The Wanderer retired from his engineering job at a major Silicon Valley semiconductor company at the age of 33. He now travels the world, seeking out knowledge from other wealthy people, so that he can teach people how to become Financially Independent themselves.
Travelling always involves an element of unpredictability, but when you travel with a child, that unpredictability goes into a whole new level. This happened to us recently, but not in the way you’re probably thinking.
Let me tell you about our flight from Toronto to Zurich that we just did earlier this month.
The route we were taking was an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Montreal. We had a layover of about 3 hours, at which point we would be boarding an Air Suisse flight from Montreal to Zurich. It was a business class flight, so we were looking forward to lots of lounging at the airport lounges, followed by a nice relaxing flight in a lie-down seat across the pond.
My first clue that something was up happened when I tried to check into the flight online. Out popped an error, but not a descriptive error like “It’s not time to check in yet.” Instead, the error message was a random string of gibberish that read “System.4006.error.title.description.”
Uh-oh. That ain’t good.
I called up Air Canada’s help line immediately and asked them what this error meant. They had no idea. Could the customer service rep check us in? No, it had to be done at the airport. And because they had no idea what the problem was, their only advice was to get to the airport early to give us more time to resolve the issue, whatever it was.
So apprehensively, we arrived at the airport with plenty of time and went to the check in counter. The lady checking us in started entering our information, but then something popped up on her screen that made her pause.
Again: uh-oh.
The ticket to Montreal booked through Air Canada was fine, and they could check me into that. But the next ticket to Zurich needed to be printed out at the Air Suisse counter at Montreal. Now, we’ve both done plenty of code-shared flights before, meaning flights in which different legs are on different airlines, and we’ve always been able to get all our tickets at the originating airport, so this was definitely not normal.
Still, we didn’t really have a choice so we dropped off our bags and headed to the lounge.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” FIRECracker said ominously.
“Please don’t say that when we’re about to board a plane.”
The flight to Montreal was uneventful, and when we landed, we girded our loins and headed to the Air Suisse counter. We were about to find out what the hell “System.4006.error.title.description” meant.
We arrived at the ticket counter and asked to check in. Once again, the agent tapped away at the computer, only for something to pop up on his screen that made him pause.
“Umm…you need to go to the customer service counter. My colleague will help you there.”
Gulp.
At the customer service counter for Air Suisse, the colleague was a man I shall refer to henceforth as Grumpy Fucker. You’ll understand why in a minute.
Grumpy Fucker looked into what was going on with our ticket for a few minutes before concluding “Your child is not on your reservation.”
…What?!?
I had the original reservation with all 3 of us on there. I had the tickets for all 3 of us that we printed in Toronto. And oh yeah, all 3 of us had just flown here!
Grumpy Fucker was unmoved. “You need to fix this.”
“Me?!? I don’t even know what the problem is! How am I supposed to fix this?”
“You need to talk to Air Canada and get them to fix this on their end.”
“But…but…”
“You must hurry. Your flight leaves soon.”
I glance at my watch. 2 hours until our flight leaves. Mother. Fucker.
The Air Canada desk is across the entire length of the airport at the other side of the departures hall, so we wheeled all our stuff over there and desperately tried to explain our situation to a customer service rep, and at first they told us to call the Air Canada help line. I know the Air Canada help line. I frequently spend over an hour on hold on the Air Canada help line. If we have to use the Air Canada help line, we’re missing our flight.
At this point, FIRECracker decides to pull out the “Mom card.”
She started whimpering “Please help. Our child is hungry, he hasn’t been changed, we’re going to be stranded. I don’t know what to do…”
Thank God FIRECracker took the initiative here, because I never would have even thought to do this. Later on, she told me she deliberately sought out another woman who looked the right age that they could be a mom, and she managed to get some fake tears going as well. She’d like to thank the Academy…
Anyway, this worked great. Not only did they stop giving us the run-around, they opened up a new check-in counter just for us. But when she checked into our reservation, she was perplexed. All 3 of us were on the tickets from Air Canada’s end. She even had the ticket numbers ready to go. Could we check with Air Suisse and see if they could see these ticket numbers on their end?
By the way, this entire time, Little Match Stick was behaving like a champ. He was playing with his toys, sitting in his stroller, and giggling happily as his parents were visible melting down. We’re really lucky that we have such a happy baby, because if he was a screamy-Mc-screamer-pants baby, we’d probably still be in Montreal right now.
