Monday, January 8, 2018

You know the saying "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings"? Well, we have 6 hours until she sings. Our 3rd scheduled flight leaves JFK tonight at 9:10pm, but at this point we've lost hope it will happen based upon the trip so far.  Although sitting in the Swiss Air business lounge, I get to pretend there is no chaos for a moment. More on the business lounge later.

After the flight was cancelled we were booked on KLM airlines for the next evening to arrive in Athens on Monday instead of Sunday. Thankfully we found a room for the night. No small feat with the madhouse happenings at JFK.

Dilemma. Our 4-day Greece bus tour leaves early Monday morning. So with all of the flight changes going on, I'm reaching out to Jamie, who arrived in Athens on Saturday and is enjoying rooftop bar at hotel overlooking Acropolis in evening while touring during the day, to help make arrangements. This was made a bit more complicated by them being 7 hours ahead of us. He went to tour HQ and arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport wih him, then take us all to the first night's stop of the bus tour. We'll miss the first day, but it's doable!

We got up, took our car to Charles from Jamaica for long-term parking, then off to JFK. Still massive chaos at airport from storm on Thursday. Find the KLM desk and give him our reservation number and passports. That's all we got. He says we are not ticketed. Yes we are. No you are not unless you can give me a ticket number. Call Swiss Air he says. Okay no problem. We leave him and call Swiss Air who gives us all 3 ticket numbers. Score!

We go back to our friend at KLM check-in and give him the numbers. Click click click click away he goes. There is no ticket he says. But she JUST gave me those numbers. They should start with 006 he says. You need to call again. Thankfully there is a clearing against a wall as you leave the ticket area and we park ourselves on the floor to dial away. A little oasis in a sea of stranded passengers.

Swiss Air says we ARE ticketed and will talk with them, so back in line we go. We get to our friend once again and I ask if he'll speak with her. Nope. Against policy. And you can't blame him. I wouldn't want to put my ear up to the phones of hundreds of strangers he deals with daily.  I ask Swiss Air agent what she wants me to tell him, and also that he said flight is overbooked anyhow. She pretty much gives up dealing with him. We kiss taking off on Sunday night goodbye. Apparently it is not uncommon for problems when being rebooked on another airline, and each airline blames it on incompetency of other airline.

All the maneuvering and arranging to catch up with bus tour is gone. Swiss Air books us on flight to leave Monday night at 9:10pm to arrive Tuesday at 4:30pm.  Business class upgrade to soften the blow of leaving 51 hours after scheduled flight. But with what is going on here, we are one of thousands dealing with the JFK debacle.

While at terminal 4 on Sunday the water main breaks and there is no running water in the entire building. With thousands of stranded passengers. Read: NO BATHROOMS. Part of a roof collapsed, fist fights broke out, and for a while customs shut down. Those last 3 were reported on the local news when we finally made it to another hotel for the night. We only witnessed being packed in like sardines in terminal 4 and thankfully had time to shuttle to terminal 5 for bathrooms. Hell, we had PLENTY of time.

We're calling this the great NYC airport hotel tour. The only available room we could find for the second night was by LaGuardia. First night was JFK.  We met some poor guy flying Swiss Air who camped out in the terminal trying to get to Zurich from Mexico City and had the unfortunate luck of connecting through JFK.

Also on the news they reported a wintery mix of snow, sleet and rain hitting NYC Monday night. Yup, right about when our flight leaves. But on the plus side, we contacted the tour guy and we can still catch up with tour bus on 2nd night of bus tour. So as long as we make it out tonight, we can do the last half of the tour. Fingers crossed!

If we don't make it out tonight, we go to Plan F (we're long passed B) and rent a car to get a flight tomorrow night from DC. Always thinking one step ahead. We even repacked our carry-on bags anticipating not seeing our checked bags for a while, if ever. Goodbye favorite boots, goodbye favorite scarf, goodbye favorite shoes. I felt like I was writing a Dr. Seuss book.

Back to business class. This is crazy! Unlimited drinks of all kinds, a full buffet-style meal, comfy seats and docking stations. It's quiet like a library in here. A little dose of denial to what may lie (or is it lay?) ahead if we don't make it out. Who knows. Maybe tonight we stay in a hotel by Newark. Lol! The trifecta of NYC based airport hotels.

Oh, also, I cannot get my tablet to connect to the photo gallery and can only upload picture if I take it now. Suffice to say I've had no time to figure it out. Been a little busy being Julie McCoy on steroids here.

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