jis
Permanent Way Inspector
Staff member
Administator
Moderator
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
On my recent trip to Athens, there were different levels of missed connections in both directions and they were both handled rather well by the airline concerned.
On the outbound, the United flight from Newark to Munich left the gate at Newark on time but left Newark about 40 minutes late. My connection at Munich to Lufthansa to Athens was 1 hour and 30 minutes. United finally arrived an hour late leaving 30 mins to connect. Huffing and puffing across the airport including a Inter-Concourse APM ride, I made it to the departure gate while the flight was still boarding.
I had placed an AirTag in my checked baggage. So almost as soon as I arrived in Athens I knew that my bag most likely had not since FindMy showed that my bag was in Munich. By the time I got to the baggage pickup I had received an SMS notification from Lufthansa about the misconnect and a form to fill to recover the bag, which I duly filled and submitted, and receipt of it was acknowledged. I chose "Deliver to Address" and gave the address of my hotel.
I checked mid-afternoon in FindMy and discovered that the bag was now at Athens Airport. Meanwhile, being a seasoned traveler I always have a day or two worth of provisions in my hand baggage so I just showered, changed and went off for a wonderful Greek dinner. When I got back I saw an email from Lufthansa's baggage agent that the bag was in Athens and would be delivered the next morning. It had contact information for the delivery agent in Athens who will do the actual delivering.
Next morning I watched the bag leave Athens Airport and meander around various parts of Athens before showing up at the hotel. I was out with family when it arrived. The hotel folks knew it would arrive, so they received and stored it. I got an email notification that it had been delivered, I go the bag from concierge when I got to the hotel.
On the way back the Aegean Airlines flight to LHR left Athens on time but then because London Heathrow had suffered from the assault of a dozen or so snow flakes that morning, we had to hold in holding pattern over Southeast England for half an hour or more, and finally arrived about 45 minutes late. That left 45 minutes to connect from the farthest gate in Terminal 2A to a middling gate in Terminal 2B. In addition to the walk slightly less than a mile, there were two barriers to cross. One was Security and another was just a document checking barrier, apparently. Security barrier all told took about 12 minutes, and the other Barrier Barrier got stuck because there was someone ahead who had document issues. Finally they let us with tight connections through, but by then the damage was done. There was no room to lose another 10 minutes while the Barrier Guards bickered over stuff.
By then it was physically impossible to get to the departure gate before departure. So instead of going to the departure gate, I just went to the Transfer Desk United agent on the way. They agreed that this was a legitimate misconnect, since normally it is not possible to make that connection in less than an hour. With surprising efficiency the agent booked me on a reroute via IAD instead of the original routing via EWR, on a flight leaving about two hours later, arriving finally into MCO just 25 minutes later than the original routing with a long connection at EWR to account for transfer from Terminal B to Terminal A or C. They even managed to transfer the checked bag to the new route, just 5 minutes before the departure of the EWR flight. How they managed it I would never know, but clearly an extremely efficient IT infrastructure was involved. Anyhow I was impressed.
So now with boarding passes for an achievable route duly planted in my Apple Wallet, and United App, I leisurely strolled over to the United Club in Terminal 2B to wait for the departure. The rest of the trip was uneventful. But I was overall left quite impressed with the excellent handling of the various IROPs situations.
On the outbound, the United flight from Newark to Munich left the gate at Newark on time but left Newark about 40 minutes late. My connection at Munich to Lufthansa to Athens was 1 hour and 30 minutes. United finally arrived an hour late leaving 30 mins to connect. Huffing and puffing across the airport including a Inter-Concourse APM ride, I made it to the departure gate while the flight was still boarding.
I had placed an AirTag in my checked baggage. So almost as soon as I arrived in Athens I knew that my bag most likely had not since FindMy showed that my bag was in Munich. By the time I got to the baggage pickup I had received an SMS notification from Lufthansa about the misconnect and a form to fill to recover the bag, which I duly filled and submitted, and receipt of it was acknowledged. I chose "Deliver to Address" and gave the address of my hotel.
I checked mid-afternoon in FindMy and discovered that the bag was now at Athens Airport. Meanwhile, being a seasoned traveler I always have a day or two worth of provisions in my hand baggage so I just showered, changed and went off for a wonderful Greek dinner. When I got back I saw an email from Lufthansa's baggage agent that the bag was in Athens and would be delivered the next morning. It had contact information for the delivery agent in Athens who will do the actual delivering.
Next morning I watched the bag leave Athens Airport and meander around various parts of Athens before showing up at the hotel. I was out with family when it arrived. The hotel folks knew it would arrive, so they received and stored it. I got an email notification that it had been delivered, I go the bag from concierge when I got to the hotel.
On the way back the Aegean Airlines flight to LHR left Athens on time but then because London Heathrow had suffered from the assault of a dozen or so snow flakes that morning, we had to hold in holding pattern over Southeast England for half an hour or more, and finally arrived about 45 minutes late. That left 45 minutes to connect from the farthest gate in Terminal 2A to a middling gate in Terminal 2B. In addition to the walk slightly less than a mile, there were two barriers to cross. One was Security and another was just a document checking barrier, apparently. Security barrier all told took about 12 minutes, and the other Barrier Barrier got stuck because there was someone ahead who had document issues. Finally they let us with tight connections through, but by then the damage was done. There was no room to lose another 10 minutes while the Barrier Guards bickered over stuff.
By then it was physically impossible to get to the departure gate before departure. So instead of going to the departure gate, I just went to the Transfer Desk United agent on the way. They agreed that this was a legitimate misconnect, since normally it is not possible to make that connection in less than an hour. With surprising efficiency the agent booked me on a reroute via IAD instead of the original routing via EWR, on a flight leaving about two hours later, arriving finally into MCO just 25 minutes later than the original routing with a long connection at EWR to account for transfer from Terminal B to Terminal A or C. They even managed to transfer the checked bag to the new route, just 5 minutes before the departure of the EWR flight. How they managed it I would never know, but clearly an extremely efficient IT infrastructure was involved. Anyhow I was impressed.
So now with boarding passes for an achievable route duly planted in my Apple Wallet, and United App, I leisurely strolled over to the United Club in Terminal 2B to wait for the departure. The rest of the trip was uneventful. But I was overall left quite impressed with the excellent handling of the various IROPs situations.
Last edited:
