It was inevitable that something would untoward occur this year and, of course, it had to happen on the final day of ones 2024 travels! Let me elaborate…
As planned, Care390 kindly transported us from Hotel Holiday to the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Frankfurt (and then onto Heathrow). If you require accessible transportation in the Sarajevo area, highly recommend contacting Care390…
Just as we queued up for check in to open (which, at Sarajevo is only 2 hours prior), one received a text from Lufthansa informing us that the flight to Frankfurt had been CANCELLED and to talk to the live chat to rebook. As Sarajevo had no information regarding this, we silently went away to chat with Lufthansa online whilst watching the chaos unfolded at check in. At first, it appeared that Lufthansa had it in hand by stating that they were going to fly us to Zagreb and then Heathrow, however a few minutes later, the guy came back to us and informed us that the flight was fully booked. Out of curiosity, one checked the Croatia Airlines website and found that there were tickets available so it was decided that we would book it ourselves and claim it back from Lufthansa. The only thing was that one only had 50 minutes to connect at Zagreb hence the plane needed to depart on time.
Everything was going to plan, the check in process and security was relatively hassle free. It was at that point that the departure time began to increase. A few minutes later, one was called to the desk and informed that Croatia Airlines had a technical fault with the aircraft hence were sending a smaller plane instead which couldn’t accommodate Superbunny! Essentially, one was then stuck in Sarajevo for the night…
The next thing was to try to secure accommodation for the night, however, one had the added complication of ensuring the hotel was accessible. Earlier in the day, Lufthansa informed us that we could pick a hotel by ourselves and they would pay for it, however it transpires from the call centre that the airline would only pay for one specific hotel (this was all happening whilst a pigeon decided to do a lap of the terminal concourse!). Luckily, Care390 arrived to transport us to wherever hence it was decided that we would drive to said hotel (Hotel Hollywood) and view the ‘accessible’ room. To ones surprise, Hotel Hollywood was actually better than Hotel Holiday in terms of having a wet room meaning that a well needed shower was possible!
After a lazy morning, Care390 transported us back to the doomed terminal of Sarajevo International Airport. Unfortunately, check in and security had different staff working who were a lot less clued up on electric wheelchairs meaning that 90 minutes were spent waiting for ‘clearance’ from Lufthansa HQ. The bad news came after security when, yet again, our flight (to Vienna this time) departure time increased considerably making the connection almost impossible. I swear that Sarajevo are reluctant for people to leave the place!
Anyway, we touched down at Vienna International at 16:51pm and the flight to Heathrow was departing at 17:15pm. Due to having assistance AND two wheelchairs to transfer over, one thinks that many airports would just not try, however, Vienna were up for the challenge! Trust me, one has never seen that much efficiency and coordination between different operations before at an airport. A team of around 10 both in the terminal and on the ground were in constant communication with each other meaning that one was sat down in the seat to Heathrow at 17:09pm, that is efficiency! To add to the baggage handlers work, Sarajevo put both Superbunny and the manual wheelchair into the hold as is meaning that Vienna had to, not only pull both chairs out but also safely put them in a container (where they should be!). Despite this, the plane pushed back only 10 minutes late (plus a little runway rejigging from ATC).
That concludes ones travels for 2024, where next, who knows!