Unfasten your seat belts

Arrived safely

An update to the events of yesterday, regarding my flight to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The control tower did not suffer complete radio silence; we arrived at our destination just about 4 hours 10 minutes behind schedule.

When I wrote the piece yesterday, my flight was delayed for a total of 2 hours 20 minutes, we finally boarded the alternate flight just after 3 hours of waiting and it was interesting to see one of those Dutch attitudes at play.

Seats for bags

I have written before that people have a tendency to occupy an extra seat for their bags on the bus, trams, trains and metro – well, since we had open seating on the plane, as I got on the plane, there were seats all up to halfway down the flight which were occupied by bags.

This is reminiscent of the generalised view that Germans pre-reserve beach seats and sun loungers with their towels in the witching hour (Someone burnt the towels) – my hotel has a big notice advising people to desist from that poor social attitude.

Indeed, there is some administrative encumbrance with pre-allocating seats but that means seating is efficient and people are forced to use the overhead bins or the space on the floor in front of them under then the seat.

Now, other advantages meant people could seat together with their large companies, it also meant, I was far from squealing children, especially, the ones that are completely implacable.

Safety instruction – unfasten seat beats

My fear however was about the flight being crewed by people unfamiliar with the layout of the plane considering I had recently watched the sinking of ship that lead to the major loss of life because the ship was crewed by people unfamiliar with the layout of the boat.

As we settled down, the captain welcomed us on board though without an apology from TUI, rather, he said they were stepping in for AkeFly, however, we had another 30 minutes to wait because the plane needed to be refuelled.

When the fuel truck arrived we were told more than twice to take off our seatbelts, I suppose that would be as a precaution if the highly volatile fuel were to spill, cause noxious fumes or catch fire.

In read now that in 2000 there was such an incident about fuel estimation/starvation and short landings - Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378.

For the third possibility, I could not imagine how that tightly packed plane would have been evacuated – in fact, in the 80s there was a fire at the Johnson Wax aerosol factory in Lagos where my uncle worked and one of the things people said was people were getting seriously burnt but no one could see the flames – thankfully, my uncle was far away from the event though for a while there was someone else who shared his surname who had been caught in the inferno and eventually needed treatment in the States – we were beside ourselves for a while.

I cannot remember seeing the safety choreography and that is probably because the crew of HapagFly were German, but then English should have sufficed.

In fact, none of the safety instructions would have helped save passengers – seat belts, air masks, life jackets, brace position or getting to the emergency exits – we were put at very serious risk, though thankfully nothing untoward happened.

Better than ArkeFly

We took off and we were served hot meals, probably a stable for HapaqFly denied the Dutch on ArkeFly; same company but different services for different countries.

When flight TFL 119 which replaced OC 109 finally landed, there was sporadic applause for work well done and now an apology for the delay – my travel agent says I should still get a basic refund for not travelling Comfort Class, but I do not think charter flights are covered by the EU Passenger Rights charter that would have had some major compensation for delaying the flight for more than 2 hours.

Having learnt from the coach transfer experience that had us delivered last to our hotel, my taxi transfer was smooth and the only bit of detail not satisfied was I asked for a room as high as possible in a 7-floor hotel and ended up on the 3^rd floor.

Today, I am not one shawl short of an Eskimo warding off the cold, but one g-string short of a beach bum – it is about to rain, but we have had temperatures in the 20s of Celsius already.

Rain tales of egrets

Talking of rain, when it did rain yesterday the sun was also shining – it reminded me of what we were told as kids – the rain and sun at the same time indicates a midwifery duty of nature as the lioness is having cubs. Ekùn ń bímo (Yoruba – The lion is having babies).

Another such tale was when we saw cattle egrets flying past we waved our back hands and sang out that believing we would get a white pigment stain on our finger nails (If only we knew that was a sign of some serious medical condition) – the egret in Yoruba legend is known for being white and clean no matter how dirty it gets. Lékeléke gbà mí léèke (Yoruba – Egrets please give me a mark).

Ah! The sun shines again – should I use factor-10 with UVA/UVB protection?

ArkeFly TUI Holland International group of cowboys

Extending a root canal

I think it is now a given that my travelling is always an event and almost always irksome. As if I did not promise myself that I would not travel ArkeFly anymore because their Comfort Class was just as much comfort as being cooped up in Economy apart from the fact that one had to buy ones refreshments.

Well, it so happened that my holiday destination only had offerings from ArkeFly (NL) which is part of the TUI AG group that has Thomson Travel (UK) and Holland International as part of its stable of travel companies.

