Beautiful Prague - the Czech In

I started off the last post with “We were so tired the night before from the lack of sleep...” but little did I know what was in store for the end of the trip. If you remember the last post, we barely got the airport in time for the checkin, but instead we were Czeched in. Czech airlines first said that the flight was delayed due to the incoming aircraft being delayed but we could all see that the plane was standing right there at the gate. They then proceeded to blame the weather in Prague and then in London. They would come back on the intercom every 30 minutes only to tell us that the flight was delayed by another 30 minutes. Finally around 11:30pm, 2 hours after the flight was supposed to take off, they came back to tell us that the flight was delayed by 8 hours and would fly the next morning at 5:30am and that we should line up at the ticket counter for the next steps.

The tired and somewhat upset passengers in a show of good character lined up at the ticket counter only to be left standing for another hour by the ground staff without any information as to what’s going on. After a few of us disgruntled passengers expressed our anger in the nicest but most forceful of ways, they proceeded to get us a hotel etc.

While we were all waiting in line, one of the passengers who was a ground staff for another airline, let us know that we should ask for a full refund of the flight since EU regulations clearly state that if the flight is delayed by more than 5 hours, passengers are entitled to a full refund. But of course, when we got to the counter, we had to drill the information out of the Czech Airline folks. Reluctantly, they gave us the information needed to get a refund.

At about 12:30am, we were put on a bus and driven for about 45 minutes to get to our “transit” hotel, which was right in front of the place we had lunch the day before. We got into bed by about 1:30am only to be woken up by the alarm at 3:30am and back on the same bus bound for the airport this time. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we came back into London a good 12 hours after we expected to have come in. We filed for the refund but haven’t seen any of this money yet. I doubt we ever will but hey, at least we tried.

It was sad that a really nice trip to a pretty city such as Prague had to end this way. But I still do maintain that Prague is one of the prettiest cities in Europe, just don’t fly Czech Air.