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Closure

February 19, 2024 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/flat-vintage-travel-poster_4661673.htm#page=2&query=airplane&position=47&from_view=keyword&track=sph&uuid=8990c9ee-9876-4a5f-93b5-870f42785c91">Image by pikisuperstar</a> on Freepik“The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday”

Steve Maraboli

My last post to this journal ended with this sentence:

“Anyway – I feel that it will not be long until the news here, at least, takes a turn for the better“.

The very next day…

Quite enough has been written in these postings over the last ten months concerning our abortive attempt at a trip of a lifetime, featuring an all bells and whistles safari to Botswana. If you somehow missed the saga of how British Airways wrote off our epic adventure (along with a considerable chunk of our savings) then simply use the search feature on the home page. A search for “British Airways” or any one of a number of expletives should return the information that you seek.

Back in December – shortly before Christmas – this post brought regular readers up to date with the current status of our long (out)standing insurance claims – by means of which we hoped to recover at least some of our outlay. At that point (back in November) the girl had received a partial payment from our main insurers but I had heard nothing. The post ended thus:

“We must, of course, needs be patient yet and wait and see what happens…”

So – back to where we started:

The very next day…

…I received in the post a cheque from our insurers. It was for the full amount of the claim (actually by a small but discernible margin rather more than I was expecting).

Hoo-bloomin’-rah!

Delighted as she was for me, The Girl was understandably put out that she had been left out of this little bonanza.

However – the very next day (again!)…

…another missive arrived from the insurers, this time including a cheque for the residue of her claim.

Hoo-bloomin’-rah-some-more!

Where does this leave us? Well – all the claims that could be met and all the payments that the various parties could not avoid making – are in. We have, between the two of us, recovered something in excess of $24,000 (CAD). That might seem impressive had we not laid out just slightly less than $40,000 (CAD) on the trip and the recovery operation as a whole.

Well – we did get a (hugely expensive) week in the UK, though much of that time was spent either on the phone to British Airways or being unable to sleep because of a growing sense of panic.

No matter. ‘Tis over and done and we have all the closure we are going to get.

I promise that I will do my damnedest not to mention it again.

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What the…

December 23, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

My humble apologies to those who receive regular updates from this blog by email. The service that I have been using for the dissemination of said new posts since April 2021 has – on the whole – worked reliably and consistently. Now – all of a sudden – many things appear to have changed, including – to my great annoyance – the sudden inclusion of adverts or sponsors messages in those emails.

Even more annoying from my point of view is the fact that I received no notification that this was about to happen!

If you are at all like me I feel sure that you will be greatly displeased by this intrusion of a very different world into this gentle forum. I will, of course, do everything that I can to get the situation rectified as soon as possible.

Please do bear with us in the meantime…

 

Grrrr!

 

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Adjusting the sails

December 23, 2023 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

William Arthur Ward

I promised a catch-up… Here is part one!

When The Girl and I booked our ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to Africa (‘never in a lifetime’ as it turned out) we spread the financial load by each using our own individual credit cards. This seemed a perfectly logical thing to do – at the time – but as things turned out it created more difficulties both before the trip and in the aftermath.

During the build up to the trip the ‘delightful’ British Airways took it upon themselves to change various features of our itinerary (flights, planes, routes etc) on a number of occasions – each time seating us in different parts of the plane regardless of our protestations that they knew perfectly well that we were traveling together. Each incident took considerable phone-based efforts on our part to correct.

In the aftermath of the fiasco, our attempts to recover as much of the costs as we could – through refunds from the airlines and payments from the insurance policies that we had (thank goodness!) taken out beforehand – has also proved tricky beyond belief. British Airways gave us the bare minimum that they could get away with legally and refused to compensate us for the additional $1,500 that they had changed us each to get back to Canada.

As a result of the bookings having been made separately we were obliged to submit separate but virtually identical insurance claims (two apiece) at virtually the same time. In the case of the lesser claim I received a cheque first but The Girl had to wait nearly another month for hers. For the larger claim – the which covered the safari package itself – she received a cheque (though not for the full amount!) back in October. I have yet to hear from them!

The explanation for The Girl’s partial payment – according to our insurers – is that some items for which we had claimed were ineligible for a coverage. The Girl pointed out to them that the safari packages had been sold and billed as a single items and must therefore either be eligible in their entirety or not at all. As we did not get to go on any part of the adventure (or even to share a continent with it) we are firmly of the view that we should be reimbursed the full whack.

