Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Contingency plans

I've been tracking AC's Toronto->Narita flight schedule almost religiously for the last several days and what I've noticed is the consistent delays, anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours averaging out to about one hour. And since there will be only about an hour for connection in Narita, I'm pretty worried. I'm running on a pretty tight schedule, not only because of the hour-long connection, but because the last bus of the route I need to take goes at 10:30. So I have about 2.5h (if my final flight arrives in Taiwan on time) to do the following:

a) get through customs
b) pick up luggage
c) shuttle bus (which takes about an hour)
d) MRT subway
e) bus

It's one of those moments you know things will definitely go awry and you count your lucky stars if things actually all work out.

I am not a big fan of these moments.

Anyways, because I'm slightly neurotic, I've been running case scenarios in my head.

Scenario #1: Missed connection in Narita
a) there should be another flight from the same alliance departing 30 minutes after my original flight. I'm going to try to make that one.
b) if there's no available flight within 2 hours (because at least the MRT will still be open and I should be able to make the rest of the way), I'm going to request the next day's earliest flight and just crash at Narita for the night. I can store my luggage ($10 US) at the airport's storage facility and sleep at one of the hotels near the airport (since the airport does not allow passengers to stay in the facility between 11 pm-6am.)

Scenario #2: Missed the last bus in Taipei
a) take the MRT and take a taxi from the station/call my relative to pick me up (the LAST resort. Let's hope it won't come to that)

UPDATE: With a typhoon looming over Taiwan the next few days, my parents have decided that I'm going to take the MRT to another relative's place for the first night and then go to my original place of stay for the second. Don't ask me why I don't just stay at either relative's for both nights because this plan makes no sense to me either. 

UPDATE 2: Air Canada has been on time both yesterday and the day before. I'm taking that as a good sign. Crossing my fingers.

No comments:

Post a Comment