Anyway, rather than wheel everyone across the airport again, we decided to leave FIRECracker and LMS at the Air Canada desk while I headed back to the Air Suisse counter. So off I went, sprinting at full speed across the airport. I glanced at my watch. 1:30 remaining.
Back at the Air Suisse counter, Grumpy Fucker was waiting. Fortunately, nobody else appeared to be in the situation I’m in, so I’m the only person in line. I explained the situation, giving the ticket numbers from Air Canada and asked him to look them up on his system. A few taps later, he shook his head. Still nothing.
At this point I thought we’re screwed. Each airline was blaming the other for the problem, and nobody’s taking responsibility to fix it.
“You need to get Air Canada to fix this,” Grumpy Fucker reminded me unhelpfully.
“They’re telling me things are fine on their side, you’re telling me you can’t see the tickets. I don’t know what to do. Please help.”
At this point, I have to give credit where credit’s due. While Air Canada’s people were much nicer, they didn’t have any ideas on how to fix this. Grumpy Fucker, on the other hand, actually tried to come up with a solution, which I greatly appreciated. He conferred with another colleague for a few minutes before coming back to me with “Can you ask Air Canada to re-issue the tickets from scratch? Maybe that will fix it.”
I could do that.
So off I went sprinting across the airport again.
In hindsight, it might have appeared a bit alarming to other passengers seeing someone sprinting full speed across the departures hall muttering swear words under their breath, but I didn’t have a choice. I was on a clock.
Back at Air Canada, I told the rep Grumpy Fucker’s suggestion. She nodded, tapped away at the computer, and then…something new pops up on her screen. Fuck.
“I can’t reissue the tickets,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Two of the tickets have already been checked in. I can’t reissue the tickets after they’ve been checked in.”
“What…but…can we un-check the tickets after they’ve been checked in?”
“Yes, but Air Suisse will have to do it.”
Off I went again. This was now my fourth sprint across the airport. Less than an hour left.
“OK, Air Canada says they can reissue the tickets, but you have to un-check our tickets in.”
Grumpy Fucker thought about this for a second, then nodded. “Yes, we can do that.”
Tap tap tap.
“Done.”
Sprint #5.
At this point, I am drenched in sweat, huffing like an asthmatic smoker, and about to have a heart attack, but I have to keep going.
Back at Air Canada, I told them the tickets have been un-checked in and to try reissuing again. Tap tap tap, and the tickets get reissued. Now to see if Air Suisse can see them.
I turn around to take off for Sprint #6 when I nearly ran straight into Grumpy Fucker. At this point, I should probably amend his name to Grumpy but Helpful Fucker, because he’s taken pity on me and came over the Air Canada desk to help me get this resolved. He calls his colleagues and asks them to look up the ticket and confirms, yes, reissuing the tickets has fixed the problem and they can now see all 3 of us on the reservation. We can now check in to our flight with 45 minutes to spare.
So now, we wheeled all our stuff back to the Air Suisse counter at a normal, non-breakneck pace, and got our tickets printed.
I thanked the newly christened Grumpy but Helpful Fucker profusely, since he’s actually the one that got us out of this mess. We took our tickets, headed towards security, and…that’s when we noticed they misspelled our son’s name on the ticket.
At this point I just had to laugh. Of course, something else has to go wrong. Sure, why not.
So, we turned around, headed back to the Air Suisse counter, and showed them the misspelled ticket. They checked it out, concluded it was Air Canada that made the typo, but it should be fine since airport rules state that one letter being off was OK, but two letters bring wrong would require us to reissue the ticket again. Only one letter was wrong, so they assured us its fine.
I was a little nervous about taking their word on this, but we headed through security, found our gate, and boarded our flight. I then proceeded to get blitzed on business class champagne for the remainder of our flight.
Conclusion
As much as we like to think we’re in control, a travel day like this does wonders to remind us that sometimes, a random computer glitch can mess up the most well laid plans. The silver lining to this experience was that is wasn’t nearly as stressful as the situation we faced in Vietnam where we nearly couldn’t board our flight to leave the country, yet couldn’t stay in Vietnam because our visa was expiring that day.
This was a great reminder that when you travel, especially with young kids, keep your itineraries as simple as possible. Our plan was to spend a week in Zurich to recover from jet lag and continue to Spain because a) we needed every bit of that time to deal with the jet lag and b) the worst that would have happened was we would have been forced to spend some time in Montreal while we sorted out how to get on the next flight to Zurich and rejoin our itinerary. Not ideal, especially with a toddler in tow, but at least the option of Vietnamese immigration lockup wasn’t in the cards, so that’s something.
Safe travels everyone!
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