Plaza Premium Lounge, Toronto Terminal 3 Domestic Departures
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to do a tour of the Plaza Premium lounges at Toronto’s Pearson International airport. The Plaza Premium Lounge network offers “pay-in lounges”, which means that for a small fee those of us who fly with cheap tickets can have access to first class service, comfortable seating, buffet styles meals and unlimited self service drinks (including alcohol). After my tour, I was in the terminal for over 3 hours before boarding my plane to Venice, so I compared life in the lounge to life in the terminal.
Magician Ramana performs invisible seating stunt at Manchester airport to promote KLM Economy Comfort Zone.
Now, if only he could show the rest of us how this can be done….then we wouldn’t have to complain about a lack of seating, armrests and hard bucket seats at airports around the world.
Since Wednesday thousands of people have been stranded at airports in Europe and abroad. With no place to go until flights resume and no word on when that will be, passengers face a lengthy wait.
Unfortunately, the airlines are not required to do much, if anything, for stranded passengers during an “Act of God” such as this. The United States Department of Transportation does not require airlines to provide any compensation, food or lodging.
In Europe, the rules are a little more civilized. The airlines are not required to provide financial compensation, but they are required to provide such things as food and lodging “as appropriate”.
The definition of “as appropriate” has been interpreted differently by different airlines. American Airlines in European airports has been providing stranded passengers snacks (because we all know the nutritional value a handful of pretzels). Meanwhile, British Airlines has been handing out meal vouchers to stranded passengers in U.S. and European airports.
Cots have been brought in to Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Brussels Zaventem, and New York JFK making the terminals look like refugee camps.
Understandably, spirits are lows and people are anxious to get home. With no official news about when the flights will resume, here are a few tips to help stranded travellers wait out the delay:
If you are travelling in a group, send one person out to buy air mattresses. You can find these at camping, hardware or pool supply stores.
If food options at the airport are non-existent, just order in! Do you feel like having some pizza or Chinese food? Call a nearby restaurant with “home delivery” and have them deliver your current home….at the airport. Coordinate a drop off zone as they may have difficulty finding your set-up without a Door/Concourse/Level/Check-in counter reference.
After a day or two, you might smell a bit rank. If your airport does not have shower facilities, find the nearest handicapped washroom, fill the sink and wash away. Alternatively, ask the airport’s fire department to give you the Mark on Air Tran style shower (see video below).
If you are stuck in Orlando, Sea World and Busch Gardens is offering free admission. Stranded travellers must present a valid return airline ticket from April 14 through April 21, or until normal flight schedules resume, at the parks’ front gate Guest Services window. Assuming you have no luggage to take care of, this can keep you entertained for a few hours.
Finally, if you are not flying, you can still help by driving a stranded traveller to the local mall to pick up supplies such as mattresses, food, clothes, and toiletries. Please help put a smile on some poor air traveller’s face during their time of need.
Has the volcanic ash affected your travel plans? Are you stuck in the airport? How are you coping?
When I started this site as a joke back in 1996, I never imagined that 14 years later it would still be around and more popular than ever. Over the years the site has evolved … slightly … from focusing on just the funny adventures of sleeping in the airport to now being a useful reference for travellers who need to sleep in airport overnight and those travellers who need to find safe refuge during a long transit.
I am in the process of creating detailed airport guides with useful info such us baggage storage, showers, pay-per-use airport lounges and other good to know info for the airport sleeper and stranded traveller.
I’ve got a lot of airports to cover though, so I need some help. Do you know your home airport well enough to share your inside information with people who have never been there before??? If you do, I am looking for people who can write a short introduction (a paragraph) about the airport to accompany the general airport information I have already researched and will post.
If this sounds like something you can do, please send me an email.
Earlier this week, we heard the bizarre story of a mother and daughter who were arrested at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport after they tried to take a corpse onto a plane.
The 91-year-old deceased man was pushed in a wheelchair through the airport wearing sunglasses before check-in staff became suspicious and he was prevented from boarding the plane.
The women were arrested on suspicion of failing to give notification of a death and were released on bail. They are accused of trying to smuggle his body back to Germany, thus saving on the costly repatriation fees. It’s a risky and unusual money saving strategy, that is for sure!
The deceased man’s wife, Gitta Jarant, claims that her husband had died at the airport. She says “My Willi only died at the airport. He suddenly looked so lifeless, like a wax figure. His fingernails turned blue all of a sudden. At home he was still warm — I swear!”
She says that she hopes to get the remains of her husband from Britain as soon as possible and have him cremated — and then return to Berlin.
