Tuesday, 10 June 2014: Montpellier to Tallahassee, airline chaos

Written 10 June

Our faithful taxi driver arrived on schedule and whisked us to the airport. As promised, he billed us for all three trips, with itemized paperwork, in the morning—a very reasonable 60 euros.

Then the problems began. We addressed ourselves to the Air France automated check-in kiosk (called a "borne," a milestone, in French). It found our records from a scan of David's Delta frequent flyer card (the two reservations were made at the same time on the same credit-card transaction, so they were linked in the system), had us enter our passport numbers, countries of residence, etc., then said sorry, can't check you in, please go talk to a live person. So we presented ourselves at the check-in desk, where Stephane (we were to come to know many of the agents by name) checked David in in short order and sent his suitcase off into the web of conveyer belts. But the system balked at my check-in. Stephane typed steadily for about five minutes, peered at his screen in annoyance, then said come with me, bring your luggage. We repaired to a nearby help desk, where the trouble-shooting agents worked. One of them (a blonde; I never caught her name), typed steadily for (count'em) 40 minutes, muttering steadily to herself and to her computer screen (she apologized for it, saying it helped her think), saying things like "Tu m'énerve!" ("You're a pain!") and "Why doesn't this work?" and "Delta needs to update its software" and "but this always works." Eventually, Françoise, at the next desk over, finished with her client and came over to help. After a a good while more, during which they alternately typed away, looking over each others' shoulders and suggesting new strategies, Françoise called her friend in the Paris office, and the three of them—the blonde and Françoise, on their respective screens, and the Paris agent on the phone on hers, kept at it for a while more, occasionally writing down or exchanging long numeric codes.

Finally, the blonde announced that they had it licked; she took me back over to Stephane, gave him a few written notes, and asked that he print the boarding passes from his screen. He cheerfully agreed to do so and started typing. About the time we passed the 90-minute mark, he asked me to wait while he disappeared behind the scenes for about 10 minutes. Shortly after he reappeared, he was joined by the check-in agent from the next desk over and by the check-in supervisor, who placed the first of several calls to Gervaise, his favorite expert contact in the Paris office. After Gervaise referred themn to another phone contact, who then referrred them back, I remarked that it didn't look as though I would get any breakfast, as we were getting pretty close to our departure time (if we hadn't made a point of arriving at the airport really early, so as to have time for breakfast inside security, we would long since have missed the flight). They were instantly solicitous, saying there was no point in my standing there—I should leave my luggage in their care and go get someting to eat while they kept working. At that point, David and I conferred (he'd been sitting around the waiting area reading his Kindle all this while), and he went on through security to ensure that he, at least, would catch the flight. I had quite a good breakfast of two "torsades" (crispy, buttery croissant pastry filled with custard and chocolate chips) and a cup of tea before reporting back to Stephane's desk. They had checked my suitcase as David's second piece to ensure that it would catch the flight, and after another five minutes or so of typing and coding, they pushed the "print" button, and miraculously my boarding pass emerged—a single card listing all three flights and with one big bar code covering all three.

It would have been tight, except that the flight was delayed for about 20 minutes, so I caught up with David and we boarded with time to spare. We even made up some of the delay during the flight.

The boarding card already showed our Paris departure gate, M48, which actually made sense, as we had encountered the new K, L, and M gates and the slick new subway train that connected them with Halls 2E and 2F. We arrived at 2F and set out to follow the "connection" signs, first to passort control (where we were officially checked out of France) and then on to our connection gate (which changed to M50 along the way somewhere). The hike was much less complicated than the one three weeks earlier—long straight hallways and up just one escalator to passport control. From there, more long straight walking and one more escalator, after which we were directed out a door and into one of a series of shuttle buses (!) that circulated among K (where we apparently already were), L, M, and 2E and 2F. Never saw the subway or all those other escalators.

Once in the M gate cluster, we encountered a positively palatial duty-free and shopping area with sumptuous restrooms and even a drinking fountain. We had plenty of time for lunch at a Paul bakery—excellent quiche lorraines, Evian, and pastries (David had apple, I got apricot)—before reporting to the gate, because our flight was delayed by several hours (so much for our connection in Atlanta). Many of the walls were graced with these wonderful "hanging gardens"—vertical panels of living plants, growing sideways out of their frames.

Ominously, when we did report to the gate, we found our names displayed on the "please contact the desk" list. We dutifully reported to the desk and were assured that all was in order. They just weren't certain whether they were supposed to give us a copy of an old-fashioned multi-copy carbon pack that someone had filled out a propos of the hooferaw over my boarding pass in Montpellier. After a phone call or two, they decided that no, I wasn't supposed to get a copy.

When we boarded, of course, the gate agent checking boarding passes stopped me and insisted I was supposed to have a copy of a special form to accompany my pass. At this point, I had had it, so I just snapped, "No, I'm not; check with your colleague, who has just checked with headquarters." The colleague backed me up, so I got to board. Northern France was, at this point, in the grip of miserable weather—the reason for our flight's long delay. Our plane, and many many others, had been delayed arriving in Paris, and the caterers' schedules had been thrown into total disarray. We waited a long time on the tarmac for the trucks to show up with the meals for our flight. That delay was so long that the interval between our boarding and our scheduled arrival in Atlanta was too long for our pilots' legally determined work day. So we had another delay while the power that be rounded up another pilot to send with us, to spell our regular pilots.

When we finally did take off, the flight went without a hitch (I watched a couple of movies and half a dozen episodes of Game of Thrones), and the food we waited so long for was quite good (I had tortellini Florentine), but of course our flight to Tallahassee had long since taken off by the time we landed.

This trip was our first chance to try out our new "Global Entry" status! Rather than queuing up at passport control, we shoved our passports into little automated kiosks, looked up into the little camera on top when directed, placed our fingers on the glass for fingerprints, specified our lack of anything to declare to customs, and each received a printed ticket (much like a supermarket receipt), complete with photo, to present at the next stage. We still had to wait to claim our luggage (which took forever to appear on the carrousel), walk it through customs, and recheck it, but that was the only delay. At every stage, a special "Global Entry" queue speeded us through. Definitely a good thing.

Once back on the domestic concourses, we shoved our boarding passes under the nose of one of those little automatic rebooking stations and were not even surprised to get a ticket that said we can't deal with those boarding passes; please report the to help center. The help center (opposite gate A19) was mobbed, because at this point, the whole US Northeast was blanketed with miserable weather, just about every flight in the country was delayed, and the national web of travel connections had melted down entirely. I stood in line for the live agents while David tried one of Delta's direct-connect telephones. He got results first. We were pretty well resigned to spending the night in Atlanta, but no, we had been automatically rebooked for a late flight into Tallahassee; we just needed to report to that gate and have new boarding passes printed there!

At our gate, we had to wait for two other domestic flights to depart before ours came up, delayed, of course. We finally got our new boarding passes, then just waited around for our (several times delayed) flight to board. Every two or three minutes, a gate change was announced, and a couple of hundred people would rise from their seats as one and troop past us on their way to their new gate. Finally, the nice lady on the PA just said forget about your flight number. Check the boards for the next flight to your destination and go to that gate; seats will probably be available because so many people booked on that flight will have missed it.

Our plane finally touched down in Tallahassee at about 12:01 a.m. Tuesday—a sign of progress in itself, as we remember when the Tallahassee airport closed down at 10:00 p.m. Our luggage (all of it!) emerged promptly, and taxis were waiting, so we were home and in bed before 2 a.m., and we didn't have to get up early the next morning; I love retirement!

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