After a very good flight from Atlanta to Doha, we have a horrible airport experience where things go from bad to worse and into the Theater of the Absurd.
Our airport experience is usually sublime. The green jacketed brigade typically make the move from the plane to the lounge a most pleasant experience.
With Carol's injury, we need a layover in Doha to allow Carol time to exercise and move about. To make it easier on her, CJ books the Onyx Transit Hotel in the airport for two nights. That causes everything to go wrong and wronger.
It seems that local security rules dictate that one can only be in the airport in Doha for less than 24 hours. No where during the hotel booking process did it say that.
We are offered a range of absurd possible solutions and at one point CJ blows a fuze yet manages not to get arrested.
After 3 and half hours sitting in the wheelchair waiting area, he changes strategy. He chases down a manager and tells him a story. It is the story of a woman who has travelled in business class with Qatar 24 times and gets injured 3000 miles from her departure destination in Seattle. He tells of the change in flights and the horrible return option which was not described that dumps us in the closed Melbourne airport and midnight and that woman customer stuck in a wheelchair, at best, for six hours. He tells of making a hotel reservation for two evenings without any warning that it was illegal under the airport's security regulations. And he tells of now sitting in the airport for coming on four hours and being offered nothing but an absurd range of solutions and asks the manager a simple question. What did we as customers do wrong to deserve such abuse? ...and 25 times business class customers nonetheless!
He suggests that at this point the airline should figure out a way to fly us to Adelaide on the direct flight on ANY day in the next week they have two open seats AND that they figure out a way to get the two of us to bed in our hotel.
Within 15 minutes we are rebooked to Adelaide on the direct flight and working our way through a convoluted process to the hotel. It seems that since they have screwed us over for so long, it is now coming up on half past eight having arrived at 5pm. In a few minutes, if we leave and arrive back in the airport for tomorrow's 8:45 flight, we will be under the 24-hour rule.
Thanks only to the marvelous and extremely nice and competent two green jacketed wheelchair drivers, who do not believe the malarky they are feeding us related to our checked luggage, the four of us visit the baggage area and discover our bags unattended with no direction to anyone to transfer them to our flight. The fellows collect the baggage and are now pushing two wheelchairs, five pieces of carryon luggage, and two very heavy pieces of checked baggage. CJ is in a wheelchair also since his recurring groin problem has worsened with all the airport walking he was doing.
Alcohol is not allowed into Qatar. To complete this absurd evolution, we must exit the airport (for a few MINUTES), and check back into tomorrow's flight. Immigration make us purchase an Qatar entry visa for those few minutes. One of our drivers informs customs that we have nine bottles of alcohol but that the bags were never intended to enter Qatar, are only entering Qatar because we have been unwittingly caught in their 24-hour hell, and that the drivers promise the alcohol will be on its way out of Qatar in MINUTES. Sanity prevails at customs and we are soon on our way.
The luggage gets checked. We clear immigration, again! At security our house key causes CJ's backpack to get checked. This is the second time the house key and its aircraft carrier key chain have been misidentified as a knife.
Arriving at the hotel, there is a long wait as the staff makes several fruitless phone calls to ASSURE, we have not entered the airport within 24 hours of our 8:45 departure. For all the trouble it causes, what is the purpose of this insanity?
None of this should have taken three and a half hours. We could have been taken to the lounge for four hours, rested and eaten. They could have retrieved us then, did all the things we needed to do to comply with the 24-hour rule and we would have avoided the anxiety and mistreatment. Actually, at one point they had proposed the solution but it was when we still had the 2am flight to Melbourne. That proposal was that we would have remained in the lounge until 2am, when we would have been required to enter and exit the airport. And since our tickets were in two day's time, we would have been required to wake at 2am the next day and do the exit/enter charade a second time! Go figure what sense this all makes.