Sunday, August 5, 2012

"Sorry, master. I forgot that you don't like flying."

So, when I came to Uruguay, I looked at my itinerary in the email I'd gotten from American Councils, went to the airport, found the correct flight on the monitors, walked to the counter, presented my ID, and was checked in. This is the way it's usually worked for me.

I did the same yesterday. The rest of the program participants and I took a bus provided by the Fulbright commission - their flight was at 9:00, mine at 9:55. The went straight to American; I looked at the monitors.

There was no flight leaving for Chile at 9:55.

I let the first cold flash of panic go past, collected myself and walked to LanChile's counter, figuring it must have been with them, since none of the flights to Santiago out of Montevideo were with any other airline. But there was no one at the counter there. So I picked up the information phone, as an airport worker suggested.

"Carrasco international airport, buenas tardes?", said a deep voice.

I asked him what I needed to do to talk to someone, anyone, with LAN Chile, or anybody else who would know on which non-mythical flight I had been booked, and was told (a) that only LAN Chile would know that, and (b) that there was no way to talk to anyone at Lan Chile because they were all off boarding people onto the flight to Santiago.

I said that since I was booked to go to Santiago today, there must have been SOME kind of re-schedule or change, and it was quite likely that they were wondering where I was for the flight that was going to leave in 20 minutes. Ergo, it was also in their interest to talk to me, as they might be looking for me. Wasn't there anyone I could talk to?

No, they said; we can't communicate with the gates.

This seems very difficult to believe.

At any rate, I asked if they could connect me to LAN's corporate office or "800" number (I didn't use those numbers, as I doubt they're the same in Spanish). The deep-voiced man spent a few minutes trying to find one. Finally, he gave me a number - but it looked just like the phone numbers of the Uruguayans I had had the chance to call while in the country. "This sounds like a Uruguayan number," I said. "It is," he told me. "It's the LAN desk at the airport." I looked at the LAN desk at the airport, which was fifty feet away. "That's where I am right now, and there's nobody there. Besides which, you just TOLD me there was nobody there. Why would you want me to call them there?"

He also seemed vexed by this question. "You should go to the information desk, then," he said. "They will know the number for LAN's offices in Chile. I don't have access to it."

I thanked him, for some reason, and hung up, then dragged my bags down the escalator to the white "Informaciones" kiosk. Walked up, explained that I needed to talk to someone at LAN Chile, at their main offices, not here at the airport, and that it was kind of urgent. They nodded knowingly, punched a number, and said "Good evening, a passenger has a question for you." Then they handed me the phone.

"Carrasco international airport, buenas tardes?", said a deep voice.

Much to my credit, I did not at that point whip out my light saber and lop off every head within reach. Rather, I marched upstairs to the American desk, waited in line, and then asked them my question. After all, the original flight had been the same one all my 11 co-program folks (who had not left the country already for various reasons and by various means) were about to get on. They must have a record of my changes.

They did. They said that LAN Chile had not changed anything. Rather, Pluna, the Uruguayan airline, had been the original carrier.

And some time between when the reservation was made, and the present moment, it seems, Pluna had gone bankrupt. My flight did not exist because the airline did not exist.


Luckily, security cameras caught my reaction.


Shockingly, no one gave a quick start and then fell into two smoking, vertically split halves. Rather, they looked embarrassed and sympathetic (but not too sympathetic), while their minds whirled around the question of how this could be my fault and not theirs.

The best theory they could come up with was that the itinerary I referred to for my "flight" from Montevideo to Santiago had never been changed, by some sort of clearly crucial alchemy, from an itinerary, into a ticket. "What about the other flights? On August 10th, from Santiago to Miami, and from Miami to New York?"

"Oh, I see those. Those are fine," she said. "Those were changed to tickets. But this one wasn't."

"Who should have done that, and when?", I asked.

"The person who made the reservation," she said.

"Who changed the other two flights?"

"I assume it was that same person."

"Why on Earth would that person do that for the other two, and not for the first one?"

"You would have to ask them."

I smiled, and waved my extended index and middle figures languidly before her eyes. "Doesn't it seem more likely," I said, in a hypnotic tone, "since Pluna has disappeared, that no one informed anyone that that crucial first flight had gone extinct? Because clearly, had I, or the people who set up the flight for me, heard anything, we would have changed it. Doesn't that seem a little more plausible?"

No effect.

"But, sir," she said, "that would mean that this whole catastrophe would be our fault. Therefore, it cannot be so."

No, no: She did not say that. She shrugged, and began the process, at my request, of booking me on a LAN Chile flight for 11:50 the next morning.

I assisted in this process by not cutting off her air supply with my mind.

$535 later, Gabi Prieto, one of the hosts associated with us motley Americans, who had hung around specifically in order to do just this thing for me, drove me in her car back to the Cala di Volpe. The other Gabi, another Uruguayan host, had called Patricia, from the Fulbright commission, to tell her what had happened, and Patricia had booked me back at the hotel, which suddenly seemed a lot less heavenly.

So THEN, the next morning, Natalia Ximeno, my own host, and her wonderful mom and dad, picked me up at the Cala di Volpe in their beloved old Volkswagen and drove me to the airport. Hugs and well wishes, and I checked in and made my way to the gate.

Where it became fully, horribly clear that the entire airport was - get this - fogged in.

So here I sit. My flight should have taken off an hour and a half ago, but the plane it was supposed to have taken place in hasn't even arrived from Chile. They announced a while ago that it had left Santiago, and was scheduled to arrive here at 1:00 PM; following off-loading of passengers, cleaning, re-fueling, and luggage loading, we are going to take off at 1:55 PM.

The optimism of the above scenario is utterly adorable. Because I know what's going to happen: The flight from Santiago is going to get about halfway here, and they're going to get a message on their radio saying, "Fellas, we're still fogged in." And they're going to land in AsunciĆ³n to wait out the fog in Montevideo.

I half-close my eyes, and I see...A chihuahua there is, in a pink overcoat. And a scarcity of electric outlets. But sure, I cannot be. Always in motion, the future is...


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