The early morning news that awaited me at the Clermont-Ferrand airport was that my 6:45 a.m. Air France flight to Paris had been delayed until 8:30. It was no big deal, hardly a reason to panic, just another inconvenience to which I have become accustomed during the past 20 years of international travel. I knew about the big snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic, had seen snow all week in Clermont, and was aware that air travel in the U.S. and Europe had been disrupted. That we didn’t actually board until 9:30, now 4.5 hours after having arrived at the terminal for this one-hour flight, was mildly annoying, but as I walked across the tarmac, under a light shower of large European Union snowflakes, I was cheerful. How could I not be: I was on my way home for Christmas, a mere 6 days from now.
My fellow passengers and I waited patiently in our seats as the ground crew de-iced the wings, the pilot cranked up the heat, and I watched the propellers on the twin-prop plane reach their maximum velocity. All of a sudden, they stopped turning. Five minutes later, the crew chief announced that because of weather conditions in Paris and a technical problem with the plane, all passengers would be disembarking, and she instructed us to pick up our luggage in the terminal. It was at this moment that I experienced my first twinge of foreboding. Upon re-entering the terminal and collecting our luggage, things quickly deteriorated.
There were no Air France agents to meet us. There were no announcements about how we would be accommodated for the inconvenience. The only thing we were told was to not approach the check-in counters so as not to interfere with the next wave of passengers who were being processed for the 11:30 a.m. flight to Paris! In a word, we were being abandoned and left to our own devices. There was a great bit of milling about, with people wandering around the terminal wondering what to do next. Some headed for the railway station. My two World Bank colleagues and I discussed our options: take a train to Paris, rent a car, return to the hotel and try again tomorrow, or hang around until we could get some clarity? We opted to hang out.
Clarity, we were soon to learn, would be in short supply this day. For example, our attempts to secure the number of the international operator, through whom we could make a collect call to our American Express travel agency in the States, were frustrated. The agent at the so-called “Information” counter—an example of the French penchant for hyperbole—had no idea what we were talking about. The agents at the rental car desks wanted to help but were no better informed. We couldn’t even get the pay phone, that dinosaur of a by-gone era, to operate. I had to remind myself that this was France, in 2009, not one of the many African airports where I have been stranded from time to time over the years.
The first glimmer of hope came in about an hour’s time. An Air France agent casually mentioned to a couple of passengers within earshot that a fifty-seat bus could be mobilized to take us to Paris. If you were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, you learned that the bus would be departing at 12:15 with estimated arrival in Paris at 4:45. There was no formal announcement. Of course, there were many more than fifty passengers who needed to get to Paris, and if you happened to be getting a coffee or taking a bio-break, you would have missed out on this relatively important information! Gradually, news of this breakthrough spread throughout the terminal by word of mouth.
It was during the next fifteen minutes of discussion with my colleagues about whether to take the bus that I realized that we should never have left behind those warm beds at the Holiday Inn. Apparently, at some point, the pilot had appeared in the terminal, and casually mentioned to a few passengers that he “knew how to fix the plane.” When we eventually learned of this, again through the 21st century communication miracle of word of mouth, I was dismayed. Mind you, this was the pilot, not a technician or a mechanic! Before I could finish collecting shoelaces, gum, and dental floss from my fellow travelers, we were instructed to drop our checked luggage bags directly on the conveyor belt behind the counter. Only a half-hour earlier we were told to stay away from the counter; now we were being invited into territory normally reserved for Air France employees. It wasn’t bad enough that they weren’t doing their own jobs; now they were asking us to do theirs as well! During the chaotic rush to the belt, I thought to myself, what are they going to ask us to do next?
May we have your attention please! Is there a volunteer willing to hold his or her thumb firmly and steadily on the cork the pilot extracted from a 1972 bottle of Chateau de Boeuf and which he has placed in the little hole he found in the emergency exit door for the short trip up to Paris? We would prefer a Dutch passenger, if possible. In return for your service we cannot offer you a free round-trip ticket to your choice of any destination in France, but we would be happy to give you the opened bottle of Pinot, we’ll throw in a lump of Camembert, and we promise to locate the number of the international operator upon arrival in Paris. Please approach the counter if you are interested, or, better yet, whisper your interest in the ear of the passenger standing next to you and tell him to pass it along up the line.
Merci de votre attention et patience.