We must, of course, needs be patient yet and wait and see what happens…

 

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Singing in the lifeboats

July 3, 2023 in Life as we know it | 2 comments

“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats”

Voltaire

26th & 27th May

Though we did not get back to the hotel until after 1:00am in the early hours of the morning of 26th May, The Girl was awake again at 4:30am and calling BA on the phone. Following a lengthy exchange she was able to get our Johannesburg flight switched to the following day, 27th May. We rebooked our connecting flights in Africa accordingly.

At around 10:00am I took a taxi back to Terminal 5 to try to locate our luggage. There were long queues of unhappy passengers outside the baggage office but they were not answering any queries. The BA management staff in the terminal would only say that we must log our missing baggage online and await a response. There was a heavy security presence in the terminal which was a good thing as the arrivals hall was teeming with unhappy travelers. Whilst I was there one hysterical young lady threw herself at one of the BA managers – apparently (though perhaps unsurprisingly) aiming to do him some harm. Shortly thereafter the security presence was reinforced by police officers. I beat a retreat.

During the afternoon we tried to log our missing bags online but the system was not working properly and would not record the details. We spent several more hours on the phone to BA and the missing luggage was finally appropriately recorded.

On waking on the morning of the 27th May we found that we had been sent email notifications overnight to the effect that our safari bags had been flown to Johannesburg on 26th May, but were by that time enroute back to the UK – though on different flights. A rapid calculation of flight times made it very clear that we could not be reunited with our bags in time to check in for that evening’s flight.

As detailed in my initial Africa posting, our trip was to have been a safari, staying in remote lodges (without wifi, Internet or cellular access) and traveling between them in small planes. We had purchased bags specifically sized to the requirements of these internal flights (maximum (W) 10” x (H) 12” x (L) 24”) and all of our clothing and other accoutrements had been chosen to be as small/light as possible.

We were supposed to have flown to Johannesburg, switched within a few hours to a local airline for the short hop to Maun, where we would have been met off the plane and transferred immediately to a small aircraft to be flown to the first safari lodge. There was no feasible way that we could have replaced our missing luggage whilst on the journey and without these items there was no possibility of completing the trip as planned. We had by this point rebooked our African internal flights twice – with no hope of a refund – and it felt as though we were just spending more and more money with no guarantee of being able to reach any of our destinations.

With immense reluctance we decided that we had no choice but to abandon our trip of a lifetime and to head back to Canada.

Much of the 27th May was taken up with a series of phone calls to BA, trying to change our booking to get us back to Victoria by any route. The BA agents told us that it was not possible to do this without paying extra charges and that we would have to find a further $1,500 CAD each to get home via Vancouver. This was adding insult upon injury for something that was never our fault.  We were not – at any point in the whole sorry saga – offered by BA the alternative of abandoning our trip and going home.

Again it seemed as though we had no choice but to pay up, which we reluctantly did on the afternoon of the 27th May. Further anxiety was induced when BA initially charged the wrong amount to my credit card, which – when they subsequently corrected it – resulted in my card being blocked until I had made another international call to my credit card company to resolve the issue.

We flew back to Victoria via Vancouver on 30th May, after the Bank Holiday on the 29th and, to our surprise (having received no notification), found my wife’s missing safari bag on the baggage carousel at Vancouver. It was another four days before I finally received notification that my bag was also enroute to Victoria and I had to go to the airport myself on the 4th June to collect it.

The whole experience was enormously stressful for us both. We did everything we could to join our safari and to continue the trip, but British Airways thwarted us at every step. We are well aware that BA has form in such matters and that this not by any means being the first such IT related incident. Little – if anything – seems to have been learned about how to resolve such self-inflicted issues.

With the exception of the small number of staff who did their best to support anxious and confused passengers, British Airway’s handling of the whole sorry saga was in the main obstructive, unhelpful and dismissive.Their only response (when questioned) was to state that all must be resolved online – which is richly ironic given that their IT systems were in meltdown. When we resorted to the inevitably extremely lengthy phone calls (during which we were almost driven insane by the endlessly repeated ‘hold music’) we found ourselves speaking to agents who were clearly a very long way away on different sides of the planet and who were equipped with a limited script outwith which they could not venture. Anything further meant an agonising wait for a call-back (which might or might not materialise) to inform us of the outcome of some other unknowable procedure that had been suggested by a faceless BA ‘supervisor’.

