Today started off just like any other normal day. We had our breakfast and took a taxi to the
airport, hoping to hop on an one hour flight to Cordoba, our next
destination. I checked the flight before
breakfast and everything was on time.
When I checked before we left our hotel, the flight was showing a delay
of 1h. By the time we arrived at the
airport, our flight was CANCELLED! To
make the matter worse, Salta is a tiny airport with limited flights in and
out. When we saw the local TV news crews
filming the chaos inside the airport, we knew the situation was pretty
grave. It turned out the pilots of the
national airlines Aerolineas Argentina were on a wild cat strike and it
affected many flights out of Buenos Aires.
They were either cancelled or delayed.
We were told we should come back tomorrow for this flight
but we insisted to fly to Buenos Aires and stay there overnight to connect to
Cordoba next morning. At least, there
would be many more options what to do once we were in a bigger airport. Unfortunately, the only open flight to Buenos
Aires was at 8:30p tonight meaning we were stuck in Salta airport for the whole
day. To make the matter worse, we had no
assurance whether the 8:30p flight would be impacted by the strike or not. Since we had an option to buy another ticket
to fly to Buenos Aires with a different airline (and gave up on the paid hotel
and airfare in Cordoba), we were torn about what to do. Finally, we decided to stay put since the
airline offered to put us up in a hotel in Buenos Aires plus transportation and
meals. At that time, the strike
situation seemed to be stabilizing as the flights seemed to be moving albeit at
a significant delay.
We struck up friendly conversations with several tourists
who were also impacted. We met a Caucasian from US who had been living in Hong
Kong longer than me, and a retired couple from New Zealand who were on a several
months vacation from Europe to US to Panama to Ecuador to Argentina going to
Iguazu next.
Our gamble to stick with Areolineas Argentina paid off
because our flight to Buenos Aires finally took off after another hour of delay.
By the time we arrived at Buenos Aires,
we had to line up to get our vouchers for hotel and meals. The meal was a piece of pan-fried breaded and
very chewy meat with fries (no choice and had to be taken in the airport). Then we had to line up for taxi for 30
mins. Hard to imagine that even close to
midnight, there were still so many travellers in the airport waiting for taxi! The taxi driver tried to scam more money from
us (not surprising) but failed since we stuck to the price on the ticket at the
airport. He gave some stupid excuses
about going on highway etc. and he could not produce an electronic receipt for
us to get reimbursement from the airlines (he turned off his meter). Checking in the hotel was a better experience
and the front desk lady was very helpful.
It was close to 1am before we got into bed… and we had to wake up to
take a taxi to the airport at 5:15a next morning….
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| Long line up in the tiny Salta Airport |
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| Local news crew interviewing passengers inside terminal. I think both of us must be on local news that night |
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| Long line up for taxi outside the Aeroparque Airport - at 11:30 pm !!! |
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