Friday, January 26, 2007

Nightmare journey

Well it is 4:50am Moscow time and I haven't gone to bed yet...
According to the original plan I would be cosily tucked up in bed in London, ready for an early flight to Amsterdam to go to 4 meetings at the office.

Instead I am still in Moscow, because of the following:
- flight from Surgut did not manage to land in Moscow due to the poor weather conditions. We were diverted to Nijny Novgorod-thank goodness I was flying in business class, with a colleague, so we could just sit and wait in the lounge. All Moscow airports as well as the Nijny one were closed after we landed
-left Nijny N after 5 hours-there were still 20cm of snow on the runway
-arrived in Moscow Vnukovo at 6 which meant I missed my original flight-had already rebooked to the next one, at 9
-got completely stuck in Moscow traffic, despite the driver's knowledge of back roads and very good zigzagging skills: arrived in Domodedovo at 10:30. Had already rescheduled flight to 5:50am today. This meant cancelling flights and meetings in Holland.
-all hotels near the airport were fully booked and I did not have time to travel backwards and forwards to anywhere else so stayed in the airport feeling grumpy about BA not opening their check-in early for business travellers so we could wait in the lounge overnight. Finally got some food though
-got to check-in as it opened to be told there was a problem with my ticket and to wait till BA agent turned up an hour later...tried phoning the BA helpline which was shut...poor employees need to sleep, to have enough energy to go on strike...grrr
-finally got a ticket after pushing the girl to try a bit harder as she was trying to send me back to my travel agent
-here I am in the BA lounge, just had a foot bath and going to grab some snacks...
-if the flight isn't delayed, I hope to get straight onto one to Edinburgh when I arrive in Heathrow...was going to go this evening from Ams but ticket now cancelled...

Nothing could be done about the situation, which was the most frustratingthing , along with the fact that colleagues flying to Moscow Domodedovo from Surgut (flight I took last time) 45mins before us managed to land-I should have been on that one!! We had planned a day trip to Moscow with Ravil, in case he missed his connecting flight (he did) so I was rather disappointed as I was looking forward to finally going into the city, and potentially catching up with Mischa.

Oh dear.
:-((

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quelle histoire ! et BA en grève imminente ...
P & M

Anonymous said...

Such awefull travel horror. Hope you got well to Edinburgh and enjoying catching up with Matthew and your friends. Hope we meet soon x INgrid

Anonymous said...

il y a des jours comme ça...