Horrific: My 1-Hour Flight With BoA Has Become A 16-Hour Day...
Intro
Holy sh*t, have I had one of those travel days. You know those travel days where everything just seems to go wrong instead of right? If you travel a lot, I assume you have had one of those days. However, not only was I re-booked 13.5 hours after the scheduled departure, but I also don't speak a lick of Spanish😅.
The Day
The day started out great, surprisingly. The part of the trip I was most worried about was the bus from Uyuni to La Paz, at least out of all that I have heard about these buses. However, the bus was fantastic with almost lie-flat seats, a closed curtain, snacks, and water all included. Heck, we even arrived an hour early into La Paz!
Since I was early getting into La Paz, I decided to take the cable car around the city. Okay, this was beautiful, and I highly recommend doing it, but at the same time, if I had gone straight to the airport, I would have made the last flight that actually left for Santa Cruz before the airport shut.
After the cable car, I grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport. It was 7:45 am by the time I arrived, and the lines were short. Seeing as there was a flight at 9:20 am, I thought, why not try to get on that since there were plenty of seats available? The agent confirmed everything and offered the choice to change to BOB 106, which was more than acceptable.
Perfect, I'd be on my way to Santa Cruz in time for lunch at the Swissotel, or so I thought.
We waited, and we waited, and we waited. Eventually, the agent came on with no prior announcements to cancel the flight. I had heard from fellow travelers that it was due to the fires in the area, which is completely understandable. However, seeing as Ecojet, Aerolinas Argentina, and GOL all operated their flights, I have to wonder if there is something management wasn't telling us.
With about 500 passengers needing re-booking, it took an hour and a half of waiting in line before an agent was able to change me to the last flight of the day. I'm not saying BoA did a bad job handling this, but they could have created a separate line for international re-booking, as it is much more complicated than a flight over to Santa Cruz. I got caught behind multiple people connecting to Madrid....
So now what? I have to take a call at 11 pm tonight, and the last flight of the day will get me in at 11:05 pm. I am not even sure it is going to fly! Well, Ecojet had one seat left on their flight from La Paz to Santa Cruz at 9 pm, so I headed over there and bought a last-minute ticket for 120$... That was brutal, but touch wood, they fly.
I then checked into these sleep pods in the airport, which were extremely expensive, but no amount of money can buy rest when you are tired. In the future (I'll do comprehensive reviews of all of this).
So, it is currently 5 pm local time, and I have two tickets booked through to Santa Cruz tonight. Considering that I trust Ecojet a bit more, the plane will get me in time for my call, and I believe the aircraft will be a BAE 146, which sounds like the best option. Heck, it kind of excites me.
The moral of the story: I wouldn't fly BoA domestically if possible🤨. They are not bad, but when stuff goes wrong, just no😂.
Final Thoughts
Well, the day finally came when I ended up with a string of bad luck on a travel day. To make matters worse, the 2:40 pm flight that I was originally booked on left only an hour late🥺. If you also have a brutal travel day, just spend the money and get it back with credit card travel insurance; trust me, it is worth it. Perhaps this is a sign to avoid BoA.
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