At first, I needed to extend my holiday; one would think it was just a open web site, type in reference number, get prompted with choices to cancel, modify, check-in etc, then if any other payments need to be made, that all gets updated.

Not really, the travel agents lamented the fact that the Holland International staff are usually very helpful but they are seriously let down by the rotten inflexible system they have to work with.

Suffice it to say that a holiday extension is best done by cancelling the existing booking and setting up a new one with the extension included, you can then pay the difference.

After a 10-minute wait and some 30 more minutes of stop-and-start conversation, it got done.

My ride to the airport arrived just in time at 3:30AM – I am still beside myself as to how I ended up booking a flight as early as 6:20AM – when I got to the airport I collected my updated ticket and went to check-in.

Arke-Flying Carpet

One look at the departures screen revealed I was going to have an exciting day – my flight was already delayed 1 hour 40 minutes, by the time I posted a letter in the postbox, another 40 minutes had been added to that delay.

As I checked in at the Comfort Class desk, I was trying to get an upgrade when I was told the flight we were to board was still in Las Palmas due to technical problems and ArkeFly was hiring another plane from a German company to take us there.

Trepidation! Foreign crew, strange pilots – just the mindset you need for a long holiday. I have been watching too much National Geographic television.

The greater humiliation was to come – there would be no classes on this plane but cattle class and then the seating was open. I had to run that past the check-in clerk again – “You mean we are going to get on that plane like we are getting on a bus?”

She nodded in the affirmative, this is definitely not how I intended to start my holiday and I am being placated with a Food & Beverage Voucher for Menzies Aviation to the mighty cost of EUR 4.95 for a continental breakfast, which seems to cost less than a snack.

There are some rights I think I am entitled to somewhere, unfortunately, people would not be too forceful about this because, we all want to go on holiday and the last thing we want is some rotten company which happens to be the one of the largest travel companies in the world messing up our holiday with cack-handed incompetence.

I’ll rather pay for a coffee than go around presenting a food stamp for a mendicant’s sop.

Akin is away

Working like a dog

Gosh! I have been working like a dog, all hours of the day and especially the witching hours to get things done before I go off on holiday.

A holiday that has been postponed for 6 weeks because my dear partner would not imitate me in one specific respect, one does not run for the train, else in this case, a trip and crack – leg in plaster for 4 weeks – thankfully, at a time the planning was still tentative.

I threatened to book a trekking holiday to see the spectacle of a hobbling tourist but relented.

At the same time, I had postponed the commencement of my thesis to allow for my holiday only to now find myself looking for an internet café in Playa del Ingles to do submissions, my recommencement having started on Tuesday.

So, my last working day came and I was still in the office at 8:30PM, took a cab home only to find that my partner had packed the whole Summer collection, like I was about to chaperone Donatella Versace in a remake of the Airport (TV series) 63 suitcases bar one at Heathrow Airport – lighten that load – we dumped 6Kg of stuff to stay in limit.

Comfort ye by payments

OK! We were traveling Comfort Class, whatever that means – extra 5Kg baggage, 8cm leg room, then, I found I was traveling a souped-up EasyJet service, we were paying for cabin service on a flight that would last 4:30 hours and the joys of noisy babies to help one relax and sleep off the whole flight. Arkefly they call themselves – never again after this holiday – but I suppose package holidays with charter flights do have their surprises.

Then, we were picked up at the airport and we had a tour of all 4/5-star hotels and apartments in Playa del Ingles before we arrived at our hotel last and just ready for dinner.

I decided on half-board accommodation with all the trimmings, the thought of looking for restaurant for 17 nights did not appeal to me and the Riu Palace Hotels brand does dish out luxurious cuisine in themed restaurants apart from the fact that company has the stomach of a child, it whines for food to my utter distraction.

We took our seats at the restaurant and checked-in afterwards, I was a bit disappointed because I thought I had an apartment-type room, but it was OK, not very large but well decorated and a balcony to boot.

Beside the seaside

I did not request a sea-side view because I felt I would get a Fawlty Towers room with the quip, the sea is just over the dunes, so I thought our orientation was towards the town though I could not see a prominent feature at that time of the night.

Later on, I found that the hotel was patently for holiday-makers, poor Internet service, no newspapers delivered to the door, I really should learn to take a holiday properly, imagine, I travelled with my laptop, well, because, I do need to make some critical submissions for my thesis.

Anyway, I woke up in the morning and looked out on the balcony, I saw the sea, yes, I saw the sea and my holiday had just begun.

Strangely, no one reads newspapers at the breakfast table, I need to, “chill-out” as they say in street parlance, I should stop counting the days left and do what I came to do – I have worked really hard, I should play doubly hard.

Ole!