This has to be one of the most stressful trips I have ever taken

So what can go wrong when you’re on a trip, and what can you do about it?

Plenty, and just about enough to keep going are the answers. 

Let me go through the three main ways my latest trip went haywire, and how I put them right. Well, kind of. Some of the stuff is going to take some more longterm thinking. But, let me go back to the beginning, and then I’ll share some lessons that I’ve learned or had at the forefront of my mind when I prepared for and went through this trip.

Let’s go back to the start. 

So the point of my whole trip was to go and see my parents, as well as see some interesting things and create some cool content along the way. I used to go back to the UK to see my family twice a year., but in cent years, that hasn’t been possible. But I’m trying to get back to the rhythm of doing that again. But the thing is, prices of flights have gone up shockingly when you compare from 2019 to now. So, cost is an issue. 

So here was my solution

And it’s a risky one, and one I’ve avoided doing before, and certainly not one I would risk if I had the kids with me. 

I have a lot of points in the British Airways Frequent Flyer programme, called, Avios, that I want to use. The problem is that British Airways do not fly to New Zealand. Not directly anyway, and its certainly difficult to find any routing that gets me to Wellington, even on partner airlines. 

The problem with using partner airlines in the Avios programme is that your points become immediately devalued, by 50%, sometimes more, and the co-payment for taxes and other fees increase as well. 

So, part 1 of my mission was to find a routing from London that flew to a place I could connect to, flying from New Zealand. And this is how I ended up in Shanghai. I found a cheap-ish air New Zealand flight that got me to and from Shanghai, and I booked a British airways rewards seat flight, using frequent flyer Avios points, that got me from Shanghai to London and back again. 

Now, the problem with slit itineraries like this is that if anything happens and you miss your connection, well that’s on you. If it was a single itinerary, the carrier is responsible for getting you to your final destination. But on a split itinerary, the carrying airline only needs to get you to your connection point. And if there are cancellations or delays because of weather or other issues, well, sorry about that but it’s not really our problem.

So I built in almost 3 days in shanghai on my outward legs between major flights, and another 36 hours between my flight arriving from London and my flight leaving shanghai for New Zealand. 

So far so good. I have some wiggle room if things go wrong. And at this point, I start to get cocky and I book a side trip use those frequent flyer miles on British Airways to Lisbon, Portugal for two nights, as I’d never been there before and wanted a little side adventure. 

Now let’s start detailing how this all starts to go wrong

First, Typhoon Bebinca hits shanghai, meaning that my flight leaves New Zealand almost a day later than planned. I mean, when 400,000 people are evacuated from Shanghai because of the worst typhoon in 75 years, I can understand the day. But this means I lose a whole day in Shanghai.

But I made my flight to the UK from Shanghai, and I arrived pretty much intact and all good. 

Five days later, I’m on and early morning flight to Lisbon and I have a wonderful day in the Portuguese capital, wondering why it took me so look to discover how great this city is in person 

And that’s when the second this goes wrong. I got a text from my sister on the second morning in Lisbon, asking me to call her urgently. 

My mum had had a fall in the house and she was not in a good way. If we wind back a couple of days, I’d just had a heart to heart with my parents about how I thought they needed to sell their house and move somewhere that was easier for them, given their age - like not having any stairs. Up until this point, whenever I’d mentioned this over the previous 20 years, they had rejected the idea. But this time was different. They seemed to recognise that being in their 80s, his house was much less than ideal. And even though they had not moved from this house since the 1960s, maybe the time was actually right now. 

So it’s ironic that just two days before, I had urged them to consider moving before something bad happened and to not wait for that moment, but to take charge and move before it happened. 

At first, we thought she had experienced a cardiac event because she mentioned through her moaning after her fall, that she had pain on her left side, before she fell. 

I made sure the ambulance had been called and then got on the phone to British Airways to try to cut my trip short and get back to London. Unfortunately, all I managed to achieve over the next few hours was finding out they had no availability on their flights, and could only route me back through Finland, which would get me back just 2-3 hours before I was due home the following day anyway. And this was through multiple dropped calls.  And I was getting calls and texts from London updating me with the latest, as well as asking advice through that morning and afternoon. 

As it turned out, it didn’t seem to be a cardiac event, with CT scan and ECGs coming back looking ok. So, I didn’t rush back, but was checking in hourly, as the weather in Lisbon turned ugly and rainy, and my mood turned away from having fun and just being worried about my mum.

I got back as scheduled the following day - well, actually about 2 hours late for some inexplicable reason, but such is modern travel.

So we come to the third thing that went wrong, and it’s a big one

As I was on the local train, I checked my email and saw an email from British Airways. It had the sort of header that made my blood run cold. I clicked on the email and found out that my flight on Oct 2 to Shanghai had been cancelled. The airline advised me to click the button to go online to book another flight. 

I could feel the blood draining from my face as I clicked the button. I looked over the following days from the date after my flight was cancelled. I looked at the days before too. The only date I would find was leaving London on 5 October. The problem was that my flight to New Zealand left Shanghai on 4 October. 

This was my nightmare coming true. 

I got off the internet, and called the British Airways contact number. Some two hours later, after finally finding someone helpful. I had gone through a process of elimination to find a routing and flight that worked. At first, they said the only flights available were 5 October and 30 September. The 30 September flight was better, but it would mean having to pay for 3 extra nights of accommodation during China’s Golden Week celebrations, which would have cost a lot. 

I asked if there were any other ways or routings around this, and then the agent said she could possibly look at alternative routings through partner airlines. Once I clarified this would not cost me any extra, because British Airways had cancelled my flight, she started to check it out.

And that is how I ended up booked on to my upcoming British Airways flight to Doha, connecting to a Qatar Airways flight to Shanghai from there. The only problem is that I lose almost an entire day again. Instead of arriving in to Shanghai at 7am, I’m arriving at 4.15pm, meaning I won't be getting to my hotel until 8pm. And I’ll have to leave my hotel the following day at 9am to get back to the airport for my flight back to New Zealand.

But, at least I was booked on a flight that connects now. I just hope we get there on time (postscript - I did, but only just)

So here are the lessons I’ve learned from what I can do when things go wrong when I travel, like they have on this trip

First, having cellphone cover is pretty important. My UK cell provider, is giffgaff, and they offered me unlimited calls in the UK, but also offered me free roaming for calls in the EU too. That was very useful to have while I was calling my dad and my sister repeatedly when I was stuck in Lisbon and my mum was taken sick and being checked out in hospital.

Second, was to make sure I had data cover too. My holafly global eSIM worked well no matter what destination I was in - I just turned it on and I got a decent mobile data connection. That was useful even to confirm that I could not get a flight I wanted and I needed to call the British Airways Contact Centre.

Third, it’s that when I was trying to get on a flight to Shanghai, the contact centre could make it happen, even when it didn’t look like there were any options online. And although it took two hours to figure out a solution, we eventually got there.

Fourth, I was wise to build in ‘go wrong’ time into my split itineraries. The time I left available was pretty tight - 36 hours is the minimum I would put in between your itineraries, depending on the flight schedules for your particular routing. 

And fifth, know that split itineraries are pretty risky. I’m reasonably happy with how mine worked out, but it’s also pretty stressful when things go off track and you’re trying to find a way to get them back on track again. Particularly because I only had 48 hours slack to get home, as my wife is leaving for a trip almost immediately after I get back, and I needed to be home to look after the kids. 

And there’s no way I would do this kind of thing if I had our kids with me. Trying to find seats on a re-routed frequent flyer miles flight would be super challenging, I reckon. 

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