The walk of shame

I spent all of last week in France visiting Le Grand Ski (a ski industry conference / contractors fair) as well as our chalets in both Les Gets and Reberty Village.

Initially I had been booked to fly home late on Saturday night, the plan had been to get some skiing in, but I decided to go for an earlier flight to get home to the family – I’ve been away a bit too much recently.

I had a very smooth and swift transfer down the mountain, courtesy of Ski Famille Resort Asssistant Rob, and arrived at Geneva around 10.10. My flight wasn’t until 13.10 and I spotted that there was another Gatwick flight leaving at 11.05.

On a trip a few weeks ago I discovered that easyJet will happily switch you to an earlier return flight without charge if they have space. I thought it was worth trying again. The helpful lady at the sales desk moved me to the 11.05 flight in seconds ... she shouldn’t have.

As soon as I got upstairs to departures I saw the mother of all customs queues. I generally travel through Geneva on weekdays and had forgotten just how grim it can be on a busy Saturday. At 10.35 I flagged up to a security bod that my flight was setting off in 30 minutes, but he assured me I would be fine and wouldn’t allow a bit of queue hopping ... he should have.

At 10.59 I hobbled to gate C56 to find a largely empty space and one grumpy looking woman shaking her head at me. I had missed the plane and the baggage handlers were in the process of trying to find my bag to pull it off the flight.

To be fair to grumpy lady she did seem to be on my side and radioded to the plane to let them know I was at the gate. The pilot must have decided that on balance it would be quicker to get me on the plane than my bag off it. Within a few minutes a minibus arrived to whizz me across the tarmac to the waiting Airbus.

As I walked up the steps I could feel the contempt of 150 people radiating out of the door. I hit the top step and spotted that a front row seat was still free. I managed to get my bag in an overhead locker and my butt in the seat without having eye contact with a single person behind me ... but I knew they weren’t smiling. I was going to get home an hour and a half earlier than planned but they were all going to be half an hour late, and it was all my fault.

So ... do make use of the easyJet facility to switch to an earlier flight ... but make sure you're not cutting in too fine!

Chris
www.skifamille.co.uk