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The tubes strike back
Something unusual happened the other evening. In Geneva, on our way back by bus to the hotel in Ferney-Voltaire, the driver stopped outside the United Nations headquarters to let on a group of passengers. The drill is that you are supposed to buy tickets from a vending machine before boarding, but these people hadn’t done that thinking you could purchase them on board. The driver ushered them back to the vending machine but it was apparent from their confused actions that the instructions were not to their language. And this is where it was unusual. The driver got off the bus and took each one through the process, determining how many sections they were travelling, feeding in the coins and getting the ticket. Had that been Abu Dhabi they would have been shouted at, unceremoniously kicked off and told to wait for the next bus, in this case one hour.
But if that was unusual, what happened on our return Easyjet flight from Geneva was extraordinary. Or rather, it was what happened before we even left the ground. Everyone was on board and the flight attendants were proceeding along the passageway ensuring that we were all buckled in, seats back and luggage in the overhead lockers or under the seat in front, you know the drill, when one of the attendants noticed a passenger, an older woman, across the aisle wearing a plaster cast on her arm. Next thing there is a gaggle of crew around telling this woman that, unless she can produce a medical certificate clearing her to fly, she cannot stay aboard. Of course, a medical clearance is not one of the items unsuspecting passengers can usually produce at a moment’s notice and a long discussion ensued with the pilot giving progress reports. Something like, “Sorry about the delay folks, we are having trouble with one of our passengers, she won’t get off the plane, but we’ll be shot of her soon.” And so there they were, this poor woman and her friend had to get off and the plane held up further while they located and unloaded her luggage. How humiliating. Or how upsetting if you were her.
One would have thought these things could have been noticed and sorted before she boarded, but that may be a consequence of budget travel where you print your own tickets, check yourself in and put your own labels on luggage. In this pressure-cooker travel Easyjet does not even allocate seats, rather it is first on, first served, and so experienced passengers employ tactics to board early which makes a rugby maul look tame. As one plane arrives, boarding passengers are already lined up at the airbridge waiting for the last of the incoming passengers to disembark, a bit like getting on the tub in rush hour. Etiquette and courtesy are out the window and we have learned to jostle with the best of them.
Unlike the poor woman in Geneva we did get home, eventually. Our flight from Geneva to London’s Luton airport took a little over one hour but, as (bad) luck would have it, it was a further three hours from Luton to Ealing. For the second time in almost as many weeks the tube drivers were on strike, creating bedlam on London transport. We should have cursed them but a cross though never crossed our minds as we lugged leaden suitcases and bags through the London rush hour.