My heart sank a bit as we proceeded through security, AGAIN, on our way to that frozen icebox of a plane, which must have misbehaved at some point not to merit its own terminal. In any case, as I sat in my seat anxiously waiting for those propellers to begin their rotation in preparation for take-off, I thought I saw a large blue rubber band around the right wing. I’m sure it was just my imagination. For heaven’s sake, this is France, and the year 2010 is practically upon us. Approximately 45 minutes later, a plane with about two-thirds of its original human cargo taxied down the runway. Without the pilot even having to ask, we all leaned forward in our seats at the moment of lift-off, just to make sure that this twin-prop with auxiliary cork contraption got off the ground. At this moment I looked at my watch. It was 1:30. Eight and one-half hours had elapsed since the time of our arrival. We were all glad to leave Clermont-Ferrand behind, and anxiously looked forward to our arrival in the City of Lights.
With the cork still firmly in place, we landed safely at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Although nothing to this point in the trip had given me reason to be optimistic, I saw in the domestic terminal where we waited for our bags a very thin, but nonetheless silver, lining. On this day in which most trips to the States had been cancelled, including ours, because of the East coast blizzard, surely the transfer and rebooking chaos would be unfolding in the international terminal. Better to deal with the process here in domestic, an underwhelming structure that had the feel of a converted airplane hangar, where it was likely that fewer passengers would be requiring assistance. It wasn’t long, however, before I learned that today chaos had no boundaries.
As we entered the terminal, my eyes were first drawn to a counter with two passengers and three agents. I thought, “this is too good to be true,” which, of course, it was. The reality show was just next door, where about fifty passengers, some of whom had been on our flight, had formed an impressive queue. At the front of the queue were two beleaguered agents and what seemed like half a dozen supervisors moving about behind the counter sporting looks of intense preoccupation coupled with comfortable disengagement from the traveler-proletariat. Obviously, theirs was a higher calling. So, this afternoon’s drama would be played out between us, the needy and tired, and these two agents, the most powerful men and women in France on this Saturday afternoon in December. It was they and they alone who stood between us, two turtle doves, and three French hens.
For a fleeting moment, there was one last breath of hope. Just beside the queue was a sign that appeared to indicate the availability of a separate line for business class travelers. But before my colleagues and I could form such a line—in truth, we didn’t approach this task with great enthusiasm as we could feel the intense heat generated by one hundred squinting eyes boring little holes into our necks—several passengers told us that they had been instructed to form a single line. Reluctantly but understandably, we took our place in the back of the queue, but were at least comforted by the fact that we were all in this together. My unofficial estimate of the average passenger-agent interaction was about thirty minutes! This was definitely going to take awhile.
About an hour into the wait, I was rudely awakened from my daydream of dancing and prancing in Jingle Bell Square in the frosty air by a wild bunch of about forty passengers who came roaring and rumbling and grumbling through the terminal, several of whom could be heard complaining bitterly and loudly that they had been travelling since 5 a.m.! “Pity,” I mumbled under my breath, “there’s plenty of space for everyone at the back of the line.” After about 15 minutes of tongue and finger waving at a new agent who had led them from wherever they came, these folks raised the day’s drama to a new level. What happened next was nothing short of incredible.
This new agent told the thundering herd to form a second line, next to ours. As soon as she had them installed, she took off, leaving us to deal with the impending disorder she left behind. The two besieged agents were so preoccupied with their tasks that neither looked up from his and her respective computer screens to witness what was happening. And none of the half dozen supervisors said a word! Mon Dieu! It was apparent that this scene was about to get ugly! Very ugly! In the absence of any kind of discipline, it became clear that we had to organize ourselves!
Our first initiative was to push everyone forward, to the point where each passenger could smell the respective perfume and cologne of our two agents. We could not permit any of these pushy barbarians to think for even one minute that we were going to take turns! A melee would have surely ensued had not one of our fellow passengers, who had miraculously made it to the counter, explained to the agent who had just rebooked him of the impending bedlam. Luckily, before accepting another client, the agent stood up and directed all the newcomers to move about one hundred feet down the counter, where they would be assisted by a new agent, who had just come to his computer. Although this meant that some of these new travelers would be served before some of us who had been standing in line for what was now two hours, order had been restored, and we had regained exclusive property rights to our two agents.
By my unofficial count, only two people had managed to slip through our fail-safe system. One was a mother, the other a young jerk who had outlasted the agent who had at first refused to serve him, and with whom he had had a running argument for about ten minutes. The agent eventually caved. Had he known that the volunteer who had held the cork in place on our flight to Paris was willing to hand over his Pinot and a chunk of cheese had he remained steadfast in his mission, he might have held his ground.
By the time my colleagues and I reached the counter, another 20 or so passengers had joined our line, night had begun to fall, and we heard that Jimmy Choo shoes and Prada handbags were no longer in fashion. Of course, by the time we were being served, a new agent had come on the scene, which improved the ratio of clients to agent from about 25 to 1 to 17 to 1. Way to go Air France! After about 45 minutes of hard work, a very amiable agent had us rebooked on a flight the next day—to Boston, not Washington. Although he offered us some tempting options for re-entry to the States, Orlando and LA included, we decided it was best to get as close to DC as possible because of the approaching holiday and the logjam in the system.
