I felt smug about my airfare, until I realised it was the wrong airline
Why on Earth am I flying home via Delhi?
Duffer that I am, I've accidentally clicked on the wrong flight on Trip.com. The time is almost identical, the price likewise, the flying time ditto. The only major difference is the route, and the airline. I am flying with an Indian carrier. Oh well, at least the food should be good.
I don't really think about it again until the morning of my flight home. I arrive at Heathrow just after 7am, to find my 9.45am flight delayed by four hours. They send an email while I am in the cab, which of course I don't see until I arrive.
As excuses go, they have a pretty good one: the airspace over the subcontinent is closed because India and Pakistan are firing missiles at each other.
I am about to wheel away to find a much-needed coffee when it dawns on me: assuming this plane really does take off in four hours (which, given the conflict, feels like a stretch), I will miss my connecting flight.
'Right,' says the check-in fellow. 'You'd better follow this man to the service desk.'
Sleep- and coffee-deprived, my neurons are firing about as well as a clapped-out Morris Minor, but out the corner of my eye I spy some bloke sprinting through the terminal. He is five metres, 10 metres, 20 metres ahead of me, doesn't once make eye contact, and says not a word.
I have no idea if he is the person I am meant to be following, but in the absence of a better option, that's what I do. And then he stops, and lo and behold it is the Air India service desk.
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