Skiing - Part 8

After a last night (nearly) of sampling the weirder drinks behind the bar (the Mark de Savoie being easily the worst) the day dawned with a hangover but brightish sunshine (at last).

With just half the day to ski before being picked up at 1400 they hit the slopes hard and early and got some serious miles in.

Halfway down the road on the way to Chambery on came the rep on the microphone, “er, it appears there is fog at Chambery and nothing is landing and taking off.”

Scenes of devastation greeted them at the airport when they got there. Some 8 flights and 800 passengers were stranded in a regional airport designed to handle no more than 1 flight and 100 passengers at a time. Chaos reigned. Our subject quickly predicted they were not getting home that night and some 5 hours later the flight was duly cancelled.

Of course their flight being the last of the day and the last to be cancelled all the hotel rooms in town were booked up and it was only in the early hours that they finally got to a hotel. Not you will notice a room. Their holiday company had not booked enough.

Eventually the reps realised that their role in life was not to do their best impressions of chocolate teapots and gave up their rooms for the benefit of their customers. Once the penny had dropped they appeared to improve immeasurably and actually begun to give a toss about the boys’ difficulties.

Having been lied to/not communicated with (take your pick but we prefer the first) all day about what was going on they took the promise that they were, “nearly 100% sure you will be taking off at 1300” with a very generous pinch of salt and considering the facts they were probably right to – 8 planes out of position, their flight the last and the ordinary operations of a useless charter company to maintain frankly a flight at all the next day looked a less than guaranteed option.

So €200 lighter blown on a taxi ride to Geneva and CHF440 lighter on BA flights they eventually got home no more than 14 hours late. They nearly did not get home even then as our subject managed to press the “YES” button on the check-in machine to the questions, “Could anyone have interfered with your baggage since you packed?” and “Has anyone given you anything to carry on-board.” Idiot.

All in all a good holiday but approaching the expensive – return BA flights on top of the charter flights saw to that. Good for the Airmiles though.