Do not ask how we got in Austin - the flight to hell

13:47 mareku 0 Comments

Hurray for KLM - taking us to London

We just arrived in Austin TX, but don't ask how we got here. It all started way back this morning at 06:15 when we try to check in our bags on the first leg of our trip to London. Something was wrong with Marijns ESTA and she had to re-apply. We had 15 minutes to do that with the ESTA terminal in the back of Schiphol. We couldn't make it - these ESTA terminals are a utter disaster (Windows - trackball with popup screens all over the place which you cannot close). We missed our flight and the bad news was that there was no other British Airways flight to get us in time to London and there was also no possibility to re-route the whole flight this week. All flights are packed with people attending the conference.
So we ran to KLM, bought tickets on their flight to London, finished somehow the ESTA and ran to the gate. In London we arrived at Terminal 4 where our next leg of the trip left at Terminal 5. With 30 minutes to spare we had to run against time (and odds). We picked up our luggage, took the train and arrived exhausted at the check-in counter: the flight was already closed. Fortunately we had a very good agent and he made a call and we were on! The downside: we had to run like hell through security and T5, take the shuttle to reach the gate.
The flight itself was great, except for the headwind which was causing the plane to have a delay of 2 hours to arrive in Dallas. We had missed our flight to Austin. Luckily because almost everybody on this flight had this problem, American made the wise decision to delay the Austin flight and after a crazy race at the Dallas Airport (waiving with special Yellow fast track cards and an extra security check) we made it in Austin. That is we did - our suitcases were still in Dallas...
They arrived a flight later and after an other hour in the Taxi cue we checked in in our Sheraton Hotel in Austin, where the restaurant just closed...
This SXSW better be awesome