DON´T FLY AIR COMET

gran'dad under starter's order:



JULY 18/19
In preparing for this journey, I consult my grandson, Charlie Boo. Rather than bones, Charlie Boo throws pieces of his animal puzzle. Eighteen-month old sages take the long view and Charlie seems pleased. I should warn him that I am flying Air Comet to Madrid for an onward connection with Aerolineas Argentina.
The Air Comet flight out of London is delayed two hours and thirty minutes. No one from the airline meets the flight at Madrid. A mini tribe of despairing Bolivians or Peruvians are camped on the floor by the Air Comet enquiries desk. A further fifty or so of the less pessimistic stand in line. Neither queue nor camping offers hope.
A woman at Argentine Airlines check-in counter sends me back to Air Comet. I try a second check-in counter - then a third. The third woman smiles and issues me a boarding pass for a flight delayed from 1 a.m. to 4.35 a.m. and comps me a free dinner. Midnight and the self-service restaurant has left-overs that a Napoleonic soldier would have avoided on the retreat from Moscow. Everything else is closed. The water dispenser won´t dispense.
I curl up on a bench in the departure lounge. Thank God, I´m not travelling with small children.
We take-off from Madrid at 8 a.m. in a replacement plane that has to refuel in Natale, Brazil. The replacement cabin crew hate us.
Breakfast is a small yellow lump rimmed with dry red sludge. The bread is stale. Lunch is a stale ham & cheese sandwich. Dinner is a stale cheese sandwich without ham. This is the 19th. The food trolleys are dated the 17th.
I doze for a while, wake and wonder whether I am dead and that purgatory is a never ending flight.
We land at Buenos Aeries at six in the evening - no baggage from London. Much of the baggage that does appear should have been on a previous flight. Passengers queue at the baggage reclamation office: families with small kids, a school rugby team deprived of their sports gear. One of the ground staff tells me this is a daily occurrence both with Aerolineas Argentina and Air Comet.
I have been forty eight hours with out proper sleep. A room at the Grand Hotel Espana feels as good as a suite at the Ritz.

THE USSR IS ALIVE AND FLOURISHING

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22

Fly to or from Argentine Patagonia and you fly Aerolineas Argentina. Fares have doubled over the past six months. Foreigners pay a premium. There are fewer flights. Tourism has taken a hit. I am booked on a 3.30 flight to Buenas Aires. My Japanese roommate has been to the airport. All flights from Ushuaia are cancelled. A transfer coach leaves for Rio Grande airport at 2.30. My roommate’s ticket has been stamped. We grab a cab. The young check-in clerk wears a two-day beard and arrogance familiar from the USSR. Ushuaia is closed. The transfer coaches are full. Come back tomorrow.

I find a young woman employee (I am better with women). I act panicked and physically feeble. I am traveling with a Japanese – a male nurse. He came earlier to confirm our flights. He left my ticket at the hotel. His seat on the coach and the flight from Rio Grande are confirmed. What am I to do?

The woman disappears to a back office with my ticket. I wait thirty minutes. Meanwhile I listen to the Soviet apartachic enjoy himself. The next flight? How would he know? Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps the next day. So he dismisses families desperate to get home to BA.

The woman returns. I am confirmed on the coach and a flight from Rio Grande to BA.

Two hours and thirty minutes to Rio Grande: the airport terminal is deserted; all representatives of Aerolineas Argentina are out to lunch. Rain squalls flee across the runway. We passengers wait forlorn and bewildered. The elderly sit on steps leading to a closed cafeteria. Mothers feed babies, placate toddlers, screech at teenagers. An hour passes. Tempers rise. Finally three check-in clerks appear. We queue while they chat and talk on the telephone and shift papers from one side of a desk to the other. I am first to crack. I call through the open door to the glass fronted office: “It would be good manners to tells us what is happening - or that you don’t know what is happening.”

Even as I speak, I fear that my fellow passengers will judge me one more arrogant Brit. My sally is greeted with applause.