Six Continents Challenge, Part 3: South America & Europe

This is a continuation of Part 1 and Part 2… My next Turkish Airlines booking was Dublin-Istanbul-Bogotá return, ticking off South America on the way out and Europe on the way back. First, an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, once again booked with Avios. As touched on previously, I do have a tendency to experience the occasional mishap when travelling. One contributing factor here is that I cannot stand boring tasks unless there is some time pressure, so packing is always a bit last-minute, and I’m not exactly known for arriving at the airport the full two hours in advance. It’s partly for this reason that I place high value on having lounge access – it’s a great self-hack, as it motivates me to try to arrive early enough to take full advantage. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have lounge access on this occasion, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why I was still at home 1h45 before my flight. In fact, I was still looking for my passport – credit to my wife for finding it. This left me due to arrive at the terminal just over an hour before my flight – not ideal, but nothing I’ve not done many times before, and I had left five hours for my connection in Dublin so I had several back-up options for getting there in time. The first sign that anything was wrong was a text from Aer Lingus while I was on the train: “Heathrow main road tunnel access to T2 is closed causing traffic congestion around the area. Please allow extra time for your journey to the airport.” “Please allow extra time”? Given even I had left home by this point, I can only assume most others had too! No issue yet, of course – until a few minutes later when an announcement is broadcast over the train’s loud speaker: “This train terminates here due to overcrowding at the Terminal 2/3 station”. Cue hundreds of people trying to catch a bus. I somehow managed to get one bus, and then another, to arrive at the terminal 28 minutes before my scheduled departure. Still feeling optimistic that I could get through security quickly and reach my gate before it closed, I went to retrieve the boarding pass from the app, only to be reminded that, for unknown reasons, it hadn’t let me generate one. Feeling less confident now, I tried to retrieve it at one of the machines in the airport, but Aer Lingus wasn’t even a listed option, so I fought through the crowd of people to speak to the supervisor. She told me that I wouldn’t make my flight but they would be able to rebook me. I had left 3h45 for my transfer in Dublin, and Aer Lingus had hourly flights scheduled between Heathrow and Dublin, so I queued up to ask to be put onto one of the next three Aer Lingus departures. When I reached the front, the same supervisor asked me if I’d be okay travelling to Cork instead. When I said that wouldn’t work, she told me she couldn’t help me and I’d need to make my own arrangements! This had wasted half an hour – time I could have been using to travel to London City airport for a (very overpriced) BA flight to Dublin, but that option was no longer available to me. With my back-up options for reaching Dublin exhausted, I approached the Turkish Airlines counter. They advised me to call customer service to offload me from the flight, which I duly did, and to then call my OTA to make changes to my booking. I should mention here that, a month or so ago, one of my booked flights (Istanbul to Dublin) had been cancelled. Both Turkish and my OTA had contacted me asking me to choose a new flight (or to cancel the booking), and I had selected a new flight via the airline. Despite having resolved the issue with Turkish a month ago, I found that the OTA were still offering me free cancellation, just four hours before my first flight was due to take off! So, I gratefully requested the full refund, headed home and made a new booking. I had intended to cancel my hotel in Bogotá, but, after sorting out my new flights, I fell asleep without doing so, thereby missing the deadline for the cancellation. Or, at least, I would have done – but it turned out I had actually booked the hotel for the 6th of September, not the 6th of August. Sometimes, I find that two wrongs do make a right. My schedule was such that it was almost a month before I could resume the campaign. On those dates, Dublin to Bogotá was much more expensive than it had been for my ill-fated first attempt, but I found Vilnius to Bogotá for a reasonable price. Flights to Vilnius were rather less frequent than flights to Dublin, so I found myself leaving home at 4:30am to travel to Luton for a flight with Wizz Air. I spent a pleasant afternoon exploring Vilnius before heading back to the airport. I had a ten-hour connection in Istanbul, which entitled me to a free hotel for the layover. My hotel was a 30-40 minute drive from the airport, and, unsurprisingly, the TK staff wanted to get me back to the airport rather earlier than I would have by choice, so it landed up being quite a short night. I was, however, provided with my own VIP transport which was very much my style. Istanbul Airport transfer I arrived in Bogotá without any issues, meaning I had ticked off my fourth continent for the challenge. Indeed, it was my first time visiting South America at all – it was a shame that I was only scheduled to spend 24 hours there. The next morning, I received the following text message: “Dear passenger, TK800 Bogota flight made a forced landing at Istanbul Airport. We will provide detailed information on your flight as soon as possible. We kindly ask you not to leave the airport. Thank you for your understanding.” It seems Turkish take the opposite approach to Aer Lingus when it comes to airport timings – whereas Aer Lingus advise you to leave extra time when your flight departs in 90 minutes, Turkish ask you to remain at the airport when contacting you thirteen hours before your scheduled departure! So, in practice, my 24 hours in Bogotá became 31 hours. I thought we might make up time during the stop in Panama City, but it didn’t pan out that way – we were on board 17 hours in total. Unsurprisingly, the delay caused me to miss my connection. 600 euros compensation under the Turkish equivalent of EC261, and the extra seven hours in Bogotá to boot? Don’t mind if I do! Turkish’s multi-city option offers a lot of flexibility for open-jaw and double open-jaw bookings, priced as two halves of a return. The best option I had been able to find was to book the inbound flight to Copenhagen, which cost the same as going to Vilnius but left me with an easier journey back to London. Unsurprisingly, the delay caused me to miss my BA flight home, but I was able to cancel that and book onto SAS for the bargain price of 5,500 Flying Blue points. I had now ticked off five of the six continents, but there would still be a lot more flying left before I completed the campaign.