If I give the impression that we are angry about the whole fiasco – then that is because we are! We are still trying to recover whatever we can of the considerable outlay that we had made on this supposed trip of a lifetime, but as you might expect – BA (and others) do not make it easy so to do.

Well – I think… I hope!… that that is quite enough about this particular subject.

Moving on!…

 

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No way to run a railroad!

June 30, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us”

Henry David Thoreau

Thursday 25th May

On Thursday May 25th  – having taken a couple of nights to recover from our extended flight from Canada – The Girl and I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 a little after 2:00pm to check-in for our 7:05pm flight to Johannesburg. We had attempted to check-in online before leaving for the airport but the online system was not working. On arrival at the terminal, we found that none of the check-in stations were working either. We were told at the Club Class check-in desk that there had been a major IT systems failure (the which would ultimately lead to well over 200 flights being cancelled). We were checked in by hand and headed for the Club Lounge.

We could immediately see from the departure displays that European and domestic flights were being cancelled in increasing numbers, though long-distance flights seemed at that point still to be operating. At around 5:00pm there was an announcement that all European and domestic flights after 6:00pm would be cancelled – and shortly thereafter came an announcement that our flight would be delayed overnight!

As we had a connection in Johannesburg for an onward flight to Maun – in Botswana – to join our safari, we immediately endeavoured to find an alternative flight that would arrive in time. We were directed to a variety of different gates, waited patiently in queues, talked to BA reps who had no idea what was going on… but it was clear that they really just wanted people to leave the airport and to go away. After a couple of hours of this we finally we gave up and returned to the Club Lounge. We enquired at the BA desk there and the agent was able to find spaces on a later BA flight – scheduled to depart at 9:25pm. We were only able to get economy seats, but we felt this was worth the trouble as we had a connecting flight and a safari to join.

As soon as the departure gate was announced we headed for Satellite C and joined the throng of passengers already there. We could see the aircraft from the gate but shortly afterwards there was tannoy announcement that this flight would also be delayed.  We learned that the aircraft had a mechanical fault which was being worked on. As time passed all of us at the gate grew increasingly concerned that the flight would not get away and, sure enough – at around 11:30pm – it was finally cancelled. By this stage we had been in the terminal for nearly 10 hours.

We were told that we must leave the satellite and walk back through the underground passageways (alongside the no-longer operating transit system) to the main terminal building – collect our baggage from the allotted carousel and make our own arrangements to stay the night somewhere.  As this was likely the last flight that was cancelled that day, the thousands of other disrupted passengers had already found accommodation and there were no hotel rooms to be had anywhere in the vicinity.

Our luggage did not appear on the carousel. The only BA staff in the terminal rapidly disappeared and there was no-one to assist us. Whilst I searched for our bags The Girl contacted the Club World Desk to enquire about flights the following day. She was told that they were fully booked and that there was nothing that could be done to help us.  I called the hotel at which we had been staying for the previous few nights and they took pity on us and found us a room.

My brother – extraordinarily kindly – went above and beyond in getting out of bed and driving over to the airport to rescue us and to take us to the hotel. We definitely owe him for that (and for many other things) – big time!

The day had been exhausting and scary… in that we had no idea what would happen next, or how we might save our trip of a lifetime from coming to a premature and expensive end. To find out how things turned out the gentle reader must needs check in to the final installment of this saga…

…next time!

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The universality of incompetence

June 26, 2023 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant…I have accepted the universality of incompetence.”

Laurence J. Peter
‘The Peter Principle’

Long term perusers of these gentle meanderings will no doubt be aware that – the occasional rant aside (usually concerning matters political) – I am not in the habit of ‘trash-talking’ anyone or anything that might – for whatever reason – have of late aroused my ire.

Should you utilise the search function built into this site to seek out occurrences of the term ‘incompetence’ – for example – you would find but a handful of posts, of which only two concern the performance of an organisation with which I was obliged to deal. Those two posts refer to a single incident back in 2014 when the UK’s national communications carrier – British Telecom – contrived to leave us without telephone or Internet access for six weeks over Christmas and the New Year.

Given our recent experiences in the travel line you will probably not be surprised that I am about to add another couple of posts (or more!) that will share the same tag. Regrettably this example also involves a corporation that lays claim to be a UK national carrier – though of a rather different commodity. I refer, of course, to British Airways.

