Ireland: Dublin to Amsterdam to Seattle, er, make that to Minneapolis and then to Seattle (part 2)

1:04 pm (Minneapolis time), somewhere over the Atlantic

No such luck with a long layover in Amsterdam.

We apparently made up some of the time lost on the ground during our flight. We were supposed to arrive at 12:15 and we were on the ground at 1:00. Still, my flight to Seattle was to leave at 1:15. The KLM agent told me they had already booked me onto a replacement flight and sent me to the T4 transfer station.

When I got there, I had to wait for a couple people, and then the agent said if I ran I would still make my Seattle flight, but the gate was… yes, you guessed it, the further one from where we were. I would have to cover 2 blocks of terminal in 8 minutes, with two carry-ons. Like Hell. (The last time I tried that, for a redeye flight to Chicago a year ago, 7 of us made it – only because the flight was 15 minutes late leaving – but they had given away all but 3 of the seats, and two solo travelers snapped up two of them, leaving me and Rusty and a family of three with no solution.) So I walked as fast as I could manage, and an agent met me about 100 feet from the gate saying she had just turned away another traveller. Could I have made it if I had actually ran? Maybe, but I think karma would have said “No” and left me just a sweaty upset mess.

So she sent me back to the T6 transfer station. Unlike the T4 one, this one had people in line. Lots of people. It took me just under two hours to get through the line (and by then, the number of people in the line had almost doubled; poor people in the line at that point!). At which point they couldn’t find me in the system. They eventually did: I had been rebooked after all, as the original agent said, on a flight to Minneapolis and then to Seattle. Which was scheduled to leave… wait for it… 2 hours 10 minutes after my original one. Also known as “in about 10 minutes”. Also known as “if you run, you can make it.” Also know as… you guessed it, back to the same gate, the farthest one away! Argh!

So I hustled (a little running, but not much) back to gate E22, and got on. The flight was still boarding 10 minutes after it was supposed to take off. I think a bunch of people got shuttled onto it late like me. But at least I’m on the flight. Unfortunately, that also means another layover in Minneapolis before the next Seattle flight. Best guess is as much as 4 hours. I was originally supposed to be back in Seattle at 2:35 pm, now it’s going to be close to 11:30 pm.

So much for any hopes of either a pleasant Sunday or staving of reverse jetlag.

Watched Chicken Little on the flight so far. Useless waste of an animated film, almost nothing to recommend it. Will probably watch Cars and Juno, too, unless I can sleep some.

The baby on the Amsterdam flight shut up once we were finally in the air, and then started up again after we landed. This flight has one of the same sort: wailing until we were in the air, fortunately sleeping now.

Ireland: Dublin to Amsterdam to Seattle, er, make that to Minneapolis and then to Seattle (part 1)

11:09 am (Dublin time), somewhere over England

Boy, it doesn’t take but one experience to show you how much airports suck.

Make that how much American airports suck.

With a 9:40 am flight to Amsterdam, I caught the 7:55 bus to the airport from the City Centre. I know, that’s less that a two hour window, and in the States they always recommend a minimum two hours, three if you’re flying internationally. (Which is utter bullshit, of course. The only time you need two hours is if you’re flying a hub airline before 8:00 am on a business day. And I’ve not seen any reason to need an hour beyond that for international flights, since there’s nothing extra you usually need to do.)

I would guess (based on the number of terminals and the number of posted flights for a Sunday morning) that Dublin’s airport is 1/2 to 2/3 the size of Seattle, with of course vastly more traffic going International. At the Dublin airport, they don’t have separate ticket counters for checking in for each airline, which in the States leaves some deserted and some utterly mobbed. Instead, in Dublin they have check-in areas allocating different departing flights to different areas. Can you imagine: load balancing! Efficiency! And thus my wait for a check-in machine: zero people. My wait for checking my bags: zero people. My wait to have the security person check my boarding pass and passport: two people. My wait to go through security: zero people. (And they didn’t make me remove my shoes, either.)

In other words, the absolute best check in and security experience you can imagine in today’s environment. Less than 10 minutes from arriving at the check-in area to being through security, at 8:20 am.

