Day 1 - Flights

And so to a really rather tricky day. Perhaps the start of all the troubles is the fact that BA (no longer my, let alone the world’s, favourite airline) cannot manage flights bought through them but being undertaken by a different airline. As a result I was not able to check in on line.

Anyhow, when I get to Heathrow, it turns out that the flight has been significantly overbooked and there are no seats left in any class! One option (!?) is to come back in a couple of hours to see if some people have not turned up. Wanting to avoid the usual institutional uselessness, I turn this down and get them to start finding an alternative route for me. The best that can be done apparently is a flight via Phoenix (South East of the US as opposed to the North West). On the one hand at least this is moving in the right direction on the other this means a long flight on a US airline – these are very much flights to be avoided; imagine and aged and even more budget version of Easyjet!

Anyhow for some reason this takes a long time to process via the various systems and then I notice that the flight is actually 20 mins earlier than my original flight and in fact time is running out for me to catch it. Oops, you’re right is the response! So I head off to departures to find that my ticket does not work! Another 5 mins passes and then someone remembers that your ticket is automatically invalidated 35 mins before departure. More phone calling and messing about with the system and eventually I am let through having clarified that my bags will not have suffered the same fate and been taken off the flight. Anyway, I run through the airport (no time to put my big mountaineering boots back on after security) and just catch the plane.

All well and good, or so it seemed until I received a message saying that there was a problem with my baggage and that I would need to speak to the ground staff at Phoenix to resolve it. As I should have guessed, my luggage had not made it onto the plane. More disconcerting was that it was not clear whether my luggage had just missed the flight or was actually lost – differing BA systems provided information that that did not really correlate. Obviously no one here can to do anything here to help ensure that my bags are found and forwarded to me before the group leaves for the mountain! Then it is a rather miserable frills free 6 hour flight from Phoenix to Anchorage getting in at 2 am rather than the 21:30 that I had arranged.