Back in 2019 we were also out and about around the globe – paying our first visit to the UK since emigrating in 2015 and adding on at the end a rather lovely little cruising sojourn in the Greek islands as a means of relaxing and recuperating. We flew from London to Athens and back (somewhat against my better judgement) on British Airways – who proved to be all too competent at extracting from us the cash to cover the pre-booking of extra legroom seats – but all too incompetent in the manner in which they re-assigned those seats on the return journey to other people and bumped us to the window-less back row of the aircraft. Naturally they also subsequently omitted to reimburse us. I swore mightily that I would never again fly with BA – an oath which I sadly let slip upon discovering that they alone had the best price/availability for this year’s attempted safari trip to Africa.

Now, I apologise in advance for the length of this diatribe, but I am eager to reveal the exact extent of the amateurishness (with further apologies to real amateurs) of the service provided by pretty much all concerned in this wretched business.

Here is the first part (or pre-amble):

Having decided upon our long-dreamt-of trip to the African continent (specifically a safari excursion to Botswana and to Victoria Falls) back in December last, we duly booked flights with British Airways from Victoria to London (via Seattle) for 22nd May – and on to Johannesburg for 25th May. We made a further onward booking to Maun in Botswana with a regional airline. The return flights were booked for 6th June from Johannesburg to London and then back to Victoria (via Seattle) on 11th June. All BA flights were booked in Club Class except for the short hop from Victoria to Seattle and back.

The Girl and I each made our own bookings so that we could use our own credit cards and/or points, but were assured that the two bookings could be ‘tied’ together.

Over the ensuing five months until we traveled we spent a great deal of time and money purchasing specific clothing and gear for our safari as detailed in previous posts.  The excitement was building.

Over the months leading up to our departure BA made a number of changes to our bookings; altering the time of the Seattle/London flight; cancelling the return Seattle/Victoria flight (which necessitated us staying an extra night in Seattle at our expense); changing the aircraft type for the Seattle/London leg (and seating us in different parts of the aircraft in the process)… before finally – 24 hours before our departure – cancelling the following day’s Seattle to London flight and re-booking us on an American Airways flight in economy! After a long and feisty phone conversation with a BA agent (on the part of The Girl), we were re-routed on an Aer Lingus flight from Seattle to London via Dublin – in Club Class.

Our journey from Victoria to London was at least for the most part comfortable and pleasant (kudos to Aer Lingus), even if rather longer than originally planned.

You will be unsurprised to hear that none of our dealings with BA to this point inspired confidence. The experience was, however, nothing compared with that which was to follow…

…for talk of which the gentle reader must patiently await the next post.

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Reflector

February 27, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

A very dear friend here in Victoria gave me for Christmas a copy of Bob Woodward’s 2020 book on Donald Trump – ‘Rage‘. This friend is building an excellent reputation for giving me thoughtful and imaginative gifts – particularly in the form of books that should be read – and this is no exception.

Now – some readers might well demur.

“Trump is gone – thank heavens!” – they may say. “Why would you not just consign all thoughts thereof to the dustbin of history?“.

The reason for not so doing, of course, is that one must always be on guard and must without fail be able to recognise the enemy. That Trump was elected in the first place is scary enough. That he might be so again – or that someone in his image could so do – is an ongoing, clear and present threat.

At one point in the book Woodward recalls an English professor at his college who advised him that – to be an effective biographer – the writer must find true ‘reflectors‘ of his subject – ie: those who know the subject intimately and can provide perceptive character assessments. Woodward toys with the notion of casting Jared Kushner (Trump’s son in law) in the role, but decides that he is too much in thrall to the man himself.

What changes his mind is advice that Kushner gives to unspecified others on how to understand Trump. He points them in the direction of four texts:

  • A piece on Trump by Pulizter Prize-winning columnist from the Wall Street Journal – Peggy Noonan. Noonan writes:

“We are not talking about being colorfully, craftily unpredictable, as political masters like FDR and Reagan sometimes were, but something more unfortunate – an unhinged or not fully-hinged quality that feels like a screwball tragedy.”

Noonan continues: “Crazy doesn’t last. Crazy doesn’t go the distance. Crazy is an unstable element that, when let loose in a stable environment, explodes.”

  • Kushner’s second text is ‘Alice in Wonderland‘ – and specifically the Cheshire Cat! Kushner paraphrased the cat:

“If you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.”

  • The third text is Chris Whipple’s book – ‘The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency‘. In a section on Trump added in 2018 Whipple wrote that:

“Trump ‘clearly had no idea how to govern’ in his first year in office, yet was reluctant to follow the advice of his first two chiefs of staff – Reince Priebus and John Kelly“.

