Take this waltz ...

by airoli
At last, the one Wednesday in May I had so long waited for had arrived. There was still a full day at the office ahead of me, but fortunately I work at ZRH airport, so I was able to stop by the check-in in the morning to get rid of my suitcase and check-in for my Austrian flights to Vienna and Bangkok. There was only a short line at the Business Class desk in ZRH’s Check-In 3, and it soon was my turn. However, as the agent handed me my boarding passes, I noticed that for the VIE-BKK segment, my seat assignment had changed away from the exit row aisle seat that I had reserved and re-confirmed with the OS Senator desk in Vienna. The check-in agent was apologetic, but said that there was nothing he could do as my original seat 26C was “gone”. He advised talking to the people in Vienna during my transit stop.

I had to run to the office (you know how those last days in ahead of two weeks off are) and thus could not pursue the matter. My flight to Vienna was scheduled to leave at 8pm, and after close of business, I hurried home to change and grab my carry-on before returning to the airport. When I got there again, I had some minutes left and decided to pay a visit to the LH (formerly Star Alliance) lounge. As the LH personnel manning this lounge are usually friendly and competent (the complete opposite of their counterparts in the Swiss lounges), I decided to quiz them again about my seat assignment for VIE-BKK. The lady at the counter was puzzled when she looked up my booking, as she could clearly see that I had requested and been granted the seat. “To make more of a point” in Vienna, she suggested printing out my PNR – a suggestion that I most gladly agreed to. I stowed away the paper without further looking at it, and eventually made my way to the gate for OS566 to Vienna, where boarding was already well underway. When it was my turn and my boarding pass was swiped, the reader beeped. And beeped again. And again. Now that can mean many things, including an operational upgrade. The gate agent however looked at the name on my ticket, said “Oh, so this is you” and asked me to step aside.

I was informed rather matter-of-factly that I would not be traveling to Vienna that night. “You see, this flight is overbooked, so we have rebooked you to the direct Swiss flight to BKK instead. Please wait here until we can make the necessary arrangements.” With that, the agent returned to boarding pax.

I was puzzled. Hadn’t I been asked to reconfirm by my travel agent due to overbooking, and done so immediately? Wasn’t I a Senator in the OS frequent flyer program, traveling on a not-so-cheap economy fare? And hadn’t I checked in early in the day? Well, apparently that all did not matter. “We are doing you a favor as you won’t have to connect through Vienna and will reach Bangkok only 20 minutes later”, was the agent’s explanation, when she produced a boarding pass for LX182. When I said that I was not happy at all with the way this was handled, because I had explicitly wanted to try Austrian and also reserved an exit row seat instead of the generic aisle seat given to me now, apologies were made and an obscure “system failure in Amadeus” was given as an explanation. Note that Amadeus is Austrian’s reservation system and not their musical near-deity (who never fails ;)). To compensate for my inconvenience, I was given a CHF20 meal voucher.

All this happened in a friendly, but very inflexible way. No further compensation, such as the upgrade to Business Class I had suggested, was offered. Well then, hardball it is. I used the extra four hours at ZRH to go to the Lufthansa ticketing office, which also represents Austrian, and demanded compensation for denied boarding and involuntary rerouting, in accordance with EU regulation 261/04. The people there were dumbstruck, and I really appreciated the discussion some days earlier on FT that helped me finally understand the EU legislation. That knowledge put me in a fairly powerful position, especially in combination with the rule in full on my notebook. Suffice it to say that after a phone call to the LH back-office, the front desk agent was advised to hand out EUR300 in travel vouchers. I wonder what percentage of eligible passengers actually get this far.

16 MAY 2007
LX182
ZRH-BKK
A340-300,
27B Economy

It can come at no surprise then that I waited for my Swiss flight in an a contempt mood, the prospect of a regular seat being offset by the DBC. The Bellevue lounge in Zurich’s E gates was surprisingly quiet, but looking at the minimalist food offering there wasn’t much of a reason to be there anyway. The flight boarded on time and in a surprisingly orderly fashion, and unlike usually the doors were closed on time. Ingeniously, Swiss still managed to produce a 30 minute delay before at last, I was my way to Asia and into the SEN Run.

I must admit that my seat was more comfortable than anticipated, pitch is okay and the guy in the seat in front of me was very considerate in not reclining his seat until after dinner. My seat mate fell asleep immediately after takeoff, but still made unappealing noises all night long. If my noise-canceling headphones hadn’t paid off a long time ago already, this night alone would have been worth buying them.

Dinner was a choice of beef or pasta, the latter of which was my choice. To my surprise, it was quite palatable (although I am not convinced that it is smart to serve garlic-heavy pesto sauce to Economy passengers) and also decent in size. The meal tray also included a bowl of salad, a roll, some cheese, butter, and a cup of chocolate mousse. Drinks were offered twice, and they even made a second pass with the bread basket, albeit at a time when everybody had long finished their meal. Overall, dinner was a decent affair that was beyond what I had last experienced on LX long-haul. Maybe they are finally able to invest a little bit more into their onboard product again? This would also explain the larger-than-lately selection of movies and short features in the on-demand IFE. I watched Music & Lyrics and was happy to notice that the system never crashed throughout the 11 hour flight. Also, the Maître de Cabine had the kindness to enable the system immediately after takeoff and not only after a 30 minute commercial movie is shown.

The service was okay, with the crew being in a decent mood, which is a significant improvement from when they were at loggerheads with LX management over their paychecks and vented their anger at passengers. I assume the crew made regular rounds of the cabin with water during the night, but to my own surprise I managed to sleep for close to 6 hours so I really don’t know.

Breakfast was served about 100 minutes out of BKK, and as usual started with a hot towel service. The meal was then presented in a cardboard box, the contents of which have also been upgraded and now contained a roll and a croissant (vs. just one of the two), and two hunks of cheese along with the yogurt and orange juice.

We touched down at Suvarnabhumi airport on schedule and docked at a gate very close to immigration. I was rather under whelmed by the first impression of Bangkok’s ever-so-grand airport, but postponed any detailed exploring in the knowledge of several more layovers there to come. There was a lengthy wait at immigration, and when I was finally admitted, my bag was already waiting for me on the belt. I grabbed it, exited customs and after some orientation work found my way upstairs to the AirAsia check-in counters.

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