Neverending trip

In a previous post, I summarized what happened during my visit to Malta until the point when I was driven to the airport. I was quite short of time and, consequently, was a bit in a hurry, as you can imagine, while the driver was following strictly the speed limits, if you know what I mean.

However, just after arriving at the airport, I found out that my concerns were not founded at all: my flight has a four hours delay. Then, I decided to speak with staff of Air Malta in order to get a voucher for some refreshments and food, as I had four hours to enjoy them. From Air Malta they sent me to Lufthansa, where my conversitation was growing in tension until concluding with a premonition: "I will complain as soon as I land in Frankfurt". Let's say that the attitute of the Lufthansa staff member in front of me was certainly improvable. My favourite sentence among what he said is "You are flying with the lowest fare, so you should not complain at all.". By the way, after complaining to Lufthansa for this behaviour, I have got a formal apology and a reimbursement of 25 euros.
Once the way to get anything from the airlines was closed, I decided to spend the time shopping. As you can imagine, the airport is like the island itself: small. So, after thirty minutes I had examined every item of minimum interest to me in the four shops there. Then I decided to call for help to my workmates, to check whether I could be rellocated to any flight flying somewhere else before mine.

Alas, but my Blackberry was running out of batteries! And I did not have an adaptor to the English (and Maltese) plugs. So I bought one for six euros and when I go to the charging area of the airport in Malta, I discover that they have both plugs: English and Continental European. Six euros stupidly wasted! However, that was not the end of my misfortunes there. At my right, there was a man, without shoes and, believe me, I was fainting... Oh, my God, when he left because his laptop was fully charged it was like heaven for me (and specially for my nose).

After much waiting, much emails reading with the Blackberry and much everything, I had to run to the boarding gate, because I had got a refreshment voucher just fifteen minutes before! It meant that I had to drink my orange juice and then run to the boarding gate. The total delay when taking off from Malta was five hours: from an scheduled time at 15:20 to 20:35.

I was seated in the first rows and I soon realised that I was surrounded by Chinese young men. That was the only remarkable issue during the flying time, until we reached Germany and the pilot told us that the airport was closed in Frankfurt (due to the snow) and that we were waiting for an alternative (Köln, Stuttgart or Frankfurt-Hahn), but that we could not wait long, because we were running out of fuel. After an hour, the pilot finally informs us that we are landing in Stuttgart, what we did some minutes later, at approximately 22:50.

My idea was that somehow we were going to be taken into buses or into trains to Frankfurt, but, again, I was mistaken. Instead, we waited and waited and waited until the pilot told us that we had now fuel in our plane and that we were taking off again for Frankfurt! I could not believe it, but it was true, we were making my plane a trip of 150 kilometres, which could be shorter by bus or by train! So, we went up into the air again and flew around Frankfurt for a while until we finally landed at 1:30 in the morning, with a total delay of more than eight hours from the scheduled landing time.

As you see, something as easy as flying from Malta to Frankfurt can become really complicated indeed.