Where do I begin?

Where do I begin?

To give you some perspective I’ve flown over 4 million airmiles in my lifetime so not a newbie to international travel.

Now, before I start today’s essay, I want to preface it that our travel woes are all first world problems and that although I might sound like I’m whining it’s just a representation of our situation.

Given that this to Italy is our honeymoon trip that we couldn’t take two years ago we had high expectations when we began planning it six months ago.

Our original travel plan had us flying on Emirates to Dubai from Sydney with a two-hour layover before heading onto Rome.

Easy peasy right?

Learning the morning that we were leaving Sydney that Dubai had a flood was concerning but given that Dubai is a global travel hub we thought we may experience a minor delay but nothing more.

Famous last words…

Looking out the plane window as we landed it appeared to be a normal middle eastern day with a blazing blue sky and heat shimmers in the distance.

We landed into a relatively busy terminal after sitting on the tarmac for two hours waiting for a ramp to open.  The captain has assured us, that our connecting flights would be held for us so I didn’t expect what was about to unfold.

They had moved our flight to 15:30 from its 14:00 timeslot and so we made our way to the gate we were surprised to see literally thousands of people sleeping on almost every piece of floor space in the terminal around us.

The detritus of more than just a simple delay catapulted into my mind…

As we waited my confidence began to wane as the departure boards were awash with cancellations.

Sure enough, our flight was pushed back to 17:00.

Then to 19:00, 21:00, and eventually to 23:55…

I think the biggest frustration for everyone was the lack of communication on the situation, plus the sheer absence of Emirates staff.

Each of the connection desks was literally flooded with hundreds of people fighting to see an agent of which there were generally only one or two available.

Where do I begin to explain the next six days.

Surprisingly, they boarded our flight at midnight which I thought somewhat promising as most flights had been cancelled outright.

Everyone was exhausted by the ordeal and many of the passengers, including Judy and I fell asleep only to be woken at 2:00 with an announcement from the captain that due to the delay the crew were beyond their allotted hours and that the flight was now cancelled.

Yep, we were still at the gate… hadn’t moved an inch!

Surprinsingly, there were not flight attendants onboard nor gate staff nor a single Emirates employee to be seen anywhere.

We then traipsed off the plane and into an even larger throng of tired and angry passengers who all converged onto the Connections desk.

We were given a number and told to wait.  Our number was 110 from the current number being served and was scrawled in pen on our boarding pass by a harried employee.

They chose not to use the normal line up process where you stand in line and slowly snake your way in the cue to the eventual counter.

Everyone ignored this and just pushed to the front.  There was no PA system in use so unless you were relatively close to the desk no one could hear the number being called.

We waited for 8 hours hoping to have our number called, but at about 9:00 am three of the staff left and the number system fell apart.

It was sheer chaos!

Who could yell loudest to get the lone attendant’s attention became the name of the game, but by this point we were done.

At this point we cut our losses and decided to look at alternate airlines given that Emirates provided zero support or communication.

I went online and found a flight with EgyptAir via Cairo to Rome that was leaving at 19:00 and got us seats.  Even though we’d be a day late it was going to be okay.

Our bags were displaced somewhere in the maelstrom of the Dubai airport and were currently unretrievable…

So, we tried to make the best of it and went to the terminal where EgyptAir was flying from.

We had the afternoon to kill so we waited in this overcrowded terminal only to see our flight was cancelled around 16:00.

I went to the EgyptAir desk and asked him to explain why our flight was cancelled.

The answer was not the rain event but given the ongoing tension in the middle east and terrorist threats all flights had been grounded until further notice.  Who knows if this was just a story or the real deal…

He said he was sorry, but he didn’t have a date for when flights would recommence.

I think the thing that was most galling was that through all this flights continued to land and thus deposited thousands more people into the already overcrowded terminals.

At this point it had been almost 48 hours straight without sleep, so we decided to find a hotel in Dubai city while we planned our next steps….

Given that we had no bags we went to the closest mall and brought some essentials to get us through.

The next morning, we went back to the airport and instead of going to the connections desk went to ticket sales.

The Emirates staff person booked us on a flight the next morning via Istanbul to Rome.

But of course, by now you know what happens next… flight cancelled.

We’ve been stuck in Dubai for six days with no bags, just a growing credit card bill as we’re paying for both our accommodations in Italy (as it’s beyond the cancellation dates) as well as in Dubai.

Ouch!   Of course there is no compensation…

Nothing like rubbing a bit of salt into the open wound.

Just so you know Judy and I are endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation.

Until next week, hopefully from Italy.

Ciao!

p.s.  I have two key learnings from our trip so far.  Firstly, I will never fly with Emirates again – period!  Secondly, I will avoid Dubai in all future travel plans… yes, there are additional stories from our hotel stay.  Oi vey!