As you can guess from the video I posted earlier, my flight to Nigeria has been the most nightmarish situation I can actually remember having with an airline and airport. Turns out.I missed out on a key key events which my mum was quick to point out (as well as the fact that the camera had cut off the top of my head *picky lady*), so I thought I should do this quick post re-highlighting every thing that happened *again*
1) The Cab
The cab driver was late but not only was he late but he had convinced himself that he was on the right road and outside the right door, when in reality he was on the wrong road and outside the wrong door and nowhere near my house. He had two sat-navs that were telling him two completely different things so how on earth he every got anywhere on time is beyond me loooool. He didn't really know where Heathrow was and wanted us to go long way there when there was a quicker and easier way to get there
Anyway we got stuck in traffic and the cab journey that as only meant to take an hour max. took us almost 2 and a half hours *stress!!!* but we finally got to Heathrow and innocently thought that our main drama was over, done and dusted but in reality, our nightmare was only just beginning.
2) Arik Airways and Heathrow
Soooooo we get to our check in gate in Heathrow and find out that we have to queue and tag ourselves. We didnt really get any information on to why, I just assumed that their thing was broken but anyway we ended up in one queue for an hour and a half, just to be told at the end of the queue we had to get into another queue to check in. We were flabbergasted!!! By this time it was 9pm and our flight was at 9.45pm so we just were not impressed, so my mum had a few "choice" words with a member of staff who rudely told her that she should have been here earlier (which was a bit of a slap in the face considering we had had problems with the cab, been stuck in traffic and just been in a pointless queue for an hour). Anyway we just were not impressed and long story short they opened up an express queue for our flight, so we checked in, went through security and ran for our gate (which wasn't even open)
Now all we wanted to get on our flight relax, have a nap and take off safely
yeeaaaahhhh . . . . It didn't work out exactly like that
3)Arik's Customer Service SUCKS!!!
Yhh . . . I think you get the point I'm trying to make with this subheading loooool. The airhostess/airhost all looked devoid of life, manky and soooo sloppy. The airhostess that covered my section was the rudest b***h EVER!!!! She had NO manners, NO positivity and a MAJOR attitude problem. I think my flight would honestly have been made worse if I had to deal with just her for the whole of the journey but luckily her co-worker balanced her out with his bubbliness and humour. The safety procedures were a shambles. Sooo uncoordinated and unsynced. The person who was on the tannoy had a serious talking problem and they only had 20 blankets for the whole flight so because my mum and sister had a blanket I had to use my wool scarf as a replacement blanket.
The flight wasn't all bad . .in Arik's defense, they have the best airplane food I've ever had, and that's saying something as I normally refuse to eat airplane food as it tastes soo horrible, not even a boat load of salt, pepper and nandos sauce can rectify it.
4) Nigerian's are borderline Crooks
I know Nigeria generally have a bad reputation when it comes to crime, *Im hearing silent sniggers of 419 right now* but I don't think it really registered til I got off the Arik flight in Abuja. We had to get a connecting flight from Abuja to Lagos but had to make our way from the international airport to the local airport (which we didn't know at the time, we assumed the flights would be in the same place), now we hadn't changed any money yet and only had max N1000 (roughly £4/£5) changed and the lady at the info desk told us that it should only cost us N1000 to get to the local airport. We are so lucky that she told us that because when we got to the cab station/ airport carpark when the cab drivers heard our accents they nicely tried to bump up the price to like N1500/N2000 *419ERS (¬_¬)* BUT my mum bargained them down like a true Nigerian looooool but that was just crime 1.
Crime 2 happened when we got to the local airport, we found that the local people or guys or parking attendants or valets or whatever they called themselves had rounded up all the trolleys in the airport and were CHARGING us to get a trolley from them. How on earth do you want me to pay for something that's meant to be free??? WTF!!!! As you can guess we were just not impressed about that but then a nice person gave us some money from a trolley but I think I was in the foulest mood at this point I can't even remember if the person was a male or female looooooool
Crime 3 is probably the one that nearly pushed us over the edge. The local airport had reduced their luggage allowance to 20kg . . . and I dont mean 20kg per suitcase . . . I mean 20kg per PERSON! I don't think you can understand the frustration when we heard that as our luggage allowance in the UK and on Arik was 60kg . . . that like *counts in head* a 200% reduction!!!!!! (OK that might not be right but you KNOW what I mean) so my mum had to go and hunt down a mallam (like I said in my video - currency exchange on legs) and change some money. I think what took the biscuit is the fact that the man slipped the money into his own pocket meaning that the huge luggage reduction wasn't the airline's policy but rather a way for him to make money on the side . . RAGE!!!
So anyway we just could not be bothered at this point, we just tired.
Luckily for us, Danair our next flight was sooo lovely. It was eveything that Arik was not
But super long story short . . we got here safely . . . and I got to rage about the events on a video loooool (click here to watch it)
