After a very long and crazy journey, he finally made it home yesterday morning. We all thought he was coming home on Monday but we just had the details of his flight mixed up. It was a nice surprise that he came home early even though it was a challenge that began with his outbound Beijing flight getting delayed 7 hours. Then, he missed his connecting flight to Vienna when he landed in Moscow. He landed late and had to be put up in the airport hotel in a lock down situation. Not only did they take all the passengers' passports away but they locked them onto the hotel floor! Americans and many other nationalities need visas to go to Russia. We don't need a visa to transit through visa but to leave the airport a visa in your passport is necessary. Since Curt (and these other passengers) didn't expect to get stuck overnight he didn't bother to update his Russian visa.
In addition to the lock down, he was forced to share a hotel room... with a Chinese guy who didn't speak any English. I would have had trouble dealing with this situation! Curt called me from the room and was a bit angry but knew he couldn't do anything about it. Fortunately he got some sleep before being let out of his room early the next morning for his connecting flight.
The only positive side to this is that he was rerouted directly into Budapest in the morning.
No compensation, no apologies, same old great Aeