Take Another Plane

A Journey through Hell.

I arrived in Rochdale at 06:30 yesterday to spend Christmas and New Year with Nanda, Jaime and Kezia. Hence the two digital paintings in the two posts below done by Kezia and Jaime this morning on the Elonex One t netbook they received in September.

My local travel agency, Mistral Voyages , always book me on the last flight from Lisbon to London assuming that the Sao Tome to Lisbon flight will arrive in Lisbon too late to make an earlier connection to Heathrow. Previous trips TAP, the Portuguese national airline, has managed to not transfer my baggage from one flight in Lisbon to another four hours later to Heathrow - but AirItalia which was the contracted baggage-handler at Heathrow always managed to get my suitcase to me the next day.

A few new twists on this trip ...

I arrived in Lisbon in good time, went through immigration to have a smoke, a beer, a sandwich etc. Finally, my flight came up on the Departure Board "delayed". So I went to enquire and was informed it was in fact cancelled but I had been put on a later unscheduled flight. However, I would have to queue for a new boarding pass. A long queue as most passengers were not transiting but checking in baggage.

So the later flight was also late in departing.

We arrived at Heathrow at at 11:30 pm. My overnight coach to Manchester was at midnight. No time to sit by the baggage carousel for a suitcase that might not be there. So I went straight ttto Baggage Claims, explained and filled in the form.

So Saturday I rang the new baggage service Global Baggage Services and they tell me that yes they have found the bag, but their courier servive TNT doesn't deliver to a destination further than 50 miles from Heathrow on the weekend so I won't get the suitcase until Tuesday!