Time Is Money

Sure I've always been pretty aware of how valuable time is, but I never expected to get paid 3 euros for 1 minute of my time!

No, it's not that I've cheated someone to get me hired to debug and fix a running vital application or to give a "master class" (I wonder in what the fuck I could give a master class...), it's much more mundane, but pretty interesting.

I've recently taken an early flight from Toulouse to Berlin. I was supposed to fly with Lufthansa via Munich (by the way, Lufthansa has some pretty good prices, more over if you're used to the blatant robberies that Iberia can perform on its clients...). I was asked to do the auto check-in in one machine at the airport, and to my surprise (and a certain discomfort) the screen kept saying that there was not any reservation with my name-number. The Lufthansa assistant told me to go to the check-in desk, that sometimes they had these problems. Once there, when the desk lady started to search among several papers I started to get slightly nervous (I had received a fight reminder by email the day before, so there could not be any problem). Suddenly the girl tells me that my flight is overbooked and that they'd like to get me transferred to another flight (Brussels Airlines to Berlin via Brussels), all in all I would be getting to Berlin 40 minutes later and would get a 125 euros voucher in compensation for the inconveniences. When she asked me if I accepted the deal I had such a smile on my face that I didn't need to say a word :-D Well, I got the voucher pared in cash in Berlin's Lufthansa desk, which bearing in mind that every time I withdraw 100 euros from a cash machine in France with my Spanish card I pay a 4 euros commission, means that I'm saving 4 extra euros :-)

125 euros for a 40 minutes delay! The deal seems pretty fair, depending on your flight these 40 minutes could mean that you no longer have pubic transport and have to take a taxi (this is a major problem in Asturies), but in my case, arriving to Berlin in the morning with all its excellent (and fucking expensive) public transport to my disposal and with no "tight agenda", the deal was just superb!

I'd never run before into this issue, an overbooked flight. I'd heard about it, but honestly I thought it would be something only happening in "banana air companies", not in serious ones. But well, as I've said for me in this particular case it's been a real favor. It quite calls my attention that you get a compensation, of course it's fair, but you're not getting any compensation with other similar issues (your flight departs/gets late or directly it gets rescheduled). Last year I had an Airberlin flight moved forward 3 hours (from 9 in the morning to 6 in the morning or something like that). Hopefully flying from Berlin that's not a big deal (apart from sleeping 3 hours less that night), cause you can reach the airport by public transport even at those early times. But a similar issue in Asturies would have forced me to take a 70 euros taxi to the Airport!!! I didn't get any sort of compensation for this reschedule, as I've never got for delayed flight. For example, years ago my EeasyJet flight to London was cancelled and I was moved to the next day, losing 1 vacation day, 1 paid hostel night and having to pay for an extra trip to the Airport...

Out of curiosity, I asked in the Lufthansa desk if was something specific to Lufthansa, and they told me it was an European normative. Hope some day they'll extend such normative to rescheduled or delayed flights.