Day 14 – The delay day –
good and bad
A 10:40am intenational
flight put us at the airport at about a eight. We got out of our
cab, hauled our bags in and found the airport mostly deserted.
Nobody at the Air China desk, and the information booth not yet open.
OK, our 2 ½ hour early arrival was perhaps a bit
conservative... We plunked down with our bags and went looking for
the monitors. We had checked online the night before, and confirmed
our ontime departure. On our double take we noticed that the
alternating Cyrillc/Roman announcement was alternating 22:40/10:40pm.
Not a typo. Shit.
We had to wait another
hour before the Air China staff showed up. A nice long queue, but
they did change our Thai Air flight to Bangkok. We would miss our
flight to Laos, but that was an online e-ticket, so we were on our
own for fixing that.
The staff in UB was pretty
efficient. Apparently this happens all the time (as in approaching
80% of the time either huge delays or wholesale cancellations). To
their credit they checked in the entire flght to a hotel for the 12
hours, with a bus back and forth and lunch and dinner provided.
At the hotel we caught up
on sleep and uploading photos, and made some new friends. There was
a really friendly engineer for Thompson, working in Beijing in prep
for the Olympics. He had come up to UB to help bid on upgrading
their TV networks and to help a buddy pitch a charity project whereby
rural Mongolian children would be provided with a sort of
watered-down laptop for remote learning. Class materials would then
be broadcast across the country directly to the electronic textbooks.
We also met a a nice Israeli couple. The five of us had a grand
time chatting over meals and learning from each other's travels. We
were still sitting in the cafeteria an hour after finishing our
meals, long past when everyone else had retired to their rooms. I
think Susan regained a little faith in the friendliness of people.
We had a minor
misadventure when the hotel tried to charge us something like US$40
for a ten minute phonecall when we had to change our Air Laos ticket
(Air Laos, incidentally was very cool and did it all for free). We
had asked for instructions on how to use the lobby payphone, but the
desk staff said “Oh, just use our phone here at the desk.” Haha,
not mentioning that they would charge like US$4 a minute. Fuckers.
Hours later as I'm sitting in the lobby using the wireless they
present me with the bill. As politely as I can, I tell them where
they can put it. OK, actually, I told them they could present it to
Air China.
After a tense 30 minutes,
with the hotel staff threatening to call the police if I would not
pay, and me insisting that they call Air China we settled on a
compromise where Air China would pay half, and I would not have to
test their bluff and potentially deal with the local authorities in a
foreign language over a $20 extortion. I'm pissed that Air China
isn't covering this – they so clearly have a cozy relationship with
the hotel. But I shelled out. Apparently, my tolerance for
extortion is somewhere over $20 and below $40. I wonder where it
will be after Africa.
In anycase, we did get on
the bus, on the plane and out of Mongolia. Sadly, this did not mean
we had had the last of our China problems.
So whatever - our Air
China flight from Ulaanbataar to Beijing was delayed 12 hours. The
airline claimed a dubious “weather” delay, but this segment is
apparently delayed frequently by Air China because there is virtually
no competition. We would miss our Thai Airlines, but after waiting
at the UB airport for the Air China staff to arrive, they assisted in
changing the connecting flights for all the travellers, ourselves
included.
But that meant we got in
to Beijing a little after 2 am, the day after we were supposed to.
Our new connection is 8:30 am; sadly this cost us a full day, as we
also miss our Lao Airlines connection to Luang Probang (of phone call
infamy). When we got to Beijing there was no staff except the
immigration folks, so we got our bags and found a bench to sleep a
few hours.
When check-in for our Thai
flight opened, we learned that we would be charged a $35 “change
fee”. Thai Airlines sent us to the Air China desk, who absolutely
refused to pay the fee, and a nice game of finger pointing left us
with a credit card charge for $70 (two tickets) and a stamped piece
of paper certifying our flight was delayed (not that anyone cared).
All this from two Star Alliance “partners”.
It would seem that Air
China is so notoriously late, that even their alleged “partners”
will no longer waive change fees resulting from their dubious
“weather delays”.
We even spoke to the “Duty
Manager” in Beijing Airport. This is the largest airport in the
world, but the person who asserts they are in charge of the state air
carrier in the airport of the capital city of China can't get a $35
charge waived or refunded.
With the ensuing crowds
and chaos of the forthcoming Olympics the situation can only get
worse. China's transportation infrastructure is at the breaking
point already, (the government here plans to compel half of the cars
to stay off the road during the Olympic period). One can only
imagine what kinds of delays and frustrations the hundreds of
thousands of international travellers will face during this period,
but there is one thing I can predict with certainty – the
challenges at the world's largest airport will be exacerbated by some
of the world's worst customer service.
