Leave one out

This story is so bizarre, I'll start with the end of the tale first:

So we went to the office, spoke with an agent, signed a form with the manager, got a full refund in cash, and left within 15 minutes.

Right. Now that you've heard the end, let me back up.

Back in May I alluded to a "hair-raising adventure" with EgyptAir. But things didn't even start in May - I started working on our trip to Abu Simbel back at the beginning of April.

Bottom line, KC and I wanted to see Abu Simbel before leaving Egypt. The Abu Simbel site is a set of two temples built by Ramesses II in the far south of Egypt. In fact, the temples are located so far south that when the Aswan High Dam was built in the late 1960s, the resulting Lake Nasser would have submerged the temples.

Eventually, someone figured this out - that building the dam (which may or may not have been an ecological catastrophe) would endanger literally dozens of pharonic sites in Upper Egypt. I need to do some more reading about this, because it's quite a remarkable story. The Egyptian government and UNESCO got help from institutions around the world to actually move the two temples at Abu Simbel (and some other sites too, like Philae) to higher ground.


Ever wonder why there's a complete Egyptian temple inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City? It was a "thank you" gift to the museum for working on the UNESCO project. Thanks for your help - here, have a temple. We were going to wreck this one anyway.

On the other hand, diving these things would be fantastic ... but I digress.

We wanted to go to Abu Simbel. I had enough EgyptAir frequent flier miles to get one free ticket to Abu Simbel, and it seemed a good use because generally that's an expensive ticket. I called the EgyptAir hotline and got put through to the rewards desk. I explained to the helpful woman that I wanted one reward ticket and one regular ticket to Abu Simbel on a particular day in June. She typed a bit, and then gave me the reservation number and told me to go down to the EgyptAir office and pay the taxes on the tickets.

"The reservation is confirmed?" I asked.
"Yes madam, no problem."
"The ticket has been issued?"
"Yes madam, just go pay the fee."
"You're absolutely sure this reservation is ready? Because I don't want to go all the way down there and find out I don't have a ticket."
"Don't worry madam, you have a ticket."

So of course I went to the Adly Street EgyptAir office and - brace yourselves - of course there were no damned tickets. I'd walked into the office and saw a desk with about 30 representatives, and there were no other customers (shockingly). An agent waved me over to his desk. When I saw his face, I said, "Oh, I remember you! You used to be in the Tahrir Office!" And to my complete and utter surprise, he responded, "Yes Dr. Tiffany, I remember you."

I almost passed out. This guy had seen me once in January and he remembered my name. That type of thing would never happen in the US. If you're in the Adly Street EgyptAir office (over near Midan Opera) look for the guy with the round glasses and thin bristly mustache. He's the one you want.

Anyway, I freaked out at this guy for a few minutes, and then settled down to business. He's a great agent - smart as hell and efficient. Eventually he constructed a delicate series of reservations for our trip, but unfortunately both seats were waitlisted. I was told to keep checking the waitlist on the airline website and to come to the office when the seats came through.

Three weeks later, the reservation for the two tickets was still waitlisted. I figured enough was enough - EgyptAir was offering a fare of LE 837 (USD $150) round-trip including taxes. I went back to the office to just pay for the tickets. Imagine my surprise when a new agent told me that the reservation I'd made was only in my name - KC's ticket didn't exist.

This precipitated an hour-long argument, and I'll gloss over the details. The most frustrating aspect was telling the guy that not an hour before EgyptAir's website had listed KC's ticket. The agent responded that that wasn't true because his system didn't have it. Fine, I said, open up the internet and I'll show you.

Apparently this was akin to suggesting that we sacrifice his firstborn son. The agent protested that he couldn't possibly do that. I pointed to the Internet Explorer icon on his desktop and said, "Click on it." Back and forth, back and forth, and finally a manager came over.

Eventually I realized the stupidity and futility of my efforts. I asked the manager to cancel that reservation and make a new reservation, which I'd pay for in cash. 10 minutes later all was settled and I walked out the door with my paid, confirmed tickets.

Or so I thought. [cue ominous music]

This past Saturday we dragged ourselves out of bed at 4 in the morning, tossed a few things in the backpack, and headed for the airport. After our airport taxi catastrophe on the way back from Dahab, I'd called City Cab to arrange for transport both ways from the airport in a metered taxi. We got to the airport around 5 am ... and that's when all hell broke loose.

