flights departing three days later than originally scheduled, without penalty. This was also another round-the-world ticket.
Our third missed flight happened in 2014. We foolishly thought we were on the second of two Qantas flights departing Los Angeles that evening. We arrived at check-in shortly after the earlier flight closed, and discovered to our horror, it was the flight we’d booked. Qantas gave us a hotel voucher for the night and rebooked us for the following day at no cost. Garry then scored us a First Class points upgrade.
We lost track of time and ultimately missed our second flight. We realised our mistake ten minutes before the flight closed. However, the plane was parked at a remote gate, which required a bus transfer to reach it. As a result, we rocked up to the gate after racing through the entire terminal, only to find the flight had closed early to accommodate a final bus transfer.
At first, we didn't panic. We were travelling in business class, and British Airways told us there were plenty of seats on the next available flight departing at 5:00pm. However, they said we had to reschedule our flight via Qantas as it was the issuing agent for our ticket. Then the fun really began.
We called Qantas. It told us it had no access to any of the empty seats on this flight. The earliest it could get us into Frankfurt was Wednesday evening, via Madrid. In other words, two days after Spielwarenmesse started. Multiple phone calls to Qantas and conversations with the BA airport staff did nothing to shift the needle in our favour.
We’d also flown Mitchell to Germany for the first time. He’d arrived on Saturday and thus was already waiting for us in Nuremberg. As I put it to Garry, this was one time when we were going to have to suck it up and do everything necessary to arrive at the hotel in Nuremberg in time to join Mitch for his first day at the show. Even more so, considering we’d drummed into Mitch that he had to make all of his travel connections without fail.
As a result, we were forced to pay for a reissue of our RTW ticket with a land leg between London and Frankfurt and buy two expensive last-minute British Airways tickets to secure seats. The evening flight also arrived too late for us to catch the last high-speed ICE train to Nuremberg. This meant we had to book a hotel for the night at the airport, cancel our original train ticket and buy a new one.
I booked us into the Hilton Garden Inn directly above the train station at Frankfurt Airport. The following morning, we caught the 5:30am train to Nuremberg, arriving at our hotel shortly before 8:00am, in time to join Mitch for breakfast. To cap off the experience, I also managed to flood the bathroom floor in our Airport hotel room and spent 15 minutes frantically mopping up more than 5 cm of water rippling around the room.
The new flights, extra hotel booking and new train tickets cost us an eye-watering $2.2k. We’ve also learned a hard lesson about the limitations of last-minute changes to round-the-world tickets. Although I’m still mystified as to why this change proved too hard to make when others, such as our rescheduled flights in South America, were relatively trouble-free. That ticket was booked through the Flight Centre, whereas this year’s was booked directly with Qantas. Perhaps that’s the difference?
One final anecdote. Our train from Nuremberg back to Frankfurt Airport was delayed more than 50 minutes after unauthorised people were reported on the track ahead. As a result, we had to race through the airport terminal, transfer on the Sky Train and race to the BA counter to check in before our flight closed. We made it with less than ten minutes to spare. I can't believe we almost missed a second flight.
If I'm honest, the tight transfer was partially my fault. It cropped up a few months ago when British Airways rescheduled our original flight to one departing almost 90 minutes earlier. I had considered changing our train ticket, but decided we still had an hour's leeway on the original booking. Little did I think we'd ever need it. Perhaps we're becoming a little too complacent with tight transfers?
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