I like planning and I like to do it right. As we travel with our 11 months old daughter, we decided to keep on the safe side when possible. For example we bought plane tickets for the trip early, and by early I mean September last year!
We had three basic requirements:
- to be able to take a baby stroller to the gate (very convenient and necessary to be able to handle a long trip, especially if you have to change your plane and wait a few hours in between your flights).
- to book a baby cot on the plane
- max. one stop on the way to Kuala Lumpur (in our case Frankfurt).
After paying quite a lot extra for all the luxury mentioned above, booking the seats and a baby cot for five months in advance, I was hopeful that even though the trip is long, it is going to be quite smooth.
Unfortunately I was way off! Once we reached Arlanda, we had to fight to be able to take the stroller with us and when we finally succeeded to convince the check-in personnel about our right to do that (directing them to Lufthansa’s own rules and customer service), they found a way to punish us: we were made to throw away 25 jars of baby food because our suitcases were too heavy.
One might think that the beginning of the journey was rough enough, but one would be wrong! Our flight from Arlanda was delayed two hours and when we finally reached Frankfurt we were told that our Kuala Lumpur flight (which was also delayed by the way and still at the airport) refused to wait for us ten minutes!! And that is how we missed the 13 hours long flight.
After watching lots of American movies I had this illusion that as compensation we are going to be moved to business class for the rest of the trip, offered nice drinks and fly the next possible flight. Well.... business class my ass! Not only we didn't fly the next day, but we also didn't get seats next to each other and had to fight like lions in order to get a baby cot for Nelly!
The best offer that Lufthansa could come up with was to make us wait in Frankfurt for 48 hours and they were willing to pay for one night at a hotel! They refused to pay for lunches, dinners as well as the second night in Frankfurt while we were waiting for the flight they booked for us.
As if this was not enough while we finally were flying to Kuala Lumpur, we got to know that we had to make a stop in Bangkok and leave the plane for one hour, just to go through a stupid security control again and get back to the same seats…
I’m not sure what was my mistake – that I planned everything too carefully or that I have chosen Lufthansa!
