We started heading home at 7:00 PM Wednesday, boarding Air Namibia in Windhoek for an 11 hour flight to Frankfurt. There, we had a 3 hour layover, before catching the 10 hour Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Portland.
We had not seen a newspaper or a television for a week and a half. We had no clue that a strike by the union for ground and cabin crews would lead to Lufthansa canceling 82 flights today.
This meant that there were over 300 passengers from our flight alone at the Frankfurt airport, looking for seats to Portland. That can make a standby list a very chancy business.
The Frankfurt airport is a dreadful place to be stranded. All the gates are secure access areas, which passengers may only enter as their passports and boarding passes are checked during the active boarding process. There are very few chairs available for those in transit who are not actively boarding. Frankfurt has, however, very thoughtfully provided a large horizontal surface for passenger relaxation. In the US, we call it a "floor."
We hustled to the Lufthansa transit center, and watched the queues grow longer as chaos descended on Frankfurt airport. When our turn finally came, the Lufthansa clerk put us on the waiting list for a flight to San Francisco. IF we could get to San Francisco, we then had confirmed flights on a flight from San Francisco to Portland.
There was a large crowd of hopeful standby passengers at the gate for the San Francisco flight. We were the last three called before they closed the doors and took off for San Francisco.
This day could have turned out a lot worse.
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