22nd – 23rd – Panic! at the airport

My flight to Geneva was with a 45 minutes’ layover in Frankfurt. 45 minutes isn’t much in a large airport as Frankfurt but enough accordingly to Lufthansa (especially when you don’t need to change terminals) so I wasn’t too worried.

Until my flight from Copenhagen was 25 minutes delayed, that is.

The flight went fine but I was getting worried that with the delay I might not make my connection. When landing in Frankfurt just a couple of minutes before the planned departure of my connecting flight I had been told that we should just hurry as it was also a bit delayed (all flights around southern Europe had apparently been delayed due to the weather). On touch down we taxied a bit and then stopped. And stayed. Due to an electrical storm all ground personnel were kept indoors which meant that unless you were already taxiing to takeoff you couldn’t do anything at all.

So we waited.

And waited.

An hour later we were finally allowed to continue and when arriving at the terminal I rushed to the next flight hoping to catch my next flight (running from A38 to A6 is longer than one would think!). It turned out to not to be a problem anyway; an hour after arrival at the gate they finally started boarding.

When all had boarded we were informed that due to the many flights being grounded now everyone wanted to take off so there would be a bit of a queue. No problems. A few minutes later we were informed the tower had all waiting flights registered as cancelled which they were trying to sort out as the flight previously had received permission to depart despite the delay.

An hour later, at midnight, we were told that all the evening’s flights had been cancelled. As there were 30-50 flights trying to deplane at once it took a while before there was a bus to take us back to the terminal. There, at 0130, we also had to realize that all service staff had gone home from work at this time. Back at the terminal I successfully managed to change my ticket to a departure early afternoon.

Which gave me 11-ish hours to kill.

With no staff around people were hanging out wherever possible to be comfortable – it was far from all who were able to use the self-service machines to change their tickets so several set up camp at and around the booths. Now and then staff came driving by on carts handing out water bottles to everyone they passed by. That was actually really nice.

Luckily there was wifi.

I managed to get half an hour’s sleep on the floor while charging my phone, but as soon they open up security to allow access to Terminal A I was off to get a change in scenery. I was able to buy access to a lounge – if I had an economy premium or higher ticket. Which I didn’t. So that plan was quickly shot down.

I spent my time in a mix of wandering around, using the wifi, getting half an hour’s sleep across 3 seats and a couple of meals until I was finally able to board at 1245. I arrived in Geneva and was picked up at 1515 and two hours later I finally arrived at the hotel in Chamonix.

Luckily I had planned for a day by myself in Chamonix before the trip’s departure so the only thing I missed out on of the tour was the first 15 minutes of the introductory meeting.

We are 8 people in the group, so fairly small.

It was pouring down in Geneva and most of the drive to Chamonix and here it was slightly raining. When returning from the dinner around 2030 things had lightened up, though. Everything is indicating much less table weather than the last time I was here.