Tunis Airport, TunisAir - Need A Lot of Improvement.

[Renato1]

About a month ago, I got an email that my TunisAir flight to Lisbon on 28 Aug 2019 had been cancelled, and to click on link and confirm flight two days earlier on 26 Aug. Which was my first inkling that things may not be so good on the forthcoming trip.

As a result I lost two days accommodation in Tunis that I had paid for with Amex points - though the hotel was nice enough to give me free pick up to and from the airport/hotel.

So, yesterday, with no emails or SMS that anything was wrong with the flight, we arrived at Tunis Airport at 1pm. The luggage check-in area was not air-conditioned, and packed with thousands of people. And our flight was delayed by 3. 5 hours.

Made our way to the check-in gates that the signs told us to go to. Only three couples ahead of us. Nothing happened. Soon scores were queued behind us. Nothing happened. Every one was waving their paperwork like a fan trying to keep cool. Soon everyone was drenched in sweat. After half an hour of this, my wife said, "In future, please don't take me to any of these backwater countries".

I went to one of the check-in gals who was punching away on her smart phone and asked what was going on. She replied,"I don't know". My wife went up to the other girl and asked in French "Pardon Madmoiselle" and she was ignored. A passenger who spoke English said to my wife "When a flight is delayed, their computers won't accept luggage, and they don't tell passengers anything - to go or to stay - happens all the time".

So all up we stood there in the heat and very noisy condtions for an hour and a half, observing all the loud altercations and fracas going on in other lines further away from us between irate passengers and staff, before finally getting our boarding pass, saying that boarding was at 6pm.

Inside the airport was nice and air-conditioned, though my wife opined insufficient number of women's toilets with long queues. Duty free snacks and lollies were ridiculously expensive. And we headed to gate 48, getting there at 3pm. Can't say it was boring - fracas here, a fracas there, five-up all told between angry passengers and staff, though two involved Italians being moved between gates trying to get on the 10am flight to Bologna.

At 6.25pm a chap came out and yelled to go to gate 50 (half the people wouldn't have heard it). At gate 50, everyone queued up to board, and .........nothing happened. We sat down.

At 7.20pm, with no announcement, boarding started. Plane took off, and we were in Lisbon by 10.30pm.

Plane wasn't all that clean. Food spattering on seats behind the trays. Someone had stuck our duty free books together with chewing gum. It was an A320, which surprisingly had lots of leg room - more than on our Qatar A380 flight. Two toilets were down the back, one was defective in that lights weren't working and was pitch black inside.

Staff were friendly and helpful, and the meal - tuna salad and tuna and pasta and cheese - was quite substantial.

Finally got to our hotel, Altis Prime. I had had to book two extra nights there, because of the TunisAir cancellation, and had used Amex, part paid with my Amex credit. For those two nights, the staff kindly upgraded us to their huge luxurious penthouse suite, where we are recovering from yesterday's ridiculous experience, as I write this.
Regards,
Renato

 

[dajop]

Thanks for sharing your “interesting” experience. Now, wouldn’t your post be boring if it all went to plan? Glad you made it Lisbon safely. How was Tunisia itself?

 

[Renato1]

Thanks for sharing your “interesting” experience. Now, wouldn’t your post be boring if it all went to plan? Glad you made it Lisbon safely. How was Tunisia itself?

Thanks for that.

As I was incapacitated for most of the stay in Tunisia, I can only say I was very pleased with our location at Royal Victoria Hotel (the room a bit small, but I knew that when I booked). Fabulous French meals that were actually filling in the hotel restaurant - though it was nearly always empty.

My wife had lot longer walks from our area, and she really enjoyed it, both the Paris feel down the main street to the city centre, and the Arabic feel in the Medina traditional shopping area where we were staying. She did note that streets off the main Street weren't that clean. She had fun haggling, for one bracelet the price went down from 85 dinars to 10.

That said, while our driver from the airport took us on the "nice" drive to the hotel, the driver on the way back took back roads to avoid the traffic, and I commented to my wife that I was glad I hadn't picked some of the hotels on that route, as the areas looked quite dingy.

Thus our views are necessarily quite superficial given our stay was cut in half, and that I was out of action. But we still have fond memories of the place.

As for me, on the day we were due to leave, I had prepared three slow release 100mg Tramadols for the trip, took the first, then weighed the suitcases with my Aldi electronic scales - and suddenly my back was cured, and I could walk again. I had tried that trick the day before, but it hadn't worked. So I was actually delighted walking all over Tunis Airport, and enjoying the sensation, when we finally got into the air-conditioned area.
Cheers,
Renato