The security guard looked at our itinerary before letting us through the security checkpoint BEFORE the area where you can actually check in. This is normal in Egypt. What was not normal was his refusal to let us pass, and his claim that the flight didn't exist. He directed us over to the EgyptAir ticket counter.

The guy at the ticket counter said this wasn't his job and sent us over to Customer Service.

The guy at Customer Service said this wasn't his job and sent us over to the ticket counter.

This is where things started to get ugly.

We told the customer service guy that we'd been sent to him by the ticket guy. He walked with us over to the ticket counter and lit into the ticket guy, screeching at him in Arabic. Finally it was determined that yes, dealing with ticket issues is in fact the job of the guy at the ticket counter.

We found out that our 6:00 am flight had been cancelled and we'd been put on the 8:45 am flight instead, which would get us to Abu Simbel at 11:30 am - with a return flight departing at 2:15 pm.

Of course, this was completely preposterous. We were tired and really, really angry at this point.

So the recriminations began. We were incensed that EgyptAir had made no effort to contact us before we arrived at the airport on the morning of our flight. The agent claimed that we had given EgyptAir no phone number to contact us. I pointed out how absurd this was, since EgyptAir had been calling me on my mobile phone for 2 years. They even called to tell me when the Tahrir office closed! The agent told me I was lying and I'd never given them my mobile number. There was a lot more shouting at that point.

At some point through my red haze of fury I realized that KC was doing something very clever. He was basically running through a checklist of things that airlines (in the US at least) can't do when they cancel your flight. For example, he asked if our flight had been "cancelled" or "rescheduled." The agent said "cancelled" (not good for the airline). KC asked for a copy of the cancellation policy of the airline. The agent refused to give us one (really, really not good).

The agent scored his only point when he demanded, "What do you want me to do?" Because of course, what we wanted him to do was to schedule a plane just for us, leaving at that exact moment. We found this much funnier later.

We decided that we just wanted our money back. The agent refused, saying we had to go to the office that had issued the ticket. OK, we returned, give us a piece of paper showing that we'd actually gone all the way to the airport before figuring out we were screwed. The guy handed me a blank piece of paper with the words "EgyptAir" printed on them. I gave him my most pissed-off withering glare of derision and he went in the back and printed out an itinerary that had the airport office letterhead.

And then we had to find a taxi to get home. We managed to find a different metered taxi, but the police prohibit the drivers from picking up passengers in front of the terminal (you figure this one out - for the fixed fare scam?) so we walked down the ramp toward the highway with the taxi following us until we were out of sight of the police.

Yesterday we went to the EgyptAir office to get our refund. We girded ourselves mentally - we prepared our extensive set of documentation - we worked out the good cop/bad cop routine - and we ticked off our set of arguing points. We were called up to the desk - and our agent was the "new" agent who'd told me in May that KC's ticket didn't exist.

"Do you remember me?" I asked him.

"Yes - Abu Simbel frequent flier. How was your trip?"

[beat]

"Actually, that's why we're here. We got to the airport and found out EgyptAir had cancelled our flight. We'd like a refund. Here's our original itinerary."

"Please wait here, I'll be right back."

The agent stepped away and we settled into our chairs. He was gone for about 10 minutes, walking here and there through the office. Finally he came back and said simply, "Come with me."

We were ushered into a manager's office behind the ticket counter. I thought they were bringing us back there to bludgeon us to death for asking for a refund. Instead the manager came around the desk, shook our hands, and boomed, "Congratulations!"

For what? we thought. Being the first EgyptAir customers to get a refund? We stared at him blankly.

"Congratulations on your country!" He beamed at us.

We thought, Great. What have we done now?

"Congratulations on your football! America very good!!"

Ah. America had just beaten Egypt in some big soccer game. Of course this was just about the furthest thing from our minds at this point.

We signed a paper and were sent to the cashier's desk. We showed photocopies of our passport - and 3 minutes later we were handed LE 1674.

To repeat how I began this long sordid tale:

So we went to the office, spoke with an agent, signed a form with the manager, got a full refund in cash, and left within 15 minutes.

I was convinced I was having a coma dream. This last trip to the EgyptAir office is by far the weirdest thing that has happened to me in this country.

And now we have to come back to Egypt - because we haven't seen Abu Simbel.