One World, Many Bags Lost - Should be the new British Airways tagline, as far as I’m concerned.
Every year, 10% of bags on average get lost or delayed by the airlines. BA seemed to have a good track record with dealing with lost bags, but this time was different:
I was one of the thousands of passengers who was caught up in the fog drama.
Fog drama? Oh yeah, that happens in Britain every year, and lost bags are nothing new. But, with new security measures it’s another world altogether.
It seems that the ‘one world’ airline seems keen to leave its passengers with ‘one change’ of clothing - and on a ski trip too.
I organised a 6.00 AM flight in order to get to the slopes of Gstaad at 9.00 AM, to fit in a day’s skiing. Unexpectedly, I ran into some friends who were on the same flight but headed to a different ski resort. We checked in together. The check-in desk was in chaos due to planes not taking off (insufficiently sophisticated technology battling the fog).
The man behind the desk was over-worked and exhausted, and mislabelled my bags for my friend’s bags. Luckily, I caught his mistake but was told it would take an hour to re-label the bags, so I would miss the flight (and the connecting mountain bus in Geneva). But, there was space on the next one arriving 4 hours later that would “definitely” have my bags on it.
Alas, in Geneva I was not reunited with my bags. The Swiss told me that my bags were scheduled to be on the next flight over and would be delivered to my address in the mountains that night.
“Thank god,” I thought. That night, I had a black-tie dinner in Gstaad. Gstaad is one of the most elegant ski resorts in the world and the competition to out-glam everyone is fierce.
After all, this is one of the world’s most glamorous places to spend your New Year’s. Listed as one of the worlds most expensive ski resorts, it’s full of dethroned royals, ex-rosey students, billionaire gangsters and the mega rich.
Never in one small town have I seen as many five-star hotels to choose from. I must point out that only one of them was full of stars, however. The Palace Hotel, where competition is takes on a whole new meaning - malice in the palace was in the cards. Read More
