Missing a trick

As seasoned travellers, Garry and I can normally get ourselves from A to B without too much trouble. Occasionally, we cut things a bit fine. For example, the collection of our motorhome in New Zealand in December and the return of our rental car in London last month. However, we’ve only missed three flights ever, and on each occasion the airline came to party rebooking us without penalty. Sadly, this record came to an inglorious end while in transit to Germany in January.

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. 

Fast forward now to our latest endeavour. Our round-the-world ticket had us booked from Barbados to Frankfurt via Heathrow. We landed in the UK early in the morning on 26 January, then had a five-hour layover before catching our flight to Germany. British Airways doesn’t announce flights in its Heathrow lounges. I had momentarily thought of setting an alarm on my phone when we entered the lounge, but got distracted and never did it.

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. This is when the fun really began.

We called Qantas. It told us it had no ticketing 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. We explained that BA was willing to allocate seats for us. However, multiple phone calls to Qantas and conversations with BA's 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 we'd have to suck it up and do everything necessary to arrive in Nuremberg in time to join Mitch for the tradeshow's opening day. Even more so, considering we’d emphatically told Mitch not to miss any of his travel connections.

As a result, we were forced to pay for a reissue of our RTW ticket, adding a land leg between London and Frankfurt, then buy two last-minute one-way British Airways tickets to Frankfurt. 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 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 after 8:00am, in time to join Mitch for breakfast. To cap off the experience, thanks to a dodgy shower drain and an elevated shower box, I flooded the bathroom floor in our airport hotel room. I spent 15 minutes frantically mopping up more than 5 cm of water sloshing 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 - even in business class. Although I’m still mystified as to why this change proved impossible to make when others, such as our rescheduled flights in South America, were trouble-free and cost us nothing. Our South American 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 almost an hour after unauthorised people were reported on the track ahead. As a result, we had to race through the main airport terminal, transfer by Sky Train to a satellite terminal and race to the BA counter before our flight closed. We checked in 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'd still arrive at least 80 minutes before check-in closed. Little did I think we'd ever need any leeway.  Perhaps we're becoming a little too complacent with tight transfers?