It’s best to just stay at home

A passenger wishes to fly from Johannesburg to Dublin.

Due to an international pandemic, there are possible quarantines and subject-to-change travel restrictions throughout.

Which option should they choose?

Option A leaves Johannesburg and stops in Frankfurt, going no further.

Option B leaves Johannesburg and flies to Addis Ababa, then to Stockholm, then to Dublin.

Option C leaves Johannesburg and flies to Frankfurt, then to the USA/Canada, then to Dublin.

Option D leaves Johannesburg and flies to Frankfurt, then to London, then stops.

Welcome to my life.

I was meant to fly back to Dublin on 16 November, but then I got an e-mail saying my itinerary had changed due to the no-longer-novel-or-amusing coronavirus.

Changed? They completely cancelled the second leg of my journey, from Germany to Ire-land. They’d take me to Frankfurt, and that was that.

So I phoned, requesting another connecting flight.

Every flight from Frankfurt to Dublin was cancelled. However, they could rebook me a month later, on 16 December, and I could wait in hope.

Or they could send me from Johannesburg to Frankfurt, and then connect me to Destination Unknown in North America, and then fly me back to Dublin from there – although there’s no guarantee that wouldn’t be cancelled.

Or they could rebook me from Johannesburg to Addis Ababa to Stockholm to Dublin – if that wasn’t cancelled.

Or they could just refund me half the ticket price, because I’d already used the other half.

I went online and searched. Air routes are extremely limited, but I found three flights to Dublin from Frankfurt, each ping-pong-ing through another hub.

It makes no sense to book one’s own multi-hub connection be-cause a journey arranged independently means that if anything gets cancelled, you’re on your own.

So could they book one of these, I wondered?

No, they could not, because the airline codeshares of old are largely refused now. Hash-tag Covid.

So I cancelled everything, and chose Option E: rebook with a different airline (from just three available) at great expense.

Sigh, a passenger should just stay home.

Jennie Ridyard

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.