Where is the strangest place you woke up after a night of drinking?
We’re sure it doesn’t rank in stupidity as the young man who was recently discovered napping behind the engine of an Indian Airlines Airbus A-320 at the New Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport. Fortunately, he was found during an inspection two hours before the plane’s departure to Raipur and Nagpur. The inspection crew noticed his leg dangling from the rear of the engine. After being roughed up by security, the man was still too inebriated to pull together some logical thoughts. He simply told airline security that he reached the airport in a truck, wandered to the operational area and was sleepy so he chose the engine as his bed for the night. His statement warrants questions like How? Why? and WTF?!?!
Incidentally, there does seem to be a trend among the drunk men of Delhi who seek refuge at the airport after a bender. Back in February, another drunk man was discovered sleeping at Indira Gandhi airport - this time on the runway. The Air Traffic Control radar detected the man catching a few zzzzzs on the runway just as an aircraft was about to land. The ATC had to ask the pilot to abort touching down
November highlights on The Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports.
NOVEMBER STATS New Airport Reviews: 57 New Facebook Fans: 275 [become a fan] Total: 3343 Top Contributors: stranger | tupungato | surejb [become a contributor] Airport with Most New Reviews: Paris CDG Most Read Airport Page: Paris CDG
LASTING IMPRESSIONS
If you’ve visited the site in the past, you’re probably familiar with the “Lasting Impressions” section on each airport’s overview page. This section includes some memorable quotes and tips I’ve picked out of our contributor’s reviews. Here are a few quotes that have just been added:
Frankfurt Airport - “The terminal is massive. I got lost and had to find security to get directions to my gate.” (zurichopper)
Paris CDG Airport - “the guy on the electric floor swiper drove at us several times and drove over the front of the bench where our feet were about 10 or 12 times in the space of 10 mins.” (cdgcov_lad)
Altenburg Airport - “There are school gyms that are larger than the terminal as a whole and the check-in area is about the size of a large living room.” (t_maia)
Glasgow Prestwick Airport - “They threaten you with eviction outside if you misbehave.” (Jeff Geoff)
Sydney Airport - “The person who suggested making a bed by tipping a seat by a wall is genius. I did this and could lie down and stretch my legs.” (Fuchka)
Shannon Airport - “I couldn’t sleep even a minute ’cause I thought I was gonna die like the people of [the movie] ‘Alive!’.” (stranger)
Trapani Airport - “there are terrible flies there. They will keep sitting on you all the time. It’s impossible to fall asleep when a fly lands on your face every 10 seconds.” (tupungato)
ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES IN AIRPORT SLEEPING
Bergamo Airport, Italy
by stranger
The place is the most similar thing to a hostel that you can find and on top of that, it’s totally free! which is of great appreciation because Milano is a painfully expensive city. You can save 18-20 by sleeping in this airport because it looks like a dorm, seriously! Its equipment is very basic and you’ll have to sleep in hard chairs, but most of the people have their own sleeping bags and sleep comfortably on the floor. There are people loafing around without T-shirt or without shoes as if they were in their homes (I did it!) and no one gives a hoot. But make sure you arrive early because there are LOTS AND LOTS of people sleeping there. The guards let you sleep in peace all night, but at 5 a.m they wake everybody up ’cause the airport become operational.
Sharjah International Airport, UAE
by surejb
Flew thru this place twice, both entailing stays of more than 8 hours. The budget airline Air Arabia has its hub here…
The place is run by a staff who are the most arrogant and racist workforce in the Middle-East. Arabs are renowned for their hospitality especially in Bahrain Oman Al Ain Ras Al Khaimah etc…but the HR guys must have recruited the most racist people to staff the airport.
I actually saw a staff use his feet to awaken (can say kick) an Afghani worker who was napping on the floor. The airport is mainly used by labourers from the Sub-continet, Far-East North Africans etc. So they don’t cater to the western diaspora of UAE, which means they can run the place like a prison.
Everything from check in to boarding is deplorable and appalling. Passengers are treated like animals
The place stinks.
The common use toilets are worse than ones in train stations in Lahore.
The only relief is the pay and use lounge which is atleast staffed by humans and the toilets showers and bathrooms are clean.
Not much food choices, but at least better than having to spend time in the common area. The common area doesn’t have many amenities for spending the night.
you’ll have to stretch out on the unclean floor if you really want to doze. Never travel thru this airport if it involves for more than an hour of transit
Check back next month for more entertaining airport experiences!
December is a big month. We have some survey and poll results coming out in the next few weeks.
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