3 Valleys – Day 1 – Cancelled Flight

I had to leave the apartment at 3:30am to get to the airport, so I decided not to sleep and stay awake the whole night. It has been snowing quite heavily in the UK so we did have concerns about our flight.

Before leaving to go to the airport, we checked the EasyJet flight to Lyon, France departing 630am and it was still scheduled to fly and all looked well. We arrived at Gatwick Airport at about 5am and checked all our baggage in and headed to waiting lounge.

You would think that if you are waiting to board a flight it is scheduled to fly and everything is ready to go. Shortly after buying some breakfast, we glanced at the departure flight screen to find our flight had been cancelled!

We spoke to the airline staff whom weren’t very helpful. The reason due to cancellation is due to the shortage of crew members. They said because of the snow, the staff couldn’t make it to work. Surely they would know this before checking passengers on a flight.

So we left the waiting lounge, walked through a few doors and ended up at baggage carousel. We got our luggage then proceeded to walk to EasyJet helpdesk to claim a refund or change flights.

The airline staff said the flight was going to be rescheduled to 1630 and we knew straight away that flight was going to be cancelled with further snow expected.

While waiting in the long line to speak to EasyJet staff about a new flight, the guy standing behind us ripped the smelliest fart ever! I turned around and bang, this smell just hit me in the face; it was ruthless!

We gave up lining up at the EasyJet line because we knew it was a waste of time and all flights today by EasyJet would be cancelled. Non budget airlines however had a far better chance of flying so we headed to the North Terminal and spoke to British Airways.

Our new plan was to fly to Geneva, Switzerland and somehow use our connecting bus ticket orginally issued for Lyon and use it in Geneva because they were the same bus company.

British Airways quoted us £150 one way flight to Geneva at 1030am which was quite expensive considering we paid £50 return to Lyon. There was also a BA flight at 2pm for £125 which was too late.

Instead we ran around the terminal and spoke to any travel company that flew to Geneva. By chance the first person we spoke to said there were available seats and the flight was leaving at 830am for £100, so we agreed. Since the flight was non budget, we knew we’d go to Geneva!

The flight was delayed by perhaps 1 hour so we managed to arrive in Geneva at about midday. We gained momentum in the luck stakes as we managed to get bus tickets to La Tania at no extra cost when it should have beem more.

We arrived at the apartment at approximately 4pm and this was only 1 hour late if we had caught the original Lyon flight, so its not a bad effort.