When You Are A Pilots Wife, With A Free Ticket And A Mr Penguin Makes Your Life Miserable In Copenhagen…

I recently got back to Egypt from a months holiday in Norway… But trust me the trip back was anything but easy! As soon as you plan, or talk, or even think about Egypt, all these obstacle and completely random problems, issues just keep appearing and being thrown into your face, giving you a powerful slap!

Lets just be honest here, when you fly with Egyptiar, you will most likely always have some sort of problem, until now, I don’t think I’ve ever flown without any issues… Actually maybe when I was a normal passenger and not a wife of a captain… The last two years I’ve been flying to Norway via Copenhagen with Egyptair and Scandinavian or Norwegian from Copenhagen… If I’m going directly to Norway, then this is the easiest and fastest route. However recently I’ve started having problems EVERY SINGLE time I arrive in Copenhagen… Last time I left Norway I even took a detour to Paris to avoid having to stop in Copenhagen.

The whole issue started when I got married and started getting upgraded tickets… I guess when you marry a pilot you should be punished, right, especially when flying with his company!? The thing with an upgraded ticket is it is ‘if available’ as my husband is a first officer… And that’s fine, but the stamp that you get on your ticket to be upgraded is in arabic, so NOBODY outside Egypt will understand what this means.. This means that you have to contact the station manager of Egyptair at your destination, to make sure he upgrades your ticket correctly, because he is the only one who understands this stamp.

The first few times after I got married and had my upgraded tickets the station manager at Copenhagen airport was okey with me… I mean he would come a little late to meet me, and be annoyed that I called him to check in when he was replying to an email, and he would sometimes have to pray before helping me, leaving me waiting up to 45 minutes… But he always showed up and got my bags checked in and upgraded my ticket. Then I had a son… The first time I came with my son, he was a huffing and puffing machine from when I called him while he was eating his lunch (the holy lunch if the station manager must never be interrupted!) until he gave me my ticket… There apparently was a huuuuge problem, that they could not find my ticket and then they could not find my sons ticket and bladi bladi blah! But in the end I got two boarding passes…

Let me just tell you this Egyptair station manager in Copenhagen is a special one… He is about 100 years old and should have retired 200 years ago… He looks like he has been a fighter in both World Wars, then been to Afghanistan for a few years, and just got back from fighting the frontline of Iraq’s war… I mean you say Hi to this guy and you are afraid this Hi will push him over the edge and make him collapse… He walks like a handicapped penguin and everything is a huuuuuuge problem! Lets refer to him as Mr Penguin from now on to make things easier…

So the time before last, was like my biggest flying nightmare! Luckily my husband was with me, or else I would have sat down and cried… I’ll try to make the story short because it makes me sooo angry and frustrated that my blood pressure is increasing as we speak, or rather as I write and you read! So we call Mr Penguin to check us in as my husband has an extra crew, and I had an upgraded ticket… He says he will meet us in an hour, which is one hour before take-off time… Just to push the time limit and make us sweat a little, he was probably suuuper busy eating or checking his emails! Too busy to attend to people flying on the aircraft you are supposed to dispatch in an hour! Anyways, he then comes to check us in… My husband is at the check-in counter and Mr Penguin suddenly leaves after 5 minutes… walking straight past me looking at the floor with his handicapped penguin walk of shame… COMPLETELY ignoring me… Then my husband comes over to me and says I have to hurry and check our suitcases in because we are having problem checking us in and if we check in our luggage its going to take them a long time to off-load the bags.. Normally Egyptair waits for the passengers instead of off-loading the baggage… Which was very smart thinking from my husband! I mean we were supposed to be boarding the aircraft and instead we are stood at the check-in counter with problems, not yet passed the security control or passport control! MAYOR STRESS and Mr Penguin has just left us to deal with the problem… Anyways cut a long story short the problem was that my ticket was a free-ticket as I’m the wife of a pilot and my sons ticket was an infant.. Now the super duper amazingly intelligent people working in ticketing office for Egyptair, in Egyptairs main office has managed to make my ticket, and NOT couple the infant with me… So my 8 months son is flying solo this flight… He got his own ticket! Okey, question, how many brain cells do you need to understand that an infant under two years old sits on the mother lap and therefore cannot travel alone… Do you then give this baby his own ticket!? HONESTLY people, this is your job, YOU get paid to MAKE tickets, why can’t you just do it correctly!??? Does it take so much more effort to do it the right way? Anyways HOW do you even book an infant ticket without a mother ticket!?

