On serendipitously discovering a few days ago that Egyptair had cancelled my months-ago-booked flight from Aswan to Cairo, and rebooked me on a flight that had no hope of connecting with my ongoing flight to London and hence to YVR (with no notification), I thought it behoved me to confirm airport pickup with my hotel in Istanbul. Thereupon I learned that despite my call to Lufthansa air a few weeks ago who confirmed the airport wouldn’t change until the end of April (there is a new international airport built there somewhat along the lines of the Montreal International – miles out of town, billed online as a “100 min” taxi ride from central Istanbul), the change happened this past weekend. Lufthansa didn’t bother to let their passengers know, apparently, and my boarding pass still reads arrival at “ATATURK”, the old airport. An amazing call with a Lufthansa agent who was completely uninterested in clarifying, rude, and didn’t seem to grasp the problem (a slight difference for pickup details….) ended in him hanging up on me – note that I never lost my temper albeit very tempted to during the whole useless conversation. I eventually found an announcement on an article online about the airport transfer – not on the airline’s website – a sentence alerting folk at the top of the flight status confirmation would surely have been easy as would have been changing info on the boarding pass… Not a good start to a long haul flight, my first experience with Lufthansa definitely not a positive one. Let’s hope the pilots know where they’re going though with recent events that’s not ensured either apparently…..
The fares to the new airport are at least three times the old fares due to the distance (and of course I arrive at rush hour). Sounds like it will take the same time from Frankfurt to Istanbul as from the airport to downtown… 🙁
And so we start. With all our computer tools shouldn’t it be easier to fly than it used to be? Seems more chaotic, and add all the layers of “security” clearance to go through – beam me up, Scotty.