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We headed off to buy some toiletries this morning; how expensive is this place!!!Dental floss 10TL (£5) - £2 UK; La roche Posay cream 45TL (£22) - £7 UK; Body Cream 20 TL (£10) - £2.50 UK). b******s!!!
We got a lunchtime transfer to the airport for our AirBaltic flight to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, via Riga in Latvia.Maria tells me that I can't count Latvia on my list of visited countries so I guess I have to scrub off Iceland too then (transfer at Reykjavik in 2002)!
We queue patiently for check-in as the line is moving pretty quickly and get to the front, confident that everything is in order as Maria triple checked with e-Bookers before our departure.20kg of luggage paid for, check.Meals booked and paid for throughout - check.Aisle seats booked - check.Unfortunately, AirBaltic's system has no record of any of our details and they won't check us in until we have paid for our baggage...great!!We move out of line and I guard the bags while Maria goes off to customer services to cough up another €40 for our luggage.When Maria returns we queue jump to check-in and are told that we do not have meals, even though our paper ticket states 'Meals: light lunch'.'I'm sorry, the computer says no!, insists the check-in girl who then tells us that our Uzbek visa is no good as it is valid from 1 May.'We arrive in Tashkent at 0135 on 1 May', look', we tell her.'But today is 30 April', she insists, not understanding that by the time we get to Uzbekistan that universal instrument known as a clock will have moved forward and, quicker than you can say 'AirBaltic sucks', it would be 01 May.How clever is that?Her watch must be stuck up her arse jockeying for position with her customer service diploma!
She then tells us that our bags are checked through but that the system cannot issue our boarding passes from Riga to Tashkent so we have the 35 minute connection time to run to the check-in desk in Latvia and get seats for the second leg of our journey.We insist on speaking with the superviser who, after making several calls, assures us that she will have meals ready for us on the flight of beef casserole and red wine.Maria also manages to change our seats as we were both allocated the middle seat (of 3) in different sections.We confirm the meal twice more from different people at the boarding gate and climb aboard.
The stewardess tells us that we do not have meals and, despite showing her our paper ticket stating the contrary she does not budge but points us instead to a customer complaint form.We fill it out!When we explain the trauma that we have gone through she then insists that none of the problems are to do with AirBaltic.Baggage, that's ebookers' fault.Meal, that's Istanbul airport's fault.Issue of boarding passes, that's the system's fault, which, by the way, is nothing to do with AirBaltic as they just hire the service!!!
We then sit on the pan, waiting for take off so our 35 minute transit time is now compressed to 10-minutes before we finally take to the air.We hear nothing from the cabin crew for the rest of the journey until we prompt them for an update on our status.'You should be okay', says the useless blonde, but we don't believe a word of it.
We arrive at Riga late, but not too late for our connecting flight but we still have to push some Germans out of the way who try to barge in.'We've only got 5-minutes for our next flight', they frantically protest.'Us too, now wait your turn', we reply.We get our boarding passes, middle seats in different sections again, and board the bus to the aircraft.After waiting the few minutes to fill the bus with passengers, it pulls off and stops 5 seconds later at the aeroplane!We all laugh in amazement as we look across the road at our departure gate 20 yards away!!!
Despite our best efforts to sit together with an aisle seat, the stewardess is emphatic that the flight is full and there are no seats available.Fifteen minutes into the flight Maria spots 12 empty seats at the back and also finds 2 adjacent aisle seats just in front of those.We move!The 12 seats remain empty for the duration of the flight, except for another useless stewardess who quickly assembles a 'crew tent' and goes to sleep.It turns out the seats are all reserved for crew despite the fact that none of them are being used!!We manage to speak with the chief purser who is very amicable and tells us that when AirBaltic started 6 years ago their only recruitment requirement was the ability to speak English!!Now that speaks volumes.
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