The Supervisor of all Supervisors

28th January 2007

Now, the ‘more later’ on Hanoi airport. When we left China at 3am, Shanghai Pudong airport seemed closed. It is the largest and most modern of large and modern airports and you couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee. Our flight was the only one on the board and was a small flight to Ho Chi Minh City.

Have you ever seen a ‘round the world’ airline ticket?
What it is not: is a ticket that says ‘ round the world’.
What it is: a book of individual tickets for each leg of the journey so. for example if you are travelling between Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City via Hong Kong, one chapter or volume of the book has one ticket, in triplicate with all three places on it, with reference numbers that run into double-figure digits;
with the flight number, passenger name, and a jumble of letters and words that are indecipherable but which we think, show that the airline tax has been paid for each leg. You need to at least to have been educated to post-graduate level in How Bureaucracies Work, to even stand a chance of understanding it.

Well, at Shanghai Airport (remember, felt closed!) we had our tickets checked by a young, very young man, who not only looked like he had never seen a round the world ticket before, but also looked like he should never have been allowed to be up so late. He scratched his head. He muttered in Chinese – and despite our eight-day stay, even Sid’s Chinese wasn’t up to fathoming what he was saying. There was no one else around; no queue; nothing to distract him; nothing to rush him. Even so, this absolute klutz managed to tear off the wrong ticket. We didn’t notice at the time (remember, it was 3am for us too) but when we did – In Ho Chi Minh, we reassured ourselves that it didn’t matter that I still had my top copy of the triplicated chapter of tickets that had already carried us from London Heathrow, to Beijing and then on from Beijing to Hong Kong. Perhaps they could become a souvenir, as those journeys were long over. We reassured ourselves that it didn’t matter that I only had two of the three parts of the duplicate ticket from Hanoi to Bangkok, because after all, the three copies were carbons, they had the same information on them and of course I could not have made a flight dated 28th January from Hanoi to Bangkok before 28th January or on any other route. We then promptly forget about it, so unconcerned were we.

This morning, we arrived at Hanoi airport, excited to be on the next leg of our journey with thoughts turning particularly to seeing Dan and Carole, Sam and Jake after our few days in Sydney.

We were checked in, luggage weighed, not a word said when each case was more than 5kg over the 20 kg allowance on Vietnam Airlines (an allowance it should be said that is 3kg lower than any other airline on our travels).

The check-in woman then stopped, noticed the problem that Klutz of Shanghai had created and called her supervisor. We explained that our top copy was in Shanghai, but it should not matter as today was the 28th January, my passport said I really was Myra Benson, the flight was due to leave at 9.30 am and so we could not have used the top copy elsewhere to go on a secret flight somewhere else.

She looked blank and called her supervisor, He came over and scratched his head. He said it was not a problem for Vietnam Airlines to solve but for Cathay Pacific (our last carrier) whose office ‘might’ be open for business at 9 am on a Sunday morning (but not at Hanoi airport). Remember, our flight was leaving at 9.30, our baggage had been stopped on the weighing belt, and we were moved to one side. If you’ve ever watched Airport, you will recognise this scene. He would see at 9 am if anyone at Cathy Pacific had found a top copy of a ticket with my name on it, some two weeks earlier, in Shanghai. We said he should go and see someone else and come back and put us on this flight. He disappeared and the poor check-in woman who had started this chain of events (that is, if you forget klutz of Shanghai) promised he would be back in 10 minutes, ie 8.20 am. At 8.20 we insisted she call him back on her walkie talkie. He came back and said he thought perhaps we would have to buy another ticket. That was when Sid lost it. Sid asked to see his supervisor. He said: ‘I am the supervisor of all supervisors’, and so we were a bit stuck at that point. We had had a little side discussion while Mr Unhelpful was away and agreed that we would probably have to buy another ticket as ‘unhelpful’s’ greatest concern was that we would get out of the country and no-one would pay for the ticket as Vietnam Airlines could not present the all-important top copy.

So you’re probably a bit bored with this by now, so I’ll cut to the chase. We bought another ticket. It cost us around £70, was worth every penny to avoid further hassle and miss the connecting flight to Sydney, and we shall now work very hard to get a refund. I’ll keep you posted.

There is a moral to this story. Don’t let any airline official near the volume of tickets – only show them the chapter and page of the next flight. And that’s what we’ll do in future. Fortunately, we were both good natured with each other about this. We did not sink into a blame culture (except that we both blame klutz of Shanghai) and now, at Bangkok airport, we are having a good laugh about it. Or perhaps we’re just hysterical.