You often hear of horror stories about lost luggage on long haul trips. Just recently, I experienced this when my luggage didn’t arrive in Madrid on a flight from Sydney. Interestingly enough flying Emirates and circling over Dubai, while the fog cleared for an hour, I had less than 45 minutes to race to the connecting gate to make the flight to the Spanish capital.
Connections to European destinations from Sydney are at the other end of the large multiple football field-sized terminal, and after getting lost after taking the wrong directions from someone in the terminal, my usual stroll to the gate turned into a sprint. Dubai airport was packed, and the call came over the loud speaker that the Madrid flight was closing and the gate was shutting. Like a scene from some mad dash movie, I made a dart for the gate, while it never occurred to me that my bags wouldn’t make the same connection.
When I arrived in Madrid, other passengers from Sydney collected their bags, so I naturally thought mine would arrive too. After two hours of waiting and watching, nothing came around on the baggage carousel. Turns out, due to the fog, my bags were on another flight to land later that night. Apparently, connecting flights have such a short turn-around that it really is almost impossible for bags to be offloaded and loaded again.
At 9.30pm that night, there was a knock on my hotel door. And there were my bags, true to their word – Emirates came through, even though much was lost in translation while they were trying to explain to me in vain, what was going to happen after reporting my lost bags (my Spanish isn’t too great). I had however, gone shopping that afternoon when I arrived in the Spanish capital, and bought underwear, socks, shirts, pants, and a pair of shoes, as I would be up early the following day to leave Madrid.
Now the proud owner of some smart Spanish threads (I’ve always fancied myself in a pair of red pants!), it turns out loosing your bags in transfer can actually work in your favour sometimes.
Tell us your lost luggage stories below.
