Leaving Europe #2

I thought the journey wouldn't be as exhausting as my coming journey since I had experienced long trip many times. But I was wrong.

My journey from Milan to Jakarta was through Dubai. My flight departed at 10 p.m. and reached Dubai at 6 a.m. Nothing special happened except the news about coup d'etat in Turkey. I used my meal voucher at Burger King, finished my meal, went to the gate C, and slept. It was half an hour before my boarding time, 10.30, when a guy woke me up and said that my flight moved to gate B. Huh! Dubai Airport is such a huge airport. You have to walk quite far to move to the other gate.

When I reached the gate, so many Indonesian people were there. It hadn't been the time time yet, but some people already came into the boarding room. Since the queue was not too long, I directly followed the queue and took my boarding pass out. I checked my seat at it was written 'STBY'. Wait..what does it mean...

I figured out what would happen when the lady scanned my boarding pass and the machine made sound 'bip bip'. She tried to scan it again and it still made that sound. Then, she told me to wait and sit calmly as she spoke to her colleague in Arabic. I followed her suggestion to sit because my backpack was too heavy. I looked around, people started queuing to board and there were 3 Arabian guys were shouting at those airline personnel, complaining about something in Arabic. I felt suspicious so I asked the lady what was wrong with my boarding pass. She told me that my pass status was 'standby', so I didn't get a seat on that plane.

I couldn't get onto the plane, ladies and gentlemen.

And she tried to calm me down by saying that I would be put on the next flight and they would provide hotel and phone call so I could speak with my family. How could that happen? I needed explanation. She couldn't explain it clearly because she was still facing those Arabian guys. Ha, then I understood what they were attempting to. I was too lazy to debate and just sit on the bench.

The queue  started getting shorter and I could see group of people couldn't get into the boarding room like me. I paid attention to a guy, who seemed like the guide, attempting to have his people be able to get onto the plane. I think he made to decrease number of people left and those Arabian guys looked annoyed. Funny. I was alone and exhausted and not good at complaining. So I approached some Indonesian people who were neglected like me and talked to them. Then we saw the Arabian guys were eventually allowed to get onto that flight. While the others made a kind of "should we have shouted like them" comment, I had a kind of "when the hell you get me out of this place and give me a hotel room" face.

So, what was happening actually? We couldn't get onto the plane because we didn't get seats there because the flight was overbooked. It didn't matter if we'd had your ticket since last year, the system would set the seat when we checked in. And according to the personnel, the company was allowed to sell tickets more than available seats. It didn't violate the regulation. So, it was purely their fault and they were responsible to give us compensation. There we were, me, a man we called Romo, and a woman with her 3 children, aground in one of the wealthiest city in the world.

They put us on the next flight, which was on the next day. They provided us the accommodation for one night and transportation airport-hotel and vice versa. And as the compensation (this is the part that I love the most), they gave us return ticket Jakarta-Europe (for me it's Jakarta-Milan) valid within a year. I didn't know if I should feel annoyed or lucky for what happened on that day. Okay, I would reach I home one day late (which I didn't mind since I wasn't in hurry). BUT, I got a clear opportunity to go back to Europe PLUS one day spent in Dubai. Yeah, one more city was checked ;)

So, dear readers, what do you think about this? Am I lucky enough? ;) ;) ;)

Alhamdulillah

#fin