British Airways – Baggage Atrocities

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.

The stars who congregate there are of a different sort than those of the typical Hollywood scene. That was last year, when Paris Hilton showed up with her bodyguards and her ex-boyfriend Paris Latis. However, Roman Polanski, film star (or film director, as the case may be), was still on hand.

There were hopeful singles looking for love in town: Claudia Schiffer’s ex, David Copperfield, and the aforementioned Paris Latis, what a pair! Newly single and extremely witty and beautiful Pia Getty was also present, every man fighting for her attention.

I was, meanwhile, unprepared for all that glamour. By 8.00 PM I gave up on hoping my bags would arrive. A friend kindly suggested I borrow a dress for the night. She was a size 6 and I’m a size 12, no luck there, the dress wouldn’t even slip over my knees! In the end I had to miss the dinner, but told my host I would join everyone afterwards. But in what? Everyone else would be decked out in diamonds, fur, sexy mini-skirts and designer clothing. Gabanna and Galliano are the uniform in Gstaad and all I had was my garbage t-shirt and jeans. I had no make-up, no hairbrush, I was like Cinderella with no fairy godmother to help me meet the prince, barefoot and naked – and the clock hadn’t even struck midnight.

I lounged around the chalet all by myself (while the smell of the other girls’ perfume and hairspray lingered in the air, not to the mention the lipsticks, hairbrushes, and hairdryers scattered all over the bathroom). I had no car and the fridge was empty. Of course, Gstaad is the only ski resort without a pizza delivery service (but you can pay a taxi to deliver it to you, which is, surprise! – very expensive). In the end, I ate a bit of tomorrow’s breakfast for dinner and read my book – Trust Nobody, a memoir of the life of Doris Duke.

The book certainly reminded me not to trust the airlines. Though in Gstaad there are plenty of Doris Duke-types around, so at least I got some insight into some of the kinds of people I would have met at dinner – at least I had a friend to spend time with, if only on the page.

Of course, the next day I was also blind (my replacement lenses were in my bags). My ears were still working for the time being, but that was no help, as BA never picked up the phone. There was just an automated voice, saying that ‘due to the weather, our baggage service line is closed’ (Do they imagine that their baggage service line is more useful in the summer? Of course they do, the victims are less angry – lost bags? Going to the beach? Just buy a bikini!… It’s an entirely different matter when a whole skiing outfit has gone missing!).

Finally, I got somebody to talk to me (on the Swiss end of things, of course). I was told that there were over 5,000 bags missing through BA and with the new security measures, the ones found would be arriving in a few days. Of course, they were unable to say just how many days exactly.

So for skiing, I had to wear gardening gloves, flimsy glasses, and jeans – all OK you ski fast enough so nobody can actually see you. Going out in the evening was not remotely humorous, however.

Miss Church Mouse here had to shop in the co-up for evening wear! Swiss Miss will never get you a kiss. And so much for jet-set skiing. Snow-shoeing in Jura next year will maybe make for a different skiing holiday.