Giovanni Apruzzese

Giovanni Apruzzese

Assistant Professor
Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, Networking

TheWebConf'24: being ping-ponged across three airlines

This was a nerve-racking trip. The return trip went smoothly, but for the initial trip… let’s say that I was very close to not go there at all.

There are direct flights that connect ZRH with Singapore (SIN). It is a long flight (12 hours), but I’d much rather take a single long flight than splitting it in smaller ones (especially given my “luck”…). Hence, I took a flight, operated by SWISS Airlines, that was going to depart at 10:40pm on Sunday (May 12th) from ZRH, and which was supposed to land in SIN at around 6pm (local time). This would have been the first flight that I would take in the evening from ZRH, and it was, honestly, ideal: given that I hate waking up early (which is often the case when I have to take a flight…), a flight at 10:40pm meant that I could arrive in ZRH at 8pm—meaning that I could take any train from FCK to reach ZRH in the afternoon. Plus, the arrival at 6pm meant that I would have had enough time to drop my bags at the hotel and have some dinner. In summary, the prospect looked wonderful. Sadly, things went much differently.

My FCK-ZRH train departed at 17:50. I arrived early at the train station and began to wait. The train arrived on time, and at that moment I was writing a message to a colleague of mine, with this text “BTW, I’m about to get onto the train: remember that my plane leaves in ~5 hours, so send me a draft of the paper before then.” Right after sending this message—I was in front of the train’s entrance—I receive an SMS. It was from SWISS. “Your flight got canceled.”

The train

I felt lost. “What should I do? Get on the train, reach ZRH and hope to get another flight to SIN? Don’t go on the train and… do everything from my house?” I had mere seconds to choose. I got on the train. I didn’t even sit: I began checking for alternatives with my phone right at the entrance. The SMS did not mention any rebooking, so I checked if there were any flights (not necessarily direct ones) that I could take and that would bring me to SIN. The objective was arriving on the 12th, or in any case at a time in which I would not “lose” the first night at the Hotel (which was not refundable). There was one flight, but it was too early for me to take (9pm or so). Then, I receive another message, stating that I was rebooked to another flight: it was supposed to depart from Zurich the following day at 9am, then land in Munich, and I had to wait there for 2 hours for another flight that would bring me in SIN… at 7am of the 14th. This option was horrible: aside from being excessively long, I would not have been able to get the flight from ZRH in the morning (unless I slept in ZRH), and, moreover, there would have been an intermediate stop which I really did not want. In contrast, if I were to depart on the following day, there was a “nice” option: a direct flight—also from SWISS—that would leave at 11:45 from ZRH and land in SIN at 5:55am (yes: it would depart later and I would have arrived sooner than the other option that I had been automatically rebooked on!). And this is when things got bloodied.

The train station

I decided that there was no point for me to go to ZRH. Hence, I got off at the first stop—Buchs. And so I did. I take a bus ticket that would bring me back to Feldkirch, and then try to change my booking. Despite many attempts, I cannot: the new flight was operated by Lufthansa (for the ZRH-MUN) and Singapore Airlines (for MUN-SIN), and I cannot choose to be rebooked to another flight from SWISS Airlines. After wasting all the time I had available before the departure of the bus, I decide that the only way was to call the airline—SWISS, in this case, since they were the ones operating the first flight that got canceled and that automatically handled the rebooking process. However, there is a problem: I could not find any phone number for SWISS airlines. For some reason, all phone numbers have been deleted from their website.[a]I tried all sort of links. There are “contact forms”, FAQs, Contact Info, but no phone number. Even a search on Google with terms “SWISS airline phone number” or “swiss airline phone” returns nothing. In the best case, I found an US number, which clearly made no sense to contact in my current situation. The only way to reach out to them was by chat—but this means was not effective.[b]Actually, while I was on the FCK-ZRH train (before getting off at Buchs), I did try to communicate with SWISS via the chat. This, however, was not successful. First, because it took a long time before I could get an operator: when I got one, I began explaining my situation but… then my internet connectivity went off (this was because I went from Austria to Switzerland and changed the phone operator). When I regained connectivity, I had lost my previous conversation and tried to conact them again. An operator responded, and I presented my issue. After 15minutes or so, I did not receive any reply and the conversation ended automatically. While waiting in Buchs, I tried a third time but I never managed to get hold of any free operator.

The bus

Since I could not find any phone number, I tried calling another operator: I opted for Singapore Airlines. After getting onto the bus, I called them and, surprisingly, I got an answer very quickly. The operator was very quick to understand the issue: I wanted to be rebooked to the direct ZRH-SIN flight that left at 11am on the 13th. Unfortunately, the line went off while the bus was crossing the border between Liechtenstein and Austria… so I called them back as soon as I could. While I began presenting my issue to another operator, I got called by the former operator (great service by Singapore Airlines, truly!). So I stopped my current call, and went back to the previous one. The operator said that they, unfortunately, could not do anything because their flight was the “second” one (i.e., from MUN to SIN), and the main issue was the first flight, which was operated by Lufthansa (however, as I wrote, from the Lufthansa website, I could not change anything by myself), and for which I resulted to be “already checked in” – which was something that I never did. According to them, I should have “unchecked in”, and only then something would be possible. At that point, sometime around 7:30pm, I had arrived in Feldkirch and began walking towards my home. I began to question this entire trip: suddenly, I did not want to go to Singapore anymore. What was originally going to be an exciting and relaxing trip, ended up becoming a nightmare: I had already lost 2 hours, and there was no good news so far.

The house

Anyway, I arrived at my house sometime at 8pm. I went to my desktop, and began trying to find ways to “uncheck in” – which was something I did not know was even possible. I try every possible option in the Lufthansa website, but to no success. Eventually, I decide to call them. After waiting a bit, I was put in contact with a human operator: I explained my issue again, and asked if they could put me on the ZRH-SIN flight (after all, Lufthansa is the head company of the airline group that SWISS is also part of). They answered that this was not possible, but they successfully “unchecked” me from the first flight. However, I still could not “rebook” myself from the website—not from Lufthansa’s, and neither from SWISS. Then, I had an epiphany. A few months before, I had a phone call with SWISS about an issue that prevented me from checking in (it occurred for my trip to HICSS24—see here): maybe, just maybe, I still had the phone number I called in my call log on my mobile phone. And so took out my phone and checked the call log… and I found it! I immediately called that number, and after a short wait I was connected to an operator. I explained the issue to them, asked to be rebooked and in a few minutes… I was rebooked! Yay!

Considerations

Now, the following day everything went well—I had to wake up early, but who cares. What I would like to emphasize, here, are some “annoyances” that made everything very unpleasant.

On a positive note, the phone calls with Singapore Airline were great, and the operator was very reassuring and completely understood my issue and my frustration.

Now, there are two more things I’d like to mention here. I of course filed a complaint for SWISS since I arrived at my destination a long time after my original time of arrival—which made me lose the first night at the hotel. However, I did not get any refund for this because “the issue was due to a very-well-hidden problem of our aircraft that we could not spot and for which we are not responsible for”. Meh. I then tried to file a complaint with my Credit Card issuer, since they do provide travel insurance services if the ticket was purchased with the Credit Card. I got denied any form of compensation. Why? Because it only triggers if the flight is “delayed” (by 4h or more), and not if the flight is “canceled” (which would result in me arriving at the destination 4h or more later than the original time). This was hilarious, and I almost could not believe it… but that’s the way it is.

At least, Singapore was great and so was WWW. Too bad that I could not enjoy everything fully because I spent a lot of time working on a paper—which was ultimately accepted (it is our ICWSM25 paper), so I do not regret having done so.