After 3 months of being away from home, I came back last Wednesday. I knew it was gonna be a long journey but I didn’t expect it to take 38 hours to reach Leidschendam!
In Sri Lanka everything went very smooth. Because I had to leave very early morning, 5 o’clock, there was almost no traffic on the road. Usually it takes 3 hours to get to Colombo airport from the place I stayed but we managed to be there in only 75 minutes. At the check in desk I asked if my luggage was going to Amsterdam because I saw that Abu Dhabi was missing on the bag tag/label. The lady who helped me confirmed it. I only had to check in again in Muscat where I had a 12 hour layover.
I decided to stay at the airport of Muscat so I got a transfer slip that made it possible to spend time there. I bought a book to entertain myself and had a lovely lunch and dinner. My flight would leave at 23:50. The guy that gave me the transfer slip told me to check in around 9 o’clock at a certain gate. During the evening the gate of my flight kept changing. So at 9 I decided to double check at the flight information desk. They told me I could just check in at the moment of boarding…like what?! I already had this strange feeling because the day before I left I received an email that something in my flight schedule changed, but nothing actually really changed…(I read that email right before I left Colombo).
I had booked an Oman Air flight to Amsterdam via Abu Dhabi, but it would be operated by KLM. And that’s probably where it went wrong…When I was at the gate around 11 o’clock to check in they couldn’t find me in their system! My flight number was of Oman Air and it had to be a KLM one. They told me I couldn’t get on this flight, just like it was nothing. I was so…I can’t describe but I think you can imagine. Waiting all these hours and then the minute you want to board you are told you can’t.
Nobody was really able to explain what happened and why…but I simple wasn’t allowed on this flight to Amsterdam. All these questions arose…Now what? How long is it gonna take until they find out what went wrong? How are they going to help me? Do I need accommodation? Do I have to pay for that? Do I have to make extra costs? Later on they found out that my luggage wasn’t checked in either…
I don’t know if Oman Air or the KLM staff booked a new flight for me but I was finally able to leave Muscat at 04:50. So that were another 5 hours of waiting. Luckily I wasn’t the only one who had missed the flight. A couple experienced the same problem. We talked to kill time in one of the lounges at the airport. They dropped us there and in the meantime they were busy getting us on a flight. There was a lot of food and drinks for free! I appreciated that because this whole happening had made me hangry.
I had to transfer in Dubai. Both flights were with Emirates. The first flight took only 45 minutes. In the past 17 hours I could have driven from Muscat to Dubai! The second flight took 7 hours. I didn’t mind that because I was flying with the A380. I enjoyed myself with the entertainment system…
At 13:15 I arrived in Amsterdam! But I still wasn’t home and I really hoped that my luggage would be in Amsterdam as well! I was so happy to see my bag on the luggage belt. So now it was time to catch a train and a bus. After 38 hours I finally rang the door bell…I was home.