REAL LIFE travel woes of a friend.

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 25 Jun 2017 Posts: 7

A friend of mine in real life is heading to Scandinavia.
He's just posted this update about his problems on-route in Hong Kong.

Honestly, It's like reading about a lad on safari!

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This place is cursed. Ever since I arrived, I have had random event after random event prevent me from leaving.....Due to confusion from the ground staff, I unkowingly went to the gate for the wrong transfer to Frankfurt....which was delayed, but even after waiting for the delay, discovered I'd been sent to the wrong flight and mine had left hours ago.....
Then I had to wait 5 hours for the service desk to be attended, but even after they arrived, the two airlines ping ponged me for the best part of an hour arguing about who would put me on the next flight....

Eventually I was told I'd have to buy a new flight...But that I had to do this outside the interantional section of the airport meaning I had to go through customs and immigration....but I wasn't allowed to leave the intetantional part of the aiport without an escort due to weird local laws about not being allowed inthere without a flight booked, so wierd...so I was esentially a prisoner for two hours....

I needed to borrow cash from a family member to do this, but after I booked the flight, it canceled itself.....
I then decided to try and buy a flight over the counter and after carrying my life on my back and arms all over ths quite large airport, I found that none of the service desks could sell me a flight over the counter, except one which was booked out...
.
I then tried to book another flight online, but my bank has frozen my card, due to Hong Kong not being on my travel plans.....SO I get some friends to get hold of my dad (my phone is dead and I don't have a sim card for hong kong as I was only planning on being here two hours......
He books me a flight using his card and all seems well....then I just got an email saying that there was a problem with the server and they had to cancel the booking.....

I'm actually starting to freak out a bit.....I'm trapped here at Hong Kong airport and actually have no idea how I'm gonna be able to leave, let alone get to Stockholm in time for my gig...
The one part of my mind that vaguelly entertains the super natural is really freaking out so any of my chaos majik/voodoo mates out there, can you do some stuff to lift this curse, please?????
I haven't slept in almost 36 hours.

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2017 2:51 am

The joys of modern airlines.............

No wonder I've grown to hate travel!

Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 11:19 pm

Stockholm is wonderful in July. I danced around this very pole during Midsummer.

I remember the pole being slightly more...symbolic?

Our return flight from Oslo to Frankfort left half an hour early just because everyone was ready to go. Pushback from the terminal in Germany was almost to the second. Even though we had a four hour layover in New Jersey, TSA and Homeless Security made our connection even with a 40 minute delay impossible to catch.

After coming out of a secure zone and waiting almost an hour for our bags and then two for customs and immigration we showed our boarding passes that had been marked "TSA Pre-Check". Homeless guy in blue rent-a-cop outfit says he cannot read it. After I read it for him he says the machine has to read it and motions us to the hours long line. I explain that if we go into that line we will miss our flight but we have been Pre-Checked and have Global Entry. He asked what planet we were from. I asked him to escalate by getting his supervisor. He says no. Global Entry should trump Pre-Check. He has never heard of it and Newark does not use Global Entry. My head snapped back at that.

I thought about showing my pilot's license that would have allowed me to be on the other side of all that pretense of security with every gun in my safe but I refuse to argue with an idiot. The scammers are bad enough.

As we were waiting to be rebooked we talked to a family from Stockholm going to Minnesota that had to stay the night in lovely Newark. We were only delayed a few hours.

We had our credit card frozen in Switzerland many years ago. I was trying to buy some railway tickets and within the last 15 minutes a purchase in London, my newspaper bill and my internet provider in Texas all put in for a payment. I was told that I did not have to call in my travel plans. I tried to use my back up card and that too was denied. I tried to call both banks. No luck. We walked back to the hotel and I borrowed a Swiss Franc from the little girl, went onto the internet on a coin operated computer and got a phone number for one of the cards. From Geneva I was transferred to a call center in Mumbai to a lady that stayed on the line with me for the next half hour until the card was unlocked.

I learned that regardless of what the bank says, call them and let them know that you are traveling. They put in in your notes and will look them over before they freeze your card for suspicious activity. If you get a new number with your local SIM card you can let them know that also.

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