Today has been a complete and utter nightmare. I was supposed to be halfway across the Atlantic right now. Instead, I’m on hold with Air Canada, sitting outside Brussels airport, chain-smoking and having a nervous breakdown.
I had a 8:15 flight out of Geneva to Brussels, then a 10:30 flight to Montreal. I got up at 4am, got my last bits ready, and then headed to the airport on the 5am train. Bags of time. Get to the airport, fight with the baggage check-in self-service kiosk (win!) then go past security super quickly. So far, so good. My flight to Brussels was uneventful, but that’s when all hell broke loose.
My flight landed at 9:35, and my flight to Canada was starting to board at 930. I could still have made it, but there was a complete and utter border checkpoint shambles in between. Even with shameless queue jumping, I didn’t make it in time for my gate. The flight closed only a few minutes before I managed to make it to the gate. The staff at the airport were like, don’t worry, they know there are late people, they’ll wait. They didn’t. I missed my flight. But I could still see it just outside the window, still connected to the ramp. So close, yet do far.
Enter circles of airport/airline hell.
First rung of airport hell was getting my suitcase back. That took about an hour – which given the number of lost bags that were piling up, is probably a small miracle nonetheless.
Second level of airport hell: customer service counters. Now comes the part of trying to rebook a connecting flight. See, the 1st leg of the flight was operated by Brussel Airways. The 2nd leg was Air Canada. After waiting in 2 different queues, I get a lady-just-about-to-close-her-window service agent. She looks at my boarding passes and smiles because she’s still going to be able to go on break soon. You see, sir, Brussels airways says that even though the flight was late by a couple of minutes, I still had more than 50 minutes to make my connection, that’s their contractual obligation, and they’re not responsible for airport delays, so I need to deal with Air Canada.
Air Canada, joyously, doesn’t have a service desk at the airport.
I need to call them.
Enter third level of airline hell: phone support.
At the time or writing this post, I’ve been on hold for over two hours. (2h20, to be exact). It was a solid hour and a quarter before I actually spoke to a human being. The rest has been trying to figure what my options are. Which seem to be very few. It would seem that AAAAAALLLLLL flights out of Brussel going even remotely to Canada are booked solid until the 4th – Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec. So now I’m trying to get myself back to Switzerland, lick my wounds and deal with the fallout. It’s still not clear just how much out of pocket I’m going to be on this.
Update at 3h mark: Possible moderate success – since I’ve already started the trip, the flight is not cancellable nor refundable but I can keep the remaining legs as “credits”, usable up to July next year. I’m hoping to be able to use the BRU-YUL portion of this aborted trip to pay for a flight back to GVA, and then I’d still have the YUL-GVA portion as credit I can use until July of 2023.
The lady on the phone has been super helpful, and I repeatedly told her so.
Update several hours later, once I’ve finally been able to pee, sit, eat and drink something. From reading up on the interwebs, it seems that Brussels is a known shitshow for passport control. This is a picture from a few years ago, but history repeats as it was the exact same spot I was in.
And this is a news blurb from a few weeks ago:
Passengers traveling through Brussels Airport, Belgium towards a non-Schengen destination were forced to enter a lengthy queue at passport control. “While Federal Police carried out the necessary but time-consuming passport controls, a technical problem also affected the airport’s e-gates, a system that mechanically reads out the passports. Passengers for non-Schengen destinations are advised to come well ahead, i.e. 3 hours in advance,” the airport tweeted.
Between 50,000 and 70,000 passengers are expected to depart from Brussels Airport daily during the summer months. 66 destinations are non-Schengen. People were complaining about kilometer-long queues and 4h delays…
Now I just have 3 hours to kill before I fly to Zurich, then Geneva.
