The day after our christmas delay, we had to fly out (Dec. 26) to Zürich to catch a trans-atlantic flight back to the states. It snowed the night before and having experienced train delays once before... we were nervous about missing the flight all together. We get to the airport on time, our flight is even departing on time! (it is still snowing at this point). We make it into Zürich and are scrambling to make it to the international transfer desk. We need to reprint Amanda's tickets becuase both couldn't be printed back in Hanover for some reason. There is a HUGE LINE. At this point i'm worried we are about to miss our flight. I check the status board... and come to find out. Our flight is cancelled. Because of Snow in Boston. Crap.
The line we were standing in was full of panicked, outraged to-be passengers waiting for explanations/accommodations/rebooking. At this point, I had a bright idea and just called Lufthansa/Air Swiss service line and was immediately connected. I was standing in line, booking our return tickets while everyone was panicking. Unfortunately, because of prior booked flights and other passengers on standby, we couldnt get a flight out until the 28th (to either New York or Boston). This posed a problem as Amanda had to work the next day.
We booked the tickets, and waited in the rest of the line to grab accomodation vouchers. The airline comped two nights (roughly 220 CHF per night) in Zürich Hilton including ALL meals. 3x Lunch dinners, 2x dinner, 2x breakfasts (at about 20CHF each) 1 swiss frank is about 1.03 us dollar so right there...the inconvenience of delay has given us $580 worth of accommodation and meals and a 2 night stay in the beautiful city of Zürich. They postponed my return flight to germany, free of charge. Even under stress, the customer service was absolutely brilliant.
I didn't take as many pictures this time, but what i can tell you is that Zürich is absolutely expensive. EXTREMELY. Fast food can cost 15CHF, a plate of chinese food will fetch 30CHF. We are lucky to have had our accommodations paid for.
on our last day in Zürich, we befriended a swiss kitty.
Because technically we are on stand-by....but we are guaranteed booked on this flight, they had to allocate all the free seats to try to assign them to passengers.
We initially both booked window seats in economy and were hoping for the same. But the attendant said, "I'm very sorry, we do not have any window seats left. If it is ok, we can put you in isle seats next to each other in business class." We didn't want to inconvenience anyone, so we just took the business class seats. YAY (We later found to upgrade from economy to business, the ticket would have cost $400 each at the register)
We have a bunch of space, leg room, a desk lamp, power outlet, control for personal tv screens, our chairs fold into beds and has a massage feature. I wonder what the hell first class is like at this point!
they served us champagne before departing.... and there were an assortment of wines, champagnes and beer available to us at any time. we just needed to ask. In flight dinner Menu:
I chose a first course of the Roasted Duck
and a main course of Smoked Pike-Perch.
The personal TV's had an assortment of recent movies available to play at any time, including many foreign Independent films. I watched a japanese film called Hanamizuki, Avatar, then Inception. There were a couple TV shows and over 80 different musical artists and genres available at the touch of a button. Movie time ice cream was a bonus.
The remote also doubled as a controller for various games you could play on the flight. Some of which include Battleship and Tetris where you could play against another passenger on a plane.
Being upgraded to Business definitely made travelling a lot more comfortable. I don't know if it's $400 dollars more comfy, but if i could afford it, i might go for it.
Through all the delays, cancellations and 'headaches' we felt really awesome about gaining 2 unplanned days tacked onto our vacation, and about $1500 worth of comped hotels and meals (including the overnight in Hanover).... if you haven't been following from the beginning.... the moral of this story is book your trips through a german airline, around winter when it will definitely snow, in cities you want to visit...because more likely than not, you will gain a couple days here and there for free, and at good value.
