How not to handle flight delays

In my past travelogues, I’ve written that the flight was eventless. The latest flight with SAS from London City airport to Stockholm Arlanda was everything except eventless.

The trip started well, I got through check-in and security in less than ten minutes and then spend time in the busy lounge reading a good book. The plane left London about in time and the first two hours were all ok.

Then we started landing and I was first thinking that we are a bit ahead of the schedule — but instead we were landing on Malmö. Something was broken in the plane and they had to land on the nearest airport.

Malmö airport was empty. There were no other passangers, just us in a secluded gate area. As we had left from London, we were outside of Schengen area and could not leave the gate. They were nobody to check passports.

After waiting a while, the captain informed us that they need to replace a window on the plane and it will about three hours. Quite a feat to be honest, seemingly they had replacement window somewhere.

In the meanwhile, we just sat there. There were no drinks or sandwiches until the ground personnel looted the plane. After four hours, the plane was ready but there was not enough fuel to fly to Stockholm.

Malmö airport had no-one around to fuel the plane, so we flew to Copenhagen. This was ironic in sense, as the flight took only 15 minutes and if they would have flew there in the first place, I could have caught a flight to Helsinki on that night.

I dosed off while flying to Stockholm. We were there at four o’clock in the morning. There were nobody from SAS waiting us on the gate, so we had to go through the passport control and finally through the baggage claim, customs and ticketing. There were no signs for transit — maybe there is a route inside the checked-in area.

If I hadn’t asked for my flight information, nobody would have told it to me. Someone had booked me to the first morning flight to Helsinki, but informing the passenger seemed not to be on high on SAS’ list.

After check-in and security control (where I lost my drink — this would have been avoided with proper transit signs), there were nobody from SAS around. All gates were unmanned and both transit desks were deserted.

EU has made regulations that in case of delays, airline needs to provide certain items promptly and without charge to the customers: free calls, free emails, and food and drink. None of them were offered in Malmö (before looting the plane) and none of them were offered in Stockholm.

The regulations paper should be available in the airport, too. Didn’t see it anywhere. Finally someone arrived to the neighbour gate, and he kindly called to the service desk.

After 15 minutes of waiting, a lady came and offered a breakfast coupon that is valid for 90 days in Stockholm only. The flight was almost boarding, and I tried from now onwards to avoid Stockholm airport, so the coupon was no value for me. Instead, I asked to be upgraded to business and after some general hassling on their part, got a economy extra ticket.

So, all in all I was eight hours late, and nobody cared to say that SAS is sorry or provide anything for me. Every single item needed to be requested.

Now I’ve got a bitter taste in my mouth. This would have been avoided with three simple steps:

• Someone waiting at the arrival gate and taking care of transiting customers.
• That same person giving out breakfast coupons and providing telephone calls and emails.
• Automatic upgrade to business, no questions asked.