March Break - Getting Away

Getting away at March Break is always a nice treat . . . if you can survive the airport nightmares!

My friend Pam and I were to fly to Munich on the Friday. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare and were waiting at the gate to catch our flight to Philadelphia.

About 15 minutes from boarding our flight, the dreaded call came on the PA for us to report to the desk. The gate attendant had a GREAT offer for us -- our flight to Philly was overbooked so they got us on a direct flight to Munich. "Just go upstairs, get your bags, and transfer to the other terminal - you're confirmed on the flight."

Note: if an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is!

Arriving at the other terminal, we go to the Lufthansa desk, as we'd been directed. "Sorry, we don't have a flight to Munich tonight. . . maybe Air Canada does."

Soooo, we go to the Air Canada desk. "Yes, we have a flight to Munich but we're overbooked." They had never even heard of us and would never have confirmed anyone on that flight! They put us on stand-by - on a flight that was delayed by an hour! Three hours later, we knew there was no hope of us getting on that plane!

Next stop - get our bags and head back to the OTHER terminal - AGAIN!

We got back to the US Airways desk just before the customer service agent was to go off duty. He stuck around for over an hour finding us a way to get to Europe . . . a long, drawn-out way of getting there, but getting us there.

He comped us a hotel room, we got a few hours of sleep and headed back to the airport to catch the first flight out to Philly. Arriving in Philly, we spent 7 hours in the airport before catching a flight to Frankfurt. We arrived in Frankfurt with just enough time to get to our next gate to catch a flight to Prague.

We arrived in Prague mid-morning on Sunday. We were two days late and had totally missed out on Munich and the drive from Munich to Prague, but we had made it to Europe, got a few extra hours in Prague, and were able to join up for our tour.

Oh the joys of international travel! ;-)