On the other had, Aer Lingus still sucks. Same lousy legroom, same hawking of perfume and charging for beverages. But let’s add in that the seats in front of the exit rows don’t recline, so I’m having to turn sideways to uncomfortably type this. And the various regular announcements are both spoken in English but from a tape in Irish, and the speaker is right over my head, so I have to plug my ears every time an Irish announcement comes on, or go deaf.

But that’s not the worst of it. There’s some sort of a threatened Aer Lingus strike in the air, and that apparently has take the effect of either a slowdown or a sick out for the baggage handlers. Which means we boarded on time… and sat on the tarmack. 40 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, they finally fired up the engines… and we sat for another 25 minutes before we finally left.

(And yes, there was the requisite crying baby, wailing the entire time.)

You’ll recall that coming through Amsterdam, we had a two hour scheduled layover than turned into five hours. Going back (me today, Mom and Grandma on Tuesday), we’re only scheduled for a one hour layover.

I’ll pause to let you do the math…

Yup. My flight to Amsterdam is now scheduled to arrive after my connection home departs. (Even at the 40 minute late mark, I doubt they could have transferred my luggage in time.) Which leaves me at a loss for how long my delay will be in Amsterdam; depends on how often Northwest and KLM leave for Seattle (not sure which I’m taking back; check-in in terminal said KLM – Royal Dutch Airlines – but boarding pass says Northwest, which we flew to Amsterdam last week; they are partners, obviously).

Mom did buy Trip Insurance, so that will be my first thing to check when I get there. I think it doesn’t kick in until there’s a 6 hour delay or some such, though. (And whether it gets me anything, or just reimburses here, I don’t know.)

The cynical yet hopeful side of me says “Maybe they’ll bump me by 12 or 24 hours, and I’ll have to (get to) go into Amsterdam for a period of time, maybe even having them put me up for the night.” Damn, I’d hate that.

I’m reminded that the guys I was originally in the row with on the flight to Amsterdam last week expressed that they couldn’t imagine having to get on another flight after the long one to Seattle, implying too much stress and annoyance to handle. I think I get what they meant, now.

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam to Dublin (part 2)

11:45 am, Dublin time (somewhere over England, sitting sideways in the airplane seat)
(3:45 am in Seattle)

It was looking like the 12:00 time was bogus, since the next listed flight was actually 13:10, but they got us on our original plane and got us out around 12:20.

The coffee was lousy, by the way.  And a “Large” was about 10-12 ounces, so it was way overpriced.  Decent apple cake, though.

Aer Lingus has the least leg room of any plane I’ve ever been on.  My knees touch the seat in front of me. If my thighs were 1/2 inch longer, sitting would be difficult.  Is this where I make a leprechaun joke, since I’m going to Ireland?

Screaming kid on the flight.  There was one on the flight to Amsterdam, too, but that one shut up for most of the flight.  I honestly think that parents should not only have to buy a separate seat for any kid under 4 years old, they should have to pay double for it.  Anything to convince them to just stay off tightly packed transports until the kid is old enough to not scream like this.  (Yeah, I realize that he’s probably in some distress from pressure changes.  I don’t care: the parents’ “need” to travel with the tot is abusing both the kid and the rest of us.)

No inflight magazine, just a “sell you snacks and perfume and jewelry and other stuff” catalog.  But the snacks listing really shows we’re in a different country.  Beyond the easy stuff like scones and shortbread biscuits, there’s a “Full Breakfast” (sausages, bacon [ham], black & white pudding [blood sausage with oatmeal filler, and an oatmeal sausage without the blood], tomato, sauteed potatoes, farmhouse brown bread, butter, marmalade, fresh orange juice, and a hot drink; €8, roughly $12).  And two sandwiches: chicken & stuffing, and cheese & spring onions (€4.50 each, about $7.50).  Nifty.

When the beverage service rolled out, I became further convinced that Aer Lingus is a budget airline on the same level as Skybus in the states. First flight I’ve been on where you had to pay for the beverages.  €2 ($3!) for a soda or a cup of lousy airplane coffee!  Watch for this level of cheapness to hit the main carriers in the states within three years.  I’d love to predict Southwest first, but I’m betting on Delta or American jumping before them.  At least with Skybus (“Pillows are just $10!  Blankets are extra!  But maybe you were lucky and got the $20 ticket for this flight!”) – emphasis on “bus” – you kind of expect it.

