Trip report: Lisbon
Jan. 24th, 2013 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izardFlying TAP was not a very pleasant experience. We planned to spend more time in Lisbon, but instead were forced to stay in the airport and fight to get on the plane.
- You were selected to be moved to standby.
- Why we were selected to be dropped off this flight, out of ~200 passengers here waiting in the lounge?
- You may have discount tickets, and may be other passengers have high frequent flyer status. So our computer program decided that your status is lowest, and you were dropped off because flight is overbooked.
- Our tickets booking class is Y, which is highest economy fare. I have LH FT status (Star Alliance Silver). This is a winning combination in the game you've just described. So there must be either a bug in that computer program, or it was intervened by a human operator.
- OK, may be, just wait for 30 minutes and I will give you your boarding pass.
In 20 minutes she gave us boarding passes for places next to a toilet with fixed chairs. Very inconvenient for a overnight flight. The girl apparently did not like that we argued with her. Several other passengers from standby list were given business class seats. (Or may be they just had HON Circle cards.)
Other than overbooking, flights were OK. Food was good, a little bit better than food on LH for similar flights. Another good thing was nice views over Lisbon on take off and landing.
So in Lisbon we only spent 3 hours instead of 5 as was planned.
It was a stop on the way to Africa, but we had a feeling that we reached our destination. We were the only white people in the subway train. On the streets in the city center, ourselves and few tourists were european, and everyone else were african.
Perhaps, that is because it was an evening of December 24th, and locals were celebrating Christmas eve at their homes.
- You were selected to be moved to standby.
- Why we were selected to be dropped off this flight, out of ~200 passengers here waiting in the lounge?
- You may have discount tickets, and may be other passengers have high frequent flyer status. So our computer program decided that your status is lowest, and you were dropped off because flight is overbooked.
- Our tickets booking class is Y, which is highest economy fare. I have LH FT status (Star Alliance Silver). This is a winning combination in the game you've just described. So there must be either a bug in that computer program, or it was intervened by a human operator.
- OK, may be, just wait for 30 minutes and I will give you your boarding pass.
In 20 minutes she gave us boarding passes for places next to a toilet with fixed chairs. Very inconvenient for a overnight flight. The girl apparently did not like that we argued with her. Several other passengers from standby list were given business class seats. (Or may be they just had HON Circle cards.)
Other than overbooking, flights were OK. Food was good, a little bit better than food on LH for similar flights. Another good thing was nice views over Lisbon on take off and landing.
So in Lisbon we only spent 3 hours instead of 5 as was planned.
It was a stop on the way to Africa, but we had a feeling that we reached our destination. We were the only white people in the subway train. On the streets in the city center, ourselves and few tourists were european, and everyone else were african.
Perhaps, that is because it was an evening of December 24th, and locals were celebrating Christmas eve at their homes.
