Don't forget the part about calling everyday.

Inspired by Ken hAAmer, I thought I'd share more details and some of the trauma of being separated from my luggage for three weeks.

It happened during the famous Ice Storm of 1998. I was scheduled to depart YUL for ZRH via AMS on KL. I was lucky enough to get an op-up (I had KL status back then). We boarded on time, but the a/c went mechanical. We were watered and fed on board, but after sitting at the gate for well over three hours we were off-loaded and offered hotel rooms for the night -- without luggage.

Mrs 13F and my belle-mere were still in the terminal as my wife's uncle was working in the AC ops centre at the time and had been giving them a tour and keeping an eye on my flight. I was able to go home to my in-laws rather than to a hotel.

That night the freezing rain started in earnest. The next night there were two KL flights to AMS. At least in theory there were two.

We boarded. Op-up again (same seat). That's when the trouble started. The tractor couldn't push us back. The a/c was frozen to the tarmac! The ground crew resorted to a fire axe and finally succeeded in chopping the wheels loose. But they couldn't get the engines started. (Too much ice inside perhaps?) We were towed to the gate. By now more than four hours had gone by since boarding. Several people, including me, decided to deplane. (I found out later that the flight took off six hours late.)

After two days shivering without power at my in-laws, I decided to take my chances with the Thursday evening departure. Success! Made it all the way to ZHR. But the bag was no where to be seen. Mrs 13F and I spent a week calling YUL, AMS and ZRH looking for the bag to no avail.

My wife followed one week later on the same routing. Rather than exit through customs at ZRH, she went straight to the SwissPort baggage office and settled in for a fight. To shut her up, they eventually let her into the luggage locker to search. There she found an orphan bag with a tag number strangely similar to mine, except with the last two digits swapped. It was tagged for Islamabad. Guess where my bag was?

I finally got it back three weeks after my original check-in date. All was in order, except the 500 g of old cheddar that I had so carefully double packed. It had become a bit mushy.
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13F