Another missed flight?

Well... nearly, so so near..

We got a flight from Chiang Mai CNX to BKK at 21.00 arriving 22.00 given our flight out of BKK was at 23.50 that have us a comfortable 1h.50m to get ourselves out of the domestic terminal to  the international...

We took that flight rather than an afternoon flight as it was the only one that actually allowed us to take some luggage with us. We planned to bring our suitcases back,  albeit mostly empty since we have a house now we left a lot of what we brought there for our return. We were unable to fold our big canvas bag into the hard large suitcase, so we just put our carry on in the hard case

great planning

yes... great planning,  was proud of that.

yes...great

And I wasn't too worried that when we got to  CNX with time to spare, to discover it was 15 mins delayed... no problem.

That is until the delayed 15 mins, didn' t update and it was still not boarding... in fact it was over 30 mins delayed

hmm still ok though

But we didn't take off for a while...didn't record the time

But we got to BKK and our 1.50 margin had slipped to  40 mins....oh shit

And we had baggage to collect....which ddn't show up until 10-15 mins later....

I sense  you're getting the idea now... my nice buffer got eaten away, and BKK is a HUGE airport

We had to get to the International terminal, drop off our luggage and we had now less than 30 mins

We moved as quickly as we could to get the the terminal, and  mean the full, scuse me please, coming through, we're late, sorry sorry, please let us through type of moving as fast as we could and we made it to departures, only to find Gate F....bag/check-in, closed.

FFFFFFUUUUCKKKKK not again.

We were checked in on line, but we needed to drop the bag, Jirawan asked several bored looking attendants  on other desks, if there was anyone from the air line to help but nope, they all said to send the luggage back via an office somewhere the other end of the lounge (when I say lounge I mean 1km square of desks) ...we did find it eventually but Jirawan was unable to get hold of her cousin to ask him to take care of this (he works in the airport).

tick tock....

So we were screwed, but Jirawan had a brilliant idea.. The big case only really contained our carry on bag which had a toilet bag and some change of clothes in it... take out the carry on case, and dump the suitcare...

So we did, we left the case in the airport and run like mad to get to the other side of Bangkok to get to the S120 gate that our flight left from.,...10 mins left.... queues, security, passport and other obsticles in our way... face scan entrance on doors didn't work...had to go to scan passport doors, etc.. oh of course security had another queue, and some of Jirawans creams and tubes caught security attendion for an extra delay... arrhhh

Scanning passport system however was really quick, so we got to run as fast as we could to....a shuttle train....oh gawd... 5 mins

The train can't be rushed, but it got there.... time was up... we were in negative time mode, we could only hope there was a delay...we had little to no chance of catching it, but we still ran as fast as we could carrying the small case, laptop bag and purses as fast as we could, at the top of the S gate escalator we saw 2 staff members holding Austrian Airlines Vienna last call cards...oh thank fuck.. yes yes, us... we're here we were delayed... after checking our boarding passes on our phones, they radioed the gate and took my arm to head there,  then she said those horrible words, can you run?

No... no, I am totally spent now.. but l will go as fast as I can.. Jirawan took the lead and ran with her while I tried to catch a 2nd , no 4th wind.... and jogged on as best I good, we stll had 400-500m to get to the gate... I did manage to increase speed from 2km/h go 2.5 and we almost all 3 of us go there together to face the 4 staff on the gate waving us to hurry......ermm we're doing our best

Passports please, and residence card.... oh shit my card is in wallet in the bottom of my laptop bag.... Jirawan had hers, I said please, my pasport is UK so its ok, (it usually is) do you really need mine... yes yes we.....oh no just go...

phew...  go go go quick, through the gate, down the stars, up the ramp, and finally into the air craft where the stewards were clearly waiting to close the door...

WE MADE IT... 

We actually made it... I can't believe it, we got on, sweating like piglets, red face, heavy breathing, immnent heart failure and sat down...oh my ....we made it.

The flight was not the most comfortable though, but we made it to Vienna, where there was far less hassle getting onto the connecting flight to Amsterdam, but it was also delayed about an hour... due to weather
Get to Amsterdam, and...the trains were all delayed...

But we go the train.... we got to Breda, we got home.

What... a nightmare... the time in CM was amazing, the journeys there and back however... unreal.

Now we wait to see what possible refunds/compensation we can get back for the 1st flight.

One thing though that is so abundantly clear, is how little help there is for passengers who turn up late due to curcumstances they have no control over... twice that trip we arrived at an airport check-in late, through no fault of our own and there's no help available at all... its terrifying.  While I was totally overwhelmed with fuccckkkkkk it thoughts Jirawan's brilliant idea gave us a fighting chance to catch the plane... even if it cost us a nice suitcase and a potential heart attack.

I hope that will be the last time we ever had to go through  this, and the lesson is allow for at least 4 hours delays and get to the air port as early as possible....mad.

Ahthankyew