Trip Starts with Chaos

We didn't expect the trip to get interesting so soon. To our surprise, the day before we were supposed to leave home, a snow storm was forecast for southern Ontario. It was going to reach its peak 3 hours before our plane was scheduled to take off.  There was a chance we could sneak into Toronto after the morning rush hour, but we could visualize grid lock on 401. And, even if we got to the airport on time, what would happen if the flight was delayed or cancelled. Of course there are lots of flights to Vancouver, but we had a tight layover scheduled, and with a delay, we'd miss the New Zealand flight, and those flights only go daily.

After considering our  options, we chose to head for Toronto the evening before and hope for the best.  When we woke in Toronto, the storm was in full  swing. 3 cms of snow down, and  it continued to snow and blow. We made our way to the airport by 11 as planned. While checking- in, there were already announcements of flight delays, but so far it hadn't included ours.

To add to the situation during check-in, it became apparent there was a problem with our Vancouver to New Zealand flight. According to the Air Canada system, our Air New Zealand seats had been cancelled back in December. We made a frantic phone call to the travel agent, and them to Air New Zealand.

In the meantime, we found out the flights being delayed and cancelled due to the storm were smaller plane flights, and it appeared we might still get out. Even though our flight to New Zealand was in question, we were prepared to go as far as Vancouver with no certainty of getting out of there. Eventually after a de-icing, we took off. It had been a long trying 3 plus hours in the Toronto airport.

As it turned out, there had been a synchronizing problem between Air New Zealand's computer system and Air Canada's system, and by the time we got to Vancouver, Air New Zealand was in full recovery mode to ensure all the wrongs were made right.

Finally, the trip that had started out in chaos, started to settled down to the plan, and we boarded the Air New Zealand flight for Auckland. The adventure was under way.

Click here for the next story in this series:
http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2014/03/our-welcome-to-nz.html