Sunday 20 October 2013
Wake
up early, have a hearty breakfast and looking forward to getting into Panama
City by mid afternoon for shopping and gourmet dinner already booked.
Well,
once again the airport experience has been stellar. A perfectly planned holiday almost derailed
by another incompetent airline. Flight
from Mexico City to Panama City with Copa Airways, booked the ticket months
ago, turn up nice and early, wait in line for an hour – yes an hour – line not
moving very fast. I say to Trevor “there’s
not much hussle to get us all on board”.
Another 15 minutes and they declare “flight is cancelled”. Great.
Alternatives? No, well there’s not really any. There’s two more flights, fully booked. Oh well.
Desperate for alternatives we ring the travel agency we booked through;
no everything fully booked for at least two days. In the meantime we’re still waiting in line
another hour or so. Ring the travel
insurance people, they at least found a possible alternative. Fly in the wrong direction for an hour to
Monterrey and then catch another flight to Panama City. So go to Air Mexico and book another
flight. USD$900 per person one way or
USD$1040 pp return. We decide to get the
return tickets. Expensive fuck up but
what can we do? Go to check our bags in, “no you’re too late for that flight
boarding is closed, go and change your flight, but they will charge you to
change.” Go back to Air Mexico, they
didn’t charge us. Made the change to a
flight half an hour later, lady walked over with me to make sure I got the
boarding passes.
So now
sitting at the Monterrey airport waiting for our flight to Panama City. The flight here was only an hour, the plane
was going down "we're about to land, wow! no we're not!" all of sudden we start going “pedal to the
medal Commander” fast straight up.
WTF? Avoiding a near collusion or
what? No, turned out the runway was
blocked, had to circle around for another 15 minutes before landing. No drama in the end, but freaked us out a
bit.
Free tequila tasting at the duty free is helping to mellow the mood.
