Wednesday 21 November 2012

THOMAS COCK IT

So, I'm home.

We left the hotel in Antalya at mid-day UK time for our 4-hour flight back to UK.  It was a half hour walk to the bus (no vehicles in old Antalya where we were staying) and another half hour drive to the airport.

At the airport, there was a one and a half hour queue at the Thomas Cook check-in desk.  I have no explanation for this.  There were six check-in positions and maybe 50 passengers queuing at each.  I was therefore 50th in my queue.  When I reached the check-in, I put my bag on the conveyor belt, the girl scanned my passport, typed my ticket details into the computer, printed the baggage slip and attached it to the bag, said 'have a nice trip' and gave me back my passport.  It took less than 30 seconds.  So why did it take 1 1/2 hours for the 50 ahead of me instead of 25 minutes?  We'll probably never know.

After passport control, it was thus almost time to board the plane.  Just half an hour for a coffee and a doughnut and then we queued to board.  At 15.20 UK time, the plane taxied onto the run-way.  But then began a series of weird technical faults.  Three hours later, including a period of refuelling during a violent electrical storm (which the airport personnel probably disliked more than the already nervous passengers), several engineers' visits and several 30 second intervals of blackness, which I can only assume were 'switch off, count to 20 and switch on again to try to reset' moments, we took off.

At Gatwick we apparently had a tricky interlude when the airport decided it was time to close, but we slipped in somehow, only to find that the baggage staff were probably preparing to go home.  So another hour later, baggage began to arrive.

At Gatwick train station, baggage duly in hand, I discovered that my trains had finished for the night.  I could have taken a taxi home, but I don't know when I would have reached the front of that particular queue, so I took the first train to a nearby station and took a taxi from there.  After negotiating a fare (can you believe that, because we were now in 'unsocial hours', it would normally cost £110 to get home; I think that is more than the original airfare!), I arrived home at 01.30 this morning.

So Thomas Cook managed to make the 4 hour flight last 13 1/2 hours from door to door.  Even cutting out the hour between airport and residence at each end, for which they have no real responsibility, that's nearly half a day traveling.  Between 2 European destinations.  Interestingly, at Gatwick there was a sign mentioning that Thomas Cook manage to get 47% of passengers' bags from the plane to the baggage collection area within 20 minutes.  I'm not sure that's much to crow about either; as far as I know, Ryanair manage 71%.

4 comments:

  1. I did not even know that Thomas Cook still existed.

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  2. the joys of traveling.... always be prepared..... still sounds like quite the ordeal.... there are times that people wonder why I drive the 14 hours to get where I want to go.... well, it's going to take about that amount of time to drive to airport/ wait/ fly [with a stop somewhere in the middle no doubt] collect luggage, collect rental car, etc.... and get where I am going.... so I rather enjoy the trip and have my own car to come and go....
    Of course I realize that doesn't work in this situation.... and when I fly to Turkey to visit my son, I count each way as 24 hours of travel.... hope you get some good catch up sleep!

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  3. Oh boy, what a pain!! I've never really experienced this kind of poor service. The only time I had an unexpectedly epic journey was when I was stuck on the US side of the Atlantic when the Icelandic volcano erupted in 2010,and had to take a rather long-winded route home that included a brief visit to Germany, but that was beyond the control of the airlines completely.

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