What the fuck is up with the flight staff hocking duty free stuff on the flight itself?  No, I don’t want to buy a full-size bottle of liquor or a watch from the stewardess.  What is this, Times Square in the 1970s?  (“Psst, buddy!  Wanna buy a Rolex?”)  This one, I can’t blame on Aer Lingus, since Northwest did it, too.  I wonder how much volume they actually sell?

Ah, the kid finally shut up.
…And then started up again 10 minutes later.

Ireland: Seattle to Amsterdam to Dublin

10:30 am, Amsterdam time (at a kid’s table in the Amsterdam airport)

(That’s 1:30 am Seattle time, I think)

Leaving Seattle and getting to Amsterdam on Northwest was pretty uneventful.  Watched Brother Bear (pretty good), Bee Movie (mediocre), and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (nowhere near as good as the first, and scattered with the three subplots – the defeat of the Spanish Armada was almost an afterthought – but Eric Bana was sure pretty to look at) on the flight.  Had three meals (or two and a snack, if you prefer); fairly typical airline food, although with airline food being so rare these days, pretty good airline food.  Got a pair of seats to myself, which was nice.  Slept maybe 2 hours of the 9 total, though (but we got to Amsterdam at the equivalent of midnight or so, so what do you expect?).  Yawn.  I’ll pay for that later.

We were supposed to have a two-hour layover in Amsterdam before catching Aer Lingus to Dublin, but there was engine trouble which first delayed and then cancelled our flight.  Grrr.  We’re to come back in another 30 minutes, to wait for the next flight (12:00, rather than our original 9:40).  I’m expecting/fearing that this will mean everyone on our flight is now on stand-by for the noon flight, and thus probably only 1/4 of us will get on.  We may be stuck here in the Amsterdam airport all day.  (That’s how it would work in the States, to be sure!)

Bought some mini-cheeses to snack on, and a new pair of cheap earphones at the duty free place, since the ones provided by the airline were crap and my own in-ear ones broke during the flight.  Debating whether to buy some overpriced non-Starbucks coffee or not…

Flying into San Francisco Airport

In the winter or the spring?  Don’t bother.  You’ll be sorry.

SFO (San Francisco’s airport) has only two runways.  Add a little bit of weather — and in that part of the Bay Area, that means fog, more likely than not — and one or both runways can close down in a heartbeat.  This, of course, causes a domino effect of flights being late or outright cancelled.

In December, 1998, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from vacation in Seattle.  Perhaps you heard about the SFO closures that time.  Some flights ended up landing in Sacramento, Reno, or even Los Angeles.  (One airline even landed in Sacramento and abandoned the passengers — “This is as close as we can get to San Francisco.  You’ll have to get the rest of the way on your own.”  What fun!)  I ended up having to stay in Seattle for two extra days.

In April, 1999, I tried to get back to the Bay Area from a weekend trip to San Diego.  Guess what happened?  Of course, matters were compounded by the airline I was flying — Southwest — being unwilling to tell passengers anything more than “might be delayed,” even when United passengers were coming over to see about flights since their airline had cancelled everything into SFO that morning.  Anyway, after missing standby to Oakland and getting the next to the last seat on a flight to San José — and being wedged into a “party seat” with one other man and four obese women (who were fun to talk to, despite the tight quarters) — and then waiting in the cold for a shuttle bus and then the commuter train for about an hour, I made it to my destination about four hours late.  I fortunately had no luggage to check; those who did had to chase it all over the Bay Area, adding yet more time to the delay.

The end result?  During the winter and spring — mid-December to mid-April — if you can avoid flying into SFO, do so.  The odds of having weather problems is high, but they drop significantly if you fly into either of the other major airports in the area (Oakland and San José).  And truth be told, neither of the other airports is especially less convenient than SFO (depending on where your final destination is, of course) — and they can even be cheaper!

(Oh, and don’t get me started on how I dislike flying out of SFO!)