  • The final text is Scott Adam’s (the creator of the Dilbert comic strips) book – ‘Win bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter’. Adams argues that:

“Trump’s misstatements of fact are not regrettable errors or ethical lapses, but part of a technique called ‘intentional wrongness persuasion’… Trump ‘can invent any reality’ for most voters on most issues and ‘all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn’t apologise and his opponents called him a liar like they always do’.”

Kushner adds:

“Controversy elevates message… A controversy over the economy – and how good it is – only helps Trump because it reminds voters that the economy is good. A hair-splitting fact-checking debate in the media about whether the numbers were technically better decades ago or in the 1950s is irrelevant“.

Remember that these are texts that Kushner – a fervent acolyte of the then-president – volunteered by way of trying to help others to understand Trump. Woodward concludes:

“When combined, Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative. I could hardly believe that anyone would recommend these as ways to understand their father-in-law, much less the president they believed in and served“.

We would be wise – to quote Thomas Cranmer – to: “Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest…“

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Dis-united

November 11, 2020 in Life as we know it | Permalink

I most heartily wish not to be writing this post!

There are many other positive and interesting topics that I have scribbled on imaginary Post-It notes stuck to my fictional whiteboard… but I can’t concentrate on any of them at the moment because my head is full of anxiety and nervous tension concerning the happenings south of the border. When I look out of my window across the Haro Strait I can see the US of A – and right now that is making me cranky.

I am angry that enough US citizens voted for Trump that there is even the slightest scintilla of doubt that he has lost the election. That is their right and – however misguided I (and many, many others around the world) might believe them to be – I actually have no argument with them and what they have done.

That is not the case when it comes to the other guilty parties.

Let’s not beat about the bush. Trump is a bad person. He is also a particularly dangerous person and certainly not – in a million years – fit to govern what was only recently one of the world’s great super-powers. (Oh – the bitter irony of MAGA – when Trump and his wrecking crew are so ruthlessly dedicated to destroying everything that ever made it great – starting with democracy!). Trump is mendacious – he is a narcissist – he is a fantasist – he is immoral, amoral, totally unscrupulous and no-where near as bright as he thinks he is. Yes – he is also probably ill – at least mentally.

But it is not even he who makes me so angry – since I presume that he does not even have the mental faculty to properly grasp the inevitable outcomes of his actions.

No – the ones that have me worked up into such a righteous fury are the un-speakables in the Republican Party. Many of these people are educated and – notionally at least – intelligent. They know what they are doing. They also know that the election is lost and that we are entering uncharted waters. They should be acting in a responsible manner and doing their damnedest to protect American democracy.

They are not. They are taking a wild risk on the inevitable destruction opening up certain financial and political opportunities for those who are in the right place at the right time – much in the way that the loathsome tories are doing with Brexit in the UK. (Johnson watches anxiously across the pond at his role model, scared that events in the US will reveal – like the writing on the wall – his own eventual and gruesome fate).

Enough! I imagine that much of the rest of the world would join me in wishing most heartily that this were all over and that those responsible were banished – Napoleon-like – to some god-forsaken rock in the south Atlantic.

 

Next time – Rugby!

 

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Bizarre gardening accident

April 22, 2020 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Those of us of a certain age – and in particular those of us who played in bands ‘back in the day’ – will be familiar with Rob Reiner’s ‘mockumentary’ (the very first of its kind) – “This is Spinal Tap“. It was obligatory in the mid 80s for us to have seen the film (often many times) – to know it sufficiently well that we could quote chunks of it by heart – and to claim that it must somehow have been based on our own band’s experiences (usually completely missing the point that it was a satire… Yup – we took ourselves pretty seriously!).

Now – I must confess that, though I have certainly seen the whole film, I have a feeling that I have not ever done so in one sitting. I also have a feeling that I may not be alone in this. No matter!

Why am I bringing this up now?

Well – though the main characters in the spoof band were played by talented actor/musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer (who went on to voice a number of key characters in ‘The Simpsons’) – one of the jokes was that Spinal Tap had worked its way through an infeasible number of drummers – most of whom had died in unusual circumstances (two from spontaneous human combustion onstage and one from choking on “someone else’s vomit”). Yet another had died in a “bizarre gardening accident” which was supposedly described by the police afterwards as a mystery “best left unsolved.”

