A Nation on Strike

Spring Break is coming up this week… How exciting! I’m going with my good friend, Annie, from Elon, who is studying in Sevilla, on a trip to Austria, and then to Italy. We planned to leave on Thursday night, and I was supposed to miss class only on Friday. Well, turns out that Thursday, March 29 is the National Day of Strikes in spain, which means that there will be only servicios minimos of public transportation. Only 30% of the flights leave the airport, because the other 70% of employees go on strike. That’s just great.

The online server for my airline is down, so it’s been impossible to change our flight online. I’m not interested in calling a phone number and being a) disconnected, b) put on hold, or c) being misunderstood, or misunderstanding, and automated machine. Instead, I thought it would be a good idea if I just went to airport and tried to do it myself, at the airline office.

I went with some friends, Rory, Jenna, and Crystal, (who also booked flights for next Thursday), on a group errand to the airport last Friday afternoon, so that we could each find out what to expect regarding our respective airlines. Rory was told that they have no way of knowing what to expect on Thursday, so if he is interested in changing his flight, he should come back on Tuesday. Honestly, I don’t understand why the airline thinks they will be any more knowledgeable about this impending strike, whether it’s two days before or one week before the expected flight.

Thankfully, Jenna and Crystal were told not to expect complications on Thursday. I think it’s unrealistic to expect that there won’t be complications or delays, to think that this specific airline will be an exception, on a day when the rest of the country will be on strike. At least, they were reassured that if issues do arise, they will be given the choice of a refund or a flight change.

I ended up being the only one who felt like spending time to go to the airport had been a waste of time. I wasn’t nearly as satisfied with the assistance I received from my airline’s office, although I can’t fault the poor airline employee who was the victim of my frustration.

I arrived at the office in the airport at 6:00pm, and I was told that they had closed at 5:30. How frustrating! Nonetheless, the woman was nice enough to quickly answer my questions, but then explained that she was unwilling to attend to me because she was already working after hours. Like I said, I can’t fault her for that; I would have done the exact same thing. But, naturally, I was pretty upset.

I asked what to expect from the airline regarding the flights on Thursday. She said that she had no way of knowing, as with everybody, because nobody is required to report that they’re going on strike. I said, okay, well, does it cost money to change my flight? And she said yes, and I said, well, how much? And she said “I don’t know for sure. That will depend on a) how much you initially paid for your ticket, and b) the day and details of the flight you’re going to change it to.” So then I was like, “Ok, just be sure, you can’t help me with any of that right now?” And she was like, “no, I’m sorry, we’re closed.” She sounded sympathetic, but I was pretty angry, so I left rudely and cut her off, and felt badly afterwards.

If nothing else, I was glad to be with my friends while I had to be hanging out at the airport. However, I realized that it definitely makes the airport less exciting when you’re there for an inconvenient chore, than when you’re the one traveling somewhere.

Besides that, we had a fun litter adventure going to the airport together. We took the metro first to Terminal 4, which is where my airline office was. The town of Barajas is in between the terminals of the airport, so to avoid paying money to get back on the metro, we looked for the airport shuttle bus. While we were on the bus, we assumed that the shuttle would stop at every terminal between 4 and 1. Well, it didn’t. Lost and confused, we got off at a bus stop that we thought was for Terminal 1. The only problem was, when we got off at the bus stop, we couldn’t actually find the entrance to the terminal. We appeared to be in some sort of industrial parking lot. There was a street of taxi traffic, so we decided to walk down the road in the direction in which the taxis were facing.

There was one other couple who got off the shuttle at the same sketchy bus stop as we did. They heard us making jokes about getting lost on our way to Terminal 1, so I asked them, in Spanish if they knew how to get there. The guy just looked at me blankly, and then said “uh, we speak English.” Obviously, they were even more hopeless than we were.

As we anticipated, even though we walked next to the road of taxis for about 15 minutes, the taxis pointed in the right direction, and eventually we found the entrance to Terminal 1.

Today, Monday, I went to the airport, AGAIN, in hopes that my airline office would be open, to try to chance my flight, and Annie’s, to Austria from Thursday to Wednesday. It wasn’t. Great. I did get some information from the airport-desk guy… he a) gave me a phone number to call my airline, b) told me when all the flights are for my airline for the next three days (there are a total of three flights, one per day), c) gave me the airline office hours (two hours before each flight, for the next three days), and d) explained why he couldn’t help me change my flight.

I called Annie, and suggested that she and I just go to the airport early together on Wednesday, and tell the airline right then and there that we want to be on the Wednesday flight, instead of Thursday.

Prayers and well-wishes are greatly appreciated. #OnlyinSpain.
Love, ~Taylor