So the head of the Star Alliance station in Copenhagen had to come to fix the problem.. The problem is they could check me in but couldn’t check in my son as he was not coupled with a grown up, and infant tickets must be coupled to be checked in.. They couldn’t even override the system.. Mr Penguin had told them, after abandoning us, that they should just write a hand written boarding pass and he shall fix the problem at the gate… Do you think we got far with a hand written boarding pass?!?!?! I got to the security check and they said I couldn’t pass without a proper boarding pass… They called the head of Scandinavian station who had to come and stamp the boarding pass, sign it and follow me through to the gate… at the gate there was a sweaty old stressed Mr Penguin waiting… He had a few angry words with my husband, as my husband thought it was cowardly of him to leave us at the check-in counter, when he is supposed to be there to help! Then Mr Penguin threatened us with that he hopes next time he sees us our son he will not be travelling as an infant, which means two years… I mean who says that, how old are you, you threaten us as we are leaving? Anyways we were the last to board, we were boarding at the time the aircraft was supposed to take off! They closed the door after us! How embarrassing, I hate those people who make the aircraft late and just stroll onboard minutes after take-off time like as if the whole world will wait for them.. and then we were one of them, but trust me I wasnt strolling and there was a whole lotta sweating going on!

Apparently this happens all the time with tickets booked by Egyptair workers in Egyptairs main office in Cairo, according to both the Scandinavian check-in ladies and Mr Penguin… So if this happens all the time Mr Penguin, why don’t you report it to the main office so they can do something about it, instead of threatening the pilots and customers of Egyptair that he doesn’t want to see us again for another two years.. I mean does this honestly solve your problem!? There will just be another couple you have to deal with, that might not be as nice and forgiving as us, I mean I honestly wanted to throw him on the next flight to the moon and leave him there!

Anyways that was that lovely story… Now last time when I flew to Copenhagen, which was a few days ago, I had a similar problem…

The Egyptian shit started flowing in at all corner of the airport in Oslo.. They could check my luggage all the way to Cairo, but not give me a boarding pass, I would have to get that at the transfer center in Copenhagen. But she found my ticket and my sons ticket without any problems… Then at the transfer center in Copenhagen she could find my ticket but was not able to check me in as I had an infant on my ticket but the infant had a different ticket number AGAIN!!!!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!?! After my husband specifically told them to book the two tickets together and couple them and even write a comment on the ticket that we are flying together, me and my infant… The brain cells were obviously not enough to comprehend such a huuuuuge and difficult task…. SO MUCH INFORMATION… CANNOT COMPREHEND… BOOOOOOOM, teeny tiny brain explodes and they book two separate tickets, one for me and one for an infant travelling alone!

I told the lady at the transfer desk to call LOVELY Mr Penguin and let him deal with this problem because he is supposed to fix it.. So she did and he told her to write two hand written boarding passes and he will fix it at the gate… So professional… She rolled her eyes and said this would only be something Mr Penguin could suggest and no other airline would allow this…

I got to the gate and Mr Penguin is there in an almost collapsing state, half running around fixing all these Egyptian problems! I show him my fake hand written tickets and upgrades… He tells me and my dad to have a seat… He upgrades my dad without a problem… but has to fix the huuuuuuge problem I have given him… You know the huge problem, that I (ME) caused, because I got the ticket from the MAIN OFFICE… My dad got his ticket immediately without any problems when booking through a travel agency website, whilst I who booked my ticket with EGYPTAIR, at their main office in Cairo with Egyptair employees, I have a huuuge problem…

After a while half the plane has boarded and we are still waiting… Mr Penguin comes over and babbles to me in arabic that he doesn’t know if he can let me on this flight, because there is a huge problem… I pretended like I didn’t understand and said excuse me… He just goes I don’t know what to do, you have caused a huge problem like last time, every time you come you give me problems… and he walks away, or rather waddles away like a drunk penguin!

When nearly the whole plane has boarded the aircraft he comes over and tells me to sit next to my father in business class but he cannot give me a boarding pass… So I ask what is the problem with my ticket…

– You don’t have a ticket, it doesn’t exist…

– Yes I do… I have the piece of paper with my ticket on it! My luggage is checked through to Cairo, which can only be done with a valid ticket, the lady in Oslo found my ticket in the database, the lady at the transfer desk found my ticket, and it clearly states on my hand written boarding pass that my ticket was OK, but my sons was not coupled with my ticket…

– No no, youre sons ticket is not a problem, it’s the same problem like last time, your tickets doesn’t exist and the plane is full, so I should actually not let you onboard…

– My tickets is booked at the Egyptair office, and CONFIRMED… I can’t understand how you can say my tickets doesn’t exist, it’s the same type of ticket ive been flying with for the last two years…. How can my sons ticket be okey if my ticket doesn’t exist? he’s flying on my lap…

– Yeah well the plane is fully booked and you are not supposed to be on this flight, but you are lucky…

We board the plane and there are three other passenger in business class were there are a total of about 24 seats… FULLY BOOKED MY FREAKING ASS MR PENGUIN!!!

So in conclusion… Screw the World, or rather screw you Egypt… Hahaha, I mean I don’t know what the country has come to when I can’t just get a ticket with my son that exists, and has not been booked in such a messed up way that it takes a team to guide me through the security controls with hand written boarding cards… Never trust a penguin!

Well done for sucking out all the energy out of me before I even arrive to Egypt…