Yes – you’ve guessed it! I was on the InterWebNet looking up unusual gardening accidents. There are – of course – many ways to injure oneself whilst tending to one’s estate (pretentious? moi?) and most of them do not bear thinking about. Some – however – just hurt a lot and make one feel particularly stupid. Such was the minor incident in which I was involved the other day.

I was mowing the lawn – which I am obliged to do with sufficient frequency that I should by now have achieved ‘black-belt’ status in the noble art of grass cutting. I should certainly know well enough what I am about that the following should not have taken place.

I stopped the mower to empty the clipping bag. Having done so I set things up again and gave a vigorous tug on the starter cord. Unfortunately I had not noticed that I was positioned rather too close to the corner of our garden tool-shed (Canadian: shop) and as I jerked my arm back the point of my elbow impacted with the corner of the building.

“Ouch!” (That is – of course – not the word that I used at the time…)

What a numpty!

 

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Home is the sailor…

June 15, 2019 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

”…home from the sea”

A. E. Housman (rather than the Robert Louis Stevenson original)

Well – we are back!

We had a wonderful trip (concerning which much more will be written) and took many photographs (of which many such will be posted). All went like clockwork until we came to the final two days, when our return travel plans went slightly awry.

I have – since a particularly uncomfortable long-haul flight some twenty years ago – always tried to avoid flying with what was once tagged ‘Britain’s Favourite Airline’. We chose them for our return journey from the UK to Greece, however, because the price and timings were reasonable and because we could follow our regular practice of paying for the extra-legroom exit-row seats.

A couple of days before the outbound departure I received an email advising me of a seat change, though I was not able to detect any difference. Puzzled I called BA Customer Service. They were likewise confused, but hazarded that the aircraft type or configuration might have changed. Whilst on the phone I got them to confirm that our return flights would feature the very same seats as we had chosen for the outward flight.

This first leg went reasonably smoothly. On the return (having received no further emails from BA) we checked in without paying too much attention and it was only when we got to the gate that I realised that we had been bumped from the seats for which we had paid to the back of the aircraft. There followed a heated but fruitless exchange at the desk during which we were informed that the aircraft must have been changed and that nothing could be done.

Investigation during the flight revealed that the aircraft was if fact identical to that on which we had flown the outbound leg, that the seats from which we had been removed still existed (with the very same seat numbers) and that someone else was sitting in them. Though we had payed extra for these seats we had been moved to the very back of the plane, lost our chosen aisle seat and were in a row with no window. In short, for the additional fee, we were now in the worst seats on the plane.

A visit to the Customer Service desk after landing garnered sympathy and the information that we could get a refund – but only by writing to BA to claim it. In this age of modern technology it must have been quite possible for the airline to automatically generate a refund at the point at which the seats for which we had paid were reassigned.

We naturally won’t be flying with BA again!

The next day we had as good a flight back to Vancouver with Air Canada as is possible on any journey of nine and a half hours. The Boeing 787 was spacious and we had masses of extra room in our exit-row seats. On landing in Vancouver we did what we have always done (and which is still necessary for all other airlines) – we waited at the baggage carousel to pick up our checked luggage prior to re-checking it for the internal flight.

We waited some more… Nothing appeared.

I visited both of the Information Desks in the baggage hall. Neither was manned!

Finally The Girl found a knowledgeable operative. We discovered that – for Air Canada only – baggage is now passed directly through to the connecting flight. The procedure was apparently changed two years ago but – since we have not done this trek since moving to Canada – we were unaware of the fact and had not been told. With time to make our connection now short we sprinted down what felt like several miles of corridor and stairway.

Unfortunately, even though one has come directly from another flight (for which one has already been security-checked) YVR insists on re-checking… and the operation is a complete gong-show! Very nearly half of all bags – including two of ours – were hauled out for special attention, carried out with excruciating slowness one at a time. We had purchased a bottle of spirits on the Vancouver flight which had been sealed in a special bag to ease onward transit. Regardless of this precaution the officer carefully unsealed the package, checked the pristine contents and then carefully and slowly resealed the bag (why?!).

The end result was that we arrived at the gate in time to see our plane accelerating away in the direction of the taxi-way. We were forced to join the standby list for the following flight.

Enquiring as to what had happened to our checked luggage we were told be no less than three officials that – as we were not on the plane that had just left – our cases would not have been on it either. Given the couple of days we had just endured we were not in the least surprised to find, on arrival in Victoria, that our luggage was already there waiting for us. No-one involved in either of these sorry affairs exactly covered themselves with glory.

What conclusion are we to draw from these mishaps?

It was clearly time to come home!

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