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Planning our trip to go to England was pretty easy.  Our pet parent offered for us to come a day or 2 ahead to get acclimatized, so that was very helpful.  I booked our flights right away (low airfares because February is definitely low season!), for our arrival 2 days before she had to depart.  Why so much time ahead, you ask?  Because we were flying from CANADA, in WINTER.  Those two factors together made it a crap shoot whether that flight would go on time, or even at all.

So, what happened?  First of all, I booked the most affordable direct flight I could find.  I just asked my cousin, who lived in the UK for a long while before, which airline she thought was best, then searched out flights available.  We were to go on a Sunday night on the red eye, and arrive in England in the morning.  Mission accomplished!

I booked through a third party provider.  Then one of my friends said if you do that, you can’t check in online ahead, which scared me.  She had that experience when she booked her flights through her cruise line.  But then I recalled having booked trip packages through that third party before, and having no problems with the online checkin, so I put that fright into a little box and decided it wasn’t important.

Since we had booked so far ahead, I wasn’t particularly concerned with things.  They sent a verification email, and I eventually opened it and scanned through the contents.  It was one of those “CHECK YOUR DETAILS” messages.  Eventually I said ya ya, whatever, and scanned through it.  Then I found they had actually put my shortened name (Sandy) instead of my LEGAL name on the seat, which wasn’t going to match my passport.  Oh no!!!  I didn’t recall making that kind of an amateur mistake, but I had filled out all the online forms!  How could I blame it on someone else?  Ugh, I think it was me.  Although, come to think of it, it really could have been AUTOCORRECT.  It substitutes a number of ridiculous things for my intended words at any given time!  Either way, I have to take the heat for that one, for not proof reading closely when I submitted our information on the form in the first place!

So, I had to call the third party and get them to fix it.  I called.  And waited.  The customer service guy put me on hold.  It wasn’t too bad, really.  But he did charge me for the name change on the ticket to London Gatwick,  and of course on the return ticket.  So there went another $118.  He explained that since I bought the cheapest ticket, it was non refundable etc etc and it could have been worse;  Air Transat could have refused to change it and I might have had to purchase a whole new ticket!!  Thank goodness that didn’t happen.

OK, so we are all set.  I’m (patiently?)  waiting for the e-tickets, and it seems like they are taking a long time.  Then I see an email in French, looking like a scam phishing email, saying our flight has been cancelled, and if we want to go on a later date, CLICK HERE, which I ignored.  Then a day later we get an email with just my husband’s ticket.  Not mine.  So I call the third party, wait and wait on hold, get an agent and explain what’s happened.  He says he has to call the airline, and puts me on hold.  An hour later he comes on the line to say he is having problems getting through, please wait longer.  30 minutes after that he comes back, says that our flight was cancelled (even though they JUST sent a ticket for it), and we didn’t select the option to go later – which was for a flight 24 hours after the one we first booked.  Apparently the email was NOT a scam after all.   So I said we would take it, and he fixed up everything.  Maybe a couple days later we get our electronic documents, which I checked carefully – to make sure we were both on the same plane, etc.  All good!

I booked a limo to the airport next.  9:45 flight, 3 hours ahead means be there for 6:45, with the worst rush hour traffic going on, and back to it being WINTER.  So I allowed an extra hour for the trip, just in case. 

24 hours before our departure time, we went to the airline site to do online check-in.  No problems! 

We picked seats with lots of legroom we which had a wall for the washroom right in front of us and an emergency exit beside us.  I was thinking how great that would be, with just our 2 seats together (there was a 3^rd seat facing backwards there for the staff) and room to sprawl a bit while sleeping.  Then after it was all done, we remembered that would mean we didn’t have a seat in front of us to stow our “personal bags”.  Oh crap!  We were at the very top of the size threshold for both personal bags and our carry-ons.  Just a wee bit of stress.  We decided not to try changing it, and we would deal with it as we went.  I had booked seats in the back third of the plane on purpose, knowing that we would still have lots of overhead storage space available at that time.

The limo showed up right on time – in heavy snow!  The driver said it took him 2 hours to get to us, did we want to use the 401 where an accident can slow you down for hours, or would we want to pay for the 407 toll route?  We picked the toll route!  We arrived at the airport in an hour, without all the stress.  Lots of time to check our baggage (no line up), go through security (no line up), find our premium lounge (thanks to free lounge passes), have a light dinner, and wander back to the gate right before they started allowing passengers on board!

We had been a bit concerned about the blizzard at home, but the airport wasn’t getting that same weather.  We did have to take time for de-icing, but that seems pretty standard for winter travel.  And – YAY – we departed pretty close to the scheduled take-off time!