The big day arrives. We leave today for Italy.
I had booked flights on KLM (through North Western's site - they are KLM's partner), so this afternoon our daughter Jen gets off work early to take us to Vancouver Airport. Our flight to Amsterdam leaves at 6:50 pm. We leave home at about 3:15pm so we can be at the airport between 2 and 3 hours before the flight. I have already checked in online and printed out our boarding passes for the flight to Amsterdam and our onward connection to Milan.
When we get to the KLM check-in desk we find that all the work we did to pack everything in our roll-aboards so we wouldn't need to check any bags was for nought as KLM have a 10 Kg maximum weight for cabin baggage and our two roll-aboards are 12 and 13 Kg. Luckily we had purchased a light expandable carry-on which we took out of the roll-aboard and used for the few essentials we would need for the flight. After repacking, and checking in our roll-aboards (with a quick prayer that they would arrive with us in Milan), we said good-bye to Jen and headed through security, thinking that we had experienced our travel glitch for the trip.
Boy - were we wrong - there was worse to come - much worse.
After wandering around the shops in the International Departures for a few minutes we decided we should eat something - as we were not likely to be fed until close to 9. While eating our A&W burgers in the Food Fair, Eileen asked me - "KLM 682 to Amsterdam - is that our flight?". "Yes, I said - why?". "Its showing on the screens as canceled !!" Panic.!! I looked around at the monitor and sure enough the monitor was showing the status of the flight as canceled. We ran to the gate and they were just announcing the cancellation to the people who were already at the gate. We looked out the window and saw the plane with its starboard engine cowling removed.
As we were already in International Departures, we had to be escorted back out through Customs and pick up our bags. The KLM staff gave us little pieces of paper with the NWA toll-free number, and while we were waiting for our bags to appear I tried calling to figure out what we could do. After being placed on hold several times, an agent finally informed me that the flight was not canceled, but was rescheduled to 3pm the next day. Well, that didn't go down well - we had a hotel booked in Milan and a tour of the city booked and paid for, that we would miss.
Finally, our bags appeared - by now most of the other passengers had already picked up theirs. We exited the customs area and made our way up to the KLM ticketing desks where we were met by a line that stretched half way across the airport. After waiting for a few minutes I decided to call the toll-free number again. This time I took a different approach - asking the agent what they would do for us, as we had connections to make in Amsterdam. After a few minutes, the agent returned and said she had found two seats on the British Airways flight to London that was leaving at 8:15pm - by now it was about 7pm - and she could get me on a connection to Amsterdam and then a later KLM flight to Milan. I told her that I was standing just across from BA's check-in desk.
The agent put me on hold while she completed the transaction. After what seemed like an age (but was probably about 10 minutes) she came back and said that she had found a better routing with a direct London to Milan flight, but that her system was not giving her a confirmation of the booking, so I walked across to the BA desk and asked the lady if we were showing in their computer - we were. I thanked the NWA agent and called Eileen across so we could check in for our flight to London. Luckily we had managed to get 2 of about 25 seats they had left. We didn't have great seats - but at least we had seats - so we didn't really care by then. BA's cabin bag weight restriction was higher than KLM's so we were able to carry our roll-aboards onto the plane.
We made our way through security to the departure gate relieved that it looked as though our travel woes were over. Our revised schedule had us arriving in Milan about an hour after our original schedule, as the layover in London was less.
The flight to London was uneventful - our bad "middle" seats were more comfortable than we expected - and BA has audio and video on demand, so we were entertained during the flight.
However - there was still more to come.
Our flight was due to arrive at Heathrow's Terminal 5 at 1:40pm the next day and the flight to Milan was scheduled to depart at 2:45pm from Terminal 5. This seemed like a reasonable amount of time, but I began to get anxious as we circled London waiting to land. We finally landed at about 2:15pm, so we had 30 minutes. No problem I thought - we are in the same terminal. But no, all passengers including passengers in transit had to go through passport control and then back through security. By the time we got to the security area it was 2:30pm and the security guard refused to let us through as there wasn't enough time, directing us to the BA transfer desk.
At the transfer desk, the agent said there was no way we should have been "sold" that connection as Heathrow requires 90 minutes to transfer between flights. However, he found us a flight out at 5:50pm, arriving in Milan at 8:50pm. At least we would get there on the same day - we wouldn't need to phone the hotel and the tour company to cancel. Again - we got the last two seats - this time they weren't together. By now, we were happy enough just to get seats. He said he would put a note on our file that if adjacent seats became available, we would like to sit together.
We now had two hours to kill before our flight. We wandered around Heathrow and found something to eat - we weren't sure what we get on the Milan flight and it would be quite late by the time we got to our hotel.
At about 5:15pm they posted our departure gate and we made our way there. After a short wait we started boarding. When we got to the front of the line - the agent said "You're not checked in" - "What", I said, as I prepared for the worst - "It's ok you've been given new seats - 6A and 6B". That sounded good - at least we would be together now. When we got on the plane - an Airbus 320 - we found that the first 6 rows were business class - we had been upgraded - what a pleasant surprise. At least we would now get a decent meal, and it made a nice conclusion to our journey.
The original KLM flight was scheduled to land at Milan's Malpensa airport which is about 50 km outside the city, so I had researched the options and planned to catch the Malpensa Express train into Milan. The BA flight was going to land at the Linate airport which is quite close to the city. Rick Steves’ book suggested a city bus to the Centrale station and then Metro, but he also said that the taxi fare from Linate to the Duomo area would be less than 20 Euro, so we decided that after our day of travel experiences, discretion was the better part of valour and we should take a taxi - which would take us right to the door of our hotel - the Hotel Star.
We checked in, went up to our room in the tiniest elevator that I have seen, unpacked and crashed. We had made it and only about 4 hrs later than planned. As we were pretty exhausted, I set the alarm and asked the hotel for a wake-up call as I was afraid we would miss our scheduled city tour.