As we walked away from the counter on six tired feet, but with boarding passes and vouchers for a night’s hotel stay in our hands, one of my colleagues was verbally assaulted by a female passenger in the back of the line, who tried to blame us for the extended time it took to rebook us. Having just spent three hours in line ourselves, and it being Christmas and all, we cut her some slack and moved on. It was 5:15 pm when we left the terminal.
In all of their wisdom, the French gods of efficiency have created a “day hotel village,” called Roissypole. About two dozen well-known brand hotels make up this village, which, unfortunately, is only accessible by 1) airport bus to electric rail station, 2) electric rail station to hotel shuttle bus station, and 3) shuttle bus station to hotel. Taxis are not an option, the bus part of the bus-rail-bus system can be rather slow and crowded, particularly when the entire European and continental US air travel system suffers a major shock, and the standing around is exacerbated by frigid temps below 0 degrees centigrade. All this to say we didn’t check in to our hotel until 6:15 p.m., thirteen hours after we first embarked on this forgettable voyage. We were grateful, however, that we could even secure a hotel room with hot water, heat and internet access. And now, finally, I could get a hold of that elusive international operator, who I needed to book me a flight from Boston to Washington.
I called the front desk. I asked the receptionist for the number of the international operator. He told me he didn’t know it. In fact, he said that no one at reception knew it; they had never known it. Was it possible that no one in all of France knew it? Could it be that switching over to the Euro was just too much of a shock to French nationalist pride? Knowing the phone number of the international operator was too much to ask? Luckily, I was able to secure an AT+T direct access line, which I could use to gain access to American Express. An hour later, I had a reservation from Boston to National on Delta for myself and one of my colleagues. Although exhausted, I only managed to sleep for about four hours, fearful, I think, that I might sleep through my alarm and end up standing in line with another unruly assemblage of people in search of a hot meal and shower.
As I awoke Sunday morning, I watched a fresh snowfall from my hotel room window thinking that I might be home for Christmas only in my dreams. Reality soon came knocking, however, in the form of a phone call from one of my colleagues. He had just heard on CNN that the storm’s next target was Boston and Eastern New England, where forecasters were predicting a foot of snow and winds likely to reach fifty mph. News from Washington was also not good. Only a few flights were getting into Dulles and National was still closed. Ground transportation was also problematical, which left us with visions of spending the night at the airport, even if we could get that far. A further complication was that only two rooms were available in the hotel for that evening, which we risked losing if the flight to Boston was cancelled, which we fully expected it would be.
So, we decided to stay another night, while our intrepid colleague decided to venture forth into the great unknown. She was rewarded for her courage: the 1:30 flight to Boston did eventually take off at 5:10; unfortunately, she missed her flight to Chicago by five minutes and was forced to spend the night in Boston. We heard that she made many, many new friends among the 300 passengers with whom she stood in line the next morning, all of whom had been trying to get out of Beantown for two days!
As for me, I spent Sunday unpacking, surfing the web, catching up on some sleep, reading, and talking to an agent from American Express, who proceeded to ruin a perfectly fine day. A Monday departure to Washington was out of the question. The soonest she could get me to the States was Tuesday! Later that evening, my colleague and I had planned to dine at a local restaurant in what we had affectionately come to call our “Abominable Snow Village,” but I had a sense that it might be prudent to visit our cheerful and efficient friends at the Air France desk in Charles de Gaulle to confirm our flights on Tuesday and to explore, by chance, the possibility of getting out on Monday.
It took us an hour to get to the terminal, but at least we were not weighed down with luggage. Luckily, we did not have to wait in line; unluckily, the agent informed us that we should be thankful that we had seats on Tuesday, but that we risked losing them because the rebooked flights had not yet been ticketed. He told us it was urgent that we contact American Express immediately to secure these seats. About an hour later, after a shuttle bus ride with a bunch of people who looked like they were in no mood to sing Christmas carols, we reached our hotel. The American Express agent told us not to worry, tickets would be issued that evening or the next morning, and that the agent could have taken care of this. Upon hearing that, I described to the naïve agent the countless actions that Air France should have taken but had not since Saturday. All we could do was sigh, in harmony.
Monday was uneventful, save for the discovery of a nice Chinese and Thai restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. With the exception of a one-hour delay, the return on Tuesday proceeded smoothly. I even managed to do a little bit of Christmas shopping in the terminal and on the plane. There were no lines, plenty of announcements, and the only dramas unfolding on this day would be those we could watch in our seats and listen to through our headphones. As I boarded the plane, I happened to catch a glimpse of the pilot, who with a wink of his eye and a twist of his head, soon gave me to know I’d be having French bread.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
