Frequent Flyer

First day back after a whirlwind 10 days in New York. Normally I'd associate a whirlwind trip as being a long weekend, but in a city of that size we went full speed 10 days and felt like we only scratched the surface. Lots to talk about, but we'll start at the end and work backwards for now.

Overall we had a great time and everything went pretty much as planned. So well in fact that something had to fall over eventually. And so it was for us. On our last day we booked a taxi to the airport in good time in order to get through through check-in process. Thanks to good forward planning a few months prior, we had booked great seats on the plane to ensure a comfortable trip back home again. Great planning. However, arriving at our part of the terminal complex at Newark airport we were greeted by an unexpected mass of people. Something was up, but no one was saying anything. After 3 hours (you heard right) of standing in a non-moving queue, we learnt that our flight from New York to Stockholm had been cancelled. Apparently there had been something wrong with the plane and it had never left Sweden the day before.

Big black mark for SAS. I'm usually a big supporter of SAS, but when you do wrong you do wrong. When there isn't going to be a plane, tell the passengers. Don't let them all come out to the airport, make them wait several hours and then tell them that you knew all along that there never was going to be a plane. Bad form. For those people who arrived at the airport, like us, use the bloody television screens above the desks to tell us. Let there be no mistake about this, they weren't waiting and hoping for an alternative. There never was any plane, and they knew that 24 hours earlier. SAS, I don't care if you use contractors on the desk in New York. That's no excuse. The moment they step up behind the counters, they are acting as SAS agents. Big customer service miss, SAS.

So anyway, once we get to the desk itself, several hours later, we get offered an alternative which will ultimately get us home to Luleå. A round about trip which would take us through London and involve spending an extra night in the US. SAS would pay for the expenses, so in theory we wouldn't be out of pocket. Apart from losing an extra day's holiday. We were given a room at the airport hotel, a very nice Marriott hotel at Newark Airport. Our new flight departure time would be 10pm the following evening. Which begged the question of what would we do for the next 30 hours. For anyone who has been to Newark airport, there is nothing there. It's an airport, a hotel, and that's that. Had we known in advance, we would have stayed an extra night in our Manhattan hotel. Once again SAS, customer service. We could have taken public or private transport from Newark back to Manhattan just to fill in the hours, but that would have been at our cost, and of course we would have the hassle of coming back again. We did some sweet talking to the staff at the Marriott, who were great people, and managed to squueeze a couple of hours extension to our checkout time, meaning that we'd only have to sit in the airport building for 8 hours the next day, instead of 10.

We got a very nice room and relaxed for a couple of hours before heading down to the hotel restaurant for our SAS pre-paid evening meal. SAS had booked both dinner and breakfast for us. Which sounded nice, and was the right thing for them to do anyway. Meals at the Marriott are not especially cheap, so it was great not having to foot the bill. Or so we thought. SAS covered the cost of the meal, but not the tip. For those who have experienced the ridiculous and farcical American financial circus, you will know the disgusting way that hospitality staff are treated in the country. More to come on that topic later, but basically the staff earn their money from tips. While it's not officially compulsary, a standard 20% tip is expected on pretty much any kind of service related activity. A decent wage from an employer is apparently not the way of the Free Market. But back to the dinner and us ending up paying the tip, for a SAS dinner. Ok, we got a meal, but we had already paid for a meal on the flight we should have been travelling on. Exactly the same deal when it came time for breakfast. Our supposed fully paid package from SAS ended up costing us the best part of 400kr. Not a fortune, but not a cost we had budgeted for at the end of our holiday, nor should have been hit with. We could have been right pricks and not paid a tip, we have that right. But that's not something a normal decent person does. It's not the serving staff's fault that their country is a financial mess and that the Swedish airline can't think beyond the end of their collective noses.

The next day we made our way back to Newark Airport. Newark Aiport had 3 different terminal buildings, A, B, and C. Different arlines operate out of different buildings. SAS uses building B. Due to there being no SAS plane for us to travel on, SAS had rebooked us onto a United Airlines flight to London. United Airlines flies out of Terminal building C. No worries. We took the free Mariott hotel taxi to terminal C, checked in our luggage, and went through security control. As with most international airport, the shops and restaurants lie on the secure side of the airport, after security control. We weren't flying out until 10pm that evening, so we were going to be a bit hungry by then. Fortunately SAS had given us meal vouchers the day before, to be redeemed at the airport restaurants and bars. So that problem was solved. Or was it ?

As luck would have it, rather than having one big meal, we decided to have a couple of small snacks instead. Merely to fill in the long waiting hours. It turned out to be kind of lucky, if you can call it that, as the restaurant declined to accept our vouchers when we came to pay. The vouchers were issued by SAS, who operate out of Terminal B. We were in Terminal C, where our new flight, booked by SAS, would be departing from. SAS issued meals vouchers were only valid in Terminal B and could not be used in Terminal C. Nothing on the vouchers themselves said anything about there being a required teminal building, not a word. Not that it would have helped us it they had. The only way we could use the SAS vouchers was to go back through the security control in Terminal C, walk to Terminal B, go through the security screeening in Terminal B, and present our vouchers to any of the fine restaurants on the secure side of Terminal B. On paper it looked possible, annoying but possible. The tiny flaw in the plan was that in order to reach the restaurants in Terminal B , you had to pass through the security screening in Terminal B. In order to pass trhough the security screening in Terminal B, you had to show a valid boarding pass for a flight departing from Terminal B. And which terminal had SAS booked our new departing flights ? Terminal C.

So while we had meal vouchers supplied to us by SAS, to compensate us, we had no way of using them. Well done, SAS, saved yourself some bucks there. 500kr in fact, in case you were interested. That's what our snack meal PLUS TIP, cost us. I mentioned being lucky earlier, that's because we decided first only to use one meal voucher at that restaurant. Had we used both vouchers, we would have been hit twice as hard in the pocket.

Add on the snack meal which we ended up buying due our unplanned 6 hour stop-over at Heathrow (we were originally flying direct from NY to Arlanda) and our SAS induced delay ended up costing us the best part of 2,000kr. Some things are out of the control of airline companies. Mechanical breakdowns and such happen. It's how they deal with these problems which help define them, and SAS has let themselves down badly in this case. Better communication and really thinking about the logistical issues would have greatly lessened the negative impact on their paying customers. If you book a cheap budget airlines, then you take your chances. You book on a national carriers, you expect more from that carrier. The one saving grace in all this is that SAS is still better than United. But I guess that's like finishing next to last in the second division on this day.