On friday afternoon I wanted to do the check-in for my flight. I didn’t get any mail from the airline, as an agency managed my ticket. After a while I found a (somehow hidden) link in the confirmation mail of my ticket. I tried several combinations of the phone number and ticket number, but the website for check-in didn’t accept my input. By chance I had glance at my name on the ticket. They wrote it wrong. (lessons learned: always check your name on tickets, especially if bought by somebody else)
My name changed to “Rebelle” (interpreted as a French word, it means “rioter, rebel” in English). At the university I would reach nobody on Friday afternoon, 5pm, so I called the travel agency. I told a lady about my problem, and she tried to change it, but she couldn’t reach anyone from the airline. She recommended me to go earlier to the airport.
The wife of my supervisor, Nicoleta Preda gave me the tip to call the air line at the Charles-De-Gaulle airport in Paris. I called, but they said they cannot do anything for me. I called again the agency, and a man promised to send me an email. For whatever reason, I never got one (maybe another spelling mistake?).
So in the morning I have breakfast, clean my room, do the dishes and take a shower. I go to the tram station and discover that one cannot buy a ticket to the air port from there (what the heck, RATP?). I arrive around 10am at the baggage check-in to discover that they didn’t start with my flight yet. I had to wait until 10:45am.
I told the lady of the baggage check-in that I have a problem with my ticket. She replied that she cannot change my name, and that I should call my agency. So I called the agency, but I couldn’t reach anybody (who wonders, on Saturday at 11am). I went back to the baggage check-in and got to another lady. I told her about my case, and she asked a woman from Air China working two places to the left. She gave me a number from Air China. I called, but they said I would need to buy another ticket.
One again I got to the baggage check-in, asking for help. Other employees got interested, too, as at the moment nobody waited in the line. So the lady from Air China (who gave me the number) called the Chinese hotline (with her private phone!). She asked me several things (birth date, whether I booked an insurance). Several times we had to wait in a holding pattern. She put a phone on the table and received two calls with two different phones in the meantime. Finally she negotiated a deal: Air China would change the name, but I cannot make any other modifications afterwards to the ticket. I agreed, went back to the baggage check-in the forth time for today, and went (happily and relieved) to the boarding area.
When I entered the plane it looked half-empty (and I boarded as one of the last passengers). A guy looking like a pirate sat in my row (He had a Kopftuch and missed two front teeth). It turned out that he comes from Japan, works as a Singer and Dancer, and returned from Europe. He would later move to the (completely empty) row besides us, so we could sleep almost comfortably. I had bought a new travel pillow which has a Schlaufe to fix it around one’s neck, plus an old inflatable pillow, which increased the search space of possible sleeping configurations.
I changed planes in Beijing, and had to go through baggage check again. I wondered why, as the security of the Paris airport had already checked my baggage. One becomes so spoiled in the European Union! I took the next plane and watched “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, as Air China forbids using mobile phones during the flight. The movie ended some seconds before the airplane arrived at the gate in Tokyo.