Maldives Day 1 - Drama at the airport and a nearly missed flight

July 26, 2021

The suitcases are packed, this afternoon at 5:30 we want to go to the airport.

The online check-in at Condor, which we try in the morning (usually available 24 hours in advance), of course doesn't work...

What an adventure vacation!

Only after a 45-minute waiting loop, a Condor employee takes pity on our request and also realizes that our TUI code does not work. He provides us with a new code and we can check in online.

However, we do not get any seats and boarding passes, we have to do that at check-in... great.

But now hopefully nothing can go wrong anymore???

Right? Apart from the fact that it is thundering outside and pouring buckets.

I want to be in the sun!!!!!!!!

Our flight departs at 20:30, we arrive at Frankfurt Airport at 17:45 and join the Condor queue.

We wait for almost an hour until we finally arrive at the counter at 18:45. We show our passports, PCR tests, and the IMUGA health declaration.

Then the shock: the health declaration that we sat at the PC for almost an hour yesterday morning has expired!!!

At 18:15, we have 18:45.
Please????? How can our entry data 'expire'!? Or our dates of birth? Passport numbers!? Vaccination certificates????

I don't understand anything anymore!!!

We misread it. It had to be filled out 24 hours before arrival on the island, but we thought it had to be filled out until 24 hours before departure 😱

The employee at the counter dryly says that we just have to do it quickly again. In 15 minutes, the counter will close, as boarding begins at 19:30.

A contradiction in terms - how is that supposed to work??? On the PC, where I have all my documents saved and a decent keyboard etc., it took us almost 1 hour. How am I supposed to do that on my phone (!) in 15 minutes for 4 people?????

My heart is racing, I'm sweating. With trembling hands, I try to fill out the first form on my phone, but I already fail with the phone number because I can't enter a '+', and the number with 0049 is not accepted. Major crisis!

On the 3rd attempt, I simply leave out the 0049, then it works. At 19:15, I have only filled out 1 form, at 19:30 boarding begins - but we are still sitting at the counter with our luggage!

The employees at the counter have already closed it, one employee is still waiting for us, everyone else has left.

Our son is sitting close to tears next to me on the chair and asks if we can't fly on vacation after all. I am totally desperate, my hands are shaking, I can hardly click on those small fields on the phone display anymore...

The employee at the counter takes pity on us and asks us to fill out the remaining forms on the way to security check (OH GOD, we still have to go through the queues at security check!!) and checks in our luggage.

It is 19:25 - boarding will begin in 5 minutes!

We run.... I run and type.

A disaster!!!

My fingers are so sweaty by now that I can hardly scroll down on the phone display.

Above all, you can't enter a birthdate - you have to 'swipe' month by month. That's a really great invention! It takes me 5 minutes just to 'swipe back' more than 40 years...

At the security check, we try to convince an employee that we will miss our flight if he doesn't let us through... no chance.

He doesn't care, a snippy 'Get to the back of the line!' is all he says.

It is already 19:50, boarding has probably already started, the plane is supposed to take off at 20:30....

Since we have a night flight and apparently not many tourist flights take off at this time, we are lucky that we come through the check relatively quickly.

We run to the gate, completely out of breath and sweaty, we reach our gate and realize that all the tourists are still calmly sitting in their seats.

The plane is delayed - never before have I been so happy about a delay!!! 😊

It is 20:00, the last form is uploaded and saved on the phone! Yay!!!
After the shock, my husband quickly buys a small bottle of wine. Wow, I need that now. What a stress!!!!
My fitness tracker shows a resting heart rate of 161.

Oh God, I really deserve this vacation now!!!!

We drink the wine and right after that, boarding begins.

Condor has assigned us seats in row 29 above the wing, 2 window seats and 2 seats in the middle (3 rows). I sit on the window with my daughter, our son and husband sit in the 3-row where luckily the last seat remains empty.
The plane is almost full, only a few single seats are left.

Finally, we take off towards the sunset.

 
Shortly afterwards, it becomes very turbulent, the pilot explains that we are flying through rain areas, so it will be quite rough for the next hour.
Cheers to a €7 wine (unfortunately everything costs extra now, we're spoiled by our flights with Emirates, Etihad, Singapore Airlines, and Qantas) - for calming down 🤭

Although the Condor InScreen screens are available in every seat, they are now only used to show the flight duration. The onboard entertainment is no longer available - at least not on the screens. An onboard entertainment via Wi-Fi and own device is advertised (we already know this from Australia).

You connect to the Condor Wi-Fi and access the onboard entertainment via your phone or tablet and watch movies. We have 5 devices (4 phones and 1 tablet), unfortunately, we only manage to connect a single phone to the system. After 30 minutes of failure with our son's phone, I give up. He can watch the movie 'Scoob!' on my phone. Thankfully, I have downloaded movies on the tablet - but unfortunately, we only have 1 tablet.

We take turns, my husband and I switch to the Kindle, then at some point we try to sleep despite the shaking.

Only over Romania does everything calm down and for the first time, my eyes close. However, none of us can really fall asleep.

Too cramped, too bumpy, too uncomfortable.
Anyway, we can relax tomorrow. 😊