Is it just me, or is there a certain antagonism between women and airports?
Last year I brought a friend of mine, Bella, who had visited me in Birmingham to the airport. Ok, she lives in New York and was travelling for a few months before so I wasn’t too surprised when I saw her piece of luggage – a man(!)-sized wardrobe on wheels.
As she was flying across oceans that wasn’t a problem so far , but then she wanted to fly to Rome to see some friends before making her way to Australia. And slowly but surely running out of money, she wanted to fly with a low-budget airline and that was when things got a bit dramatic, if not traumatic (well, at least for her).
When we arrived at the airport with that rolling walk-in wardrobe of hers, Ryan Air flatly refused to accept her suitcase as it weighed in at a staggering 35 kilos.
They stated that for health and safety reasons staff was only allowed to lift suitcases up to 30 kilos. So off we went to buy another suitcase at the airport there and then to distribute the weight.
And back is was to the check-in desk - just to face the next obstacle.
Of course Ryan Air only allows one 15 kg suitcase per person and for every kilo more you payed £15 each (then). As even before there was 20 kg excess weight, together with the weight of the brand new suitcase it came to just over £350 in penalty.
Now with the checkout being close to closing and boarding to begin shortly, this was not the time to divide the belongings up in “necessary” and “not-so-necessary” (just to do that for all the pairs of shoes Bella had with her would have taken an eternity) and with me always willing to come to an aide of an damsel in distress it was a good thing that I had my credit card with me.
Funny as all this that was (now, a few months later), I thought that this would have been something of a one-time-off thing.
Well.
Today, this afternoon, I accompanied my friend Annalisa, one of my housemates, to the airport as she was leaving to return to her native Sicily.
Like Bella, she was running out of money.
Unlike Bella, she had sent some of her stuff via carrier days before and made sure that her suitcase did not come to more that 12 kg. So, what could go wrong?
We went to the check-in and the weigh-in went fine – 12,5 kilos. But then the lady behind the counter asked for the on-line check-in print-out. When I saw Annalisa’s eyes widening in surprise I had a deja-vu feeling coming over me.
Without the print-out Annalisa had to pay £40 for the airport desk check-in.
Did I mention before that when a damsel is in distress having a credit-card comes in handy sometimes?
Sigh.
Perhaps it will be third time lucky and next time I bring one of my female friends to the airport all we need are matches to light the cigarettes before she is boarding the plane.
