One of my Alps stories is detailed
here.
I still have not had a 100% clean airline trip to the Alps, though the glitches on the last two were trivial.
2004: Delay leaving Geneva so tight connection in Frankfurt to fly home. I made the connection but my bags didn't. It's not a big deal when it's on the way home and you get your bags in a day or two.
2008: Lyon-CDG-Cincinnati-SLC was asking for trouble. My bags were missing 3 of the 4 days I skied Utah, but fortunately admin outfitted me head to toe. This one was still the worst because I had to rent boots as well as skis.
2013: This trip was via Heathrow on my friend Richard's American FF miles. About 3 inches of snow shut down Heathrow for 24 hours, and we barely got a reservation on our connecting flight the next day by using $45 in cell phone roaming while in a holding area. We arrived at the Sandhof in Austria at 11PM, missing dinner but they put out a nice cold cut spread for us. My skis arrived 3 days later.
2014: Our skis made it to Geneva but regular suitcases did not make it to Zermatt until 30 hours later. I had learned my lesson from 2008 and had a bootbag backpack with a day's worth of ski clothing as carry-on. Liz says this one was a win as we did some shopping in Zermatt at Delta's expense.
2017: Amsterdam had fog so our takeoff from Geneva was delayed. We missed our direct flight home and were diverted via Heathrow, getting home 7 hours late and missing a Super Bowl party.
Jan. 2018: Details in link above. Bags arrived at LAX only 10 hours late but on a different airline and were put in storage. We had to make repeated phone calls and eventually drive out to LAX 4 days later for pickup.
Apr. 2018: LAX-CDG-GVA no problem. GVA-CDG-Reykyavik-Akureyri no problem. Reykyavik-Portland OR no problem. Portland-Oakland-Burbank on Southwest? Bags did not make the connection! But Southwest flies OAK-BUR every hour so we just waited for the next flight, no big deal.
2019: In bound flight to Amsterdam missed GVA connection. We arrived GVA on a 3 hour later flight, which had no real effect upon our trip.
James, please note from 2017 and 2019 examples that AMS seems comparably subject to snafus as CDG, though there's no question the physical transfer process at CDG is more of a PITA.
I guess I should mention while on the subject of Europe that I flew NONSTOP JFK-Rome in May 2004 after a Princeton reunion and arrived sans luggage. This was a potential nail biter as I was getting on a cruise ship 36 hours later. Fortunately my bag showed up the next morning so I got the port transfer driver to swing by the airport to pick it up.
I don't seem to have much difficulty going the other direction: no problems on 2 ski trips to Japan, 3 dive trips to Indonesia and Micronesia, one trip to Thailand and several to Australia/New Zealand. One of the eclipse trips to China had an unscheduled delay transferring in Shanghai on the way to Beijing and similarly there was once a 3 hour delay in Brisbane on the way to NZ.
Some of you may recall last December we dodged a bullet when
neither United not Air Canada bothered to inform me that our flight to Argentina had been cancelled.
In 2006 one of my Canadian trips Burbank - Seattle - Kamloops had multiple screwups. The Burbank flight took off late and missed the connection in Seattle. The geographically challenged Alaska Airlines agent in Seattle booked me to Vancouver, which is a 4 hour drive to Kamloops. I got her to switch me to Kelowna, which is still a 2 hour drive that cost Alaska $215CDN in taxi fare to get me to the Kamloops hotel where Mike Wiegele heliskiing was picking me up the next morning.
The return flight out of Kamloops was also delayed, so I was routed through Vancouver and Portland to LAX. :twisted: To Alaska's credit, I wrote them a letter about these flights and they gave me a voucher which I used for spring skiing at Bachelor the next season.