The GCW Tour, Spain & Morocco: Well This Must Make a Person Feel Important

We're still in Barcelona.

After the world's worst included breakfast, we got to the Barcelona Airport this morning at the planned time of 10:00 am. Check in went fairly smoothly, though oddly the Air Canada personnel were all wearing Swiss Air uniforms and badges. We got our passports stamped and made it to the gate just as boarding for our flight was beginning. A few moments later our "zone" was called, and since we were strategically positioned near the front of the crowd, we were quickly on board the plane.

We found our seats and were very pleased to see there were outlets at the seats, since we had both left our European adapters stuck in the wall at Hotel Bed4U, and our phone and iPad batteries were on their last legs. Since my iPad was in the worst shape, we plugged it in first to begin charging.

After a but, we noticed the flight was pretty empty. The couple in front of us noticed as well and asked if they could move to some open seats on the other side of the plane.

Oh, no. The flight is full. We've just stopped boarding for a bit.

Stopped boarding? Why would they stop boarding?

Funny you should ask, as the pilot came on the PA to explain: when he awoke that morning, the co-pilot gad felt ill and got worse as he reached the airport. Thus, he reported his condition to airline and airport officials -- the fool! So while he know felt better, he had to be checked out by the doctors before the plane could leave.

Apparently, they were very thorough doctors, as we kept getting that same announcement for nearly an hour. But, joy of joys, after an hour we got word that the airport doctors had cleared the co-pilot to fly, so boarding would resume. Yay! So quickly unplugged my phone and other devices from the empty seats around me, and, indeed, the plane started to fill.

The flight attendants asked everyone to quickly find their seats. Rush, rush, rush. Everyone be seated, as we're closing the doors. And... nothing.

Again the pilot makes an announcement: while the airport docs have cleared the co-pilot to fly, Air Canada policy requires clearance from the company's doctors as well, so we're just waiting on that.

Finally, an hour and fifty minutes after we were supposed to take off, word comes down from Air Canada headquarters: co-pilot is grounded, cancel the flight. Everyone off the plane.

And now the goat rodeo begins...

Plan A -- We're rescheduling the flight for 11:30 pm tonight, and will give each passenger a €20 voucher for food. Everyone line up back at the gate to get your voucher. What about connections, etc.? The gate attendants will take care of that.

So we all line up for our vouchers -- and chance to talk to the gate attendants. Evidence, of course, suggests that Air Canada has never dealt with more than three people at a time so crowd control is not in their toolkit. So what begins as a line, very quickly devolves into a disorganized mob surrounding the desk with a very long tail of increasingly frustrated queue members emerging out of it.

So of course it's time for Plan B...

Plan B -- Everyone just be patient while we figure out what we're going to do. No more food vouchers until that happens. And what about the folks who took the food vouchers and left, planning to return at 11:30? They don't say.

Oops, time for Plan C...

Plan C -- We're going to put everyone on tomorrow's Toronto flight, and so will be handing out hotel vouchers. Stay in line for your hotel voucher. Wait, if today's cancelled Toronto flight was full, won't tomorrow's be just as bad? How are you planning to squeeze us all on? And what about our connections? Good questions, without answers.

But we all stayed queued, until, wait for it, Plan D...

Plan D -- We are rescheduling today's Toronto flight for tomorrow at 9:00am. You will still get a hotel and dinner voucher, but you need to go to baggage claim and get your bags and then return to window #514 at the departure check in desks to get your vouchers.

Now let's just pause here for a moment. If you've been to an airport since, say, September 11, 2001, you've probably noticed that the human traffic at an airport is designed to flow in one, and only one, direction. This is even truer at international terminals, where passport and immigration control applies even stronger unidirectional gates to the flow. By the time we reached our gate, we were no longer officially "in Europe," having officials exited the country when our passports were stamped.

In short, Air Canada has just sent 400 extremely frustrated rats backwards through a maze designed not to let them pass.

It went about as well as you might expect. My two favorite moments were, first, when the Asian gentleman pressed the emergency stop on an escalator so he could use it to go down instead of the preprogrammed up, and second, when the two very confused Spanish immigration officers figured out that they had 400 people coming at them from the back of their booth, instead of the front, so they exited to booth deal with us all. Want to know how to officially cancel the EU exit stamp in you passport? The officer takes a pen and draws two lines through the EU symbol at the corner and then scratches out the serial number on the stamp. At least that's how they handled it in our case.

So now we're all back in Europe, so I send the niece to claim our bags -- I gave her a cart -- and I make a dash for window 514 at departures. Which is closed. But I recognize a few faces in the line at 513, so I queue up there. I'm like fifth in line, and by the time the clerk finishes with the first person there must be two hundred people lined up.

Once again, Air Canada displays its top notch crowd control skills and opens two additional windows. But rather than pulling people from the existing central line, they just stare blankly into space until two new lines form, and all the people in the existing line are even more pissed off.

I recall a TV show once built on the premise of replacing a clerk or waitress or some such with someone who would just annoy the hell out of a patron until they blew a gasket. Depending on how long they tolerated the abuse -- and, presumably, whether or not they would subsequently sign a release form -- the patron would receive a cash prize of some amount. I was starting to think I should be looking for hidden cameras.

Anyway, I finally get my turn with the clerk.

Me: So how do my niece and I get to Vancouver?
Clerk: <blank stare>
Me: Toronto was a connection for us. Our final destination is Vancouver. We obviously missed our connection, so how do we get to Vancouver?
Clerk: Oh, I don't have any information on that, sir. They'll help you with that when you check in at 6:00 am tomorrow. I'm just giving out hotel vouchers.
Me: So you're telling me I could get stuck in Toronto.
Clerk: They'll help you with that tomorrow.

So here we are. Miles from anything interesting in Barcelona, sitting in an airport hotel, with zero clean clothes, not much in the way of euros, a promised free dinner at eight, a promised free breakfast which the hotel will start serving long after we're gone, and yet another 5:00 am wake-up call.

But the niece tells me that she just reached 4,000,000 on Temple Run, so it's not all bad.

But I'd hate to have to calculate how much the co-pilot's almost sick day cost Air Canada.