Travel to US – All is Well That Ends Well

“Appa, this time you two are NOT travelling alone; we are coming to Bangalore. On return we all fly together to US,” conveyed my elder son in a tone that had traces of a directive. Yes, nowadays it is bottom-up command – their turn to bat. He is fully justified. In the recent past I was hospitalized twice – once for Covid and later for severe Vertigo. But as fate would have it, at the last minute their trip had to be cancelled, and the just two of us, Aunty and I, travelled as usual.

“Have a safe flight,” said the staff at the counter as he handed the boarding pass to us. In passing he mentioned the reporting time at the gate which sounded much later than originally scheduled. “Yes, the flight is delayed sir. Not to worry, you require just 30 minutes at the next point to catch your connecting flight to US.”

The thoughtful travel agent lady who earlier booked our tickets had opted for the wheel-chair facility for us so that we got transported in the buggy to the connecting flight without any hindrance. The only problem we encountered was, Business class or Economy, the buggy operators at the European airport waited to pick up similar wheel-chair passengers from different flights landing around that time and drove them all together – to save on their labour. The net result? We missed the connecting flight.

We were rebooked via Washington Dulles. No problem. The only snag was we got different responses on our checked in-baggage. One said it would go direct to San Francisco as originally tagged, regardless of re-booking. Another said that for security reasons, these days the checked-in baggage would travel with the passenger.  At the Washington airport the staff on duty checked computer and said that the baggage was still stuck at the European airport and we should file a baggage claim on arrival at our destination.

Like the multi-car rear-end collisions in a road accident, we would miss our final connecting flight too, from San Francisco to Phoenix. We would thus be stuck in San Francisco from 9 pm till early next morning. Our younger son in San Francisco, closely following our movements, rushed to the airport along with his son armed with Aloo and Paneer parathas from the best restaurant in town and light blankets for the few hours of halt at the airport. A blessing in disguise – we spent time together catching up with grandson’s recently acquired Kung Fu black-belt status, Kamala Haasan’s Vikram, Drishyam famous Jeetu Joseph’s  12th Man and other movies that swarm the new-found OTT world, the rain-affected fifth and final T-20 series between SA and India and so on.

Finally, we reached Phoenix on a Wednesday morning instead of the previous evening. Alas, without the baggage. Love’s labour’s lost. Aunty had hand-picked items for the grandchildren, daughter in law and son, and was hoping to open the suitcases right at the doorstep and hand them over along with the bundle of select Indian sweets and snacks.

The baggage arrived three days later; luckily everything was intact. “All is well that ends well,” I said, quashing my earlier decision to claim damages from the airlines for the inconvenience caused. Better sense prevailed that the fine print of the airlines’ terms and conditions would more than amply cover such and still complicated contingencies, and I would only be waging a losing battle. Discretion is the best part of valour, I said to myself as I put the incident on the back burner, and here we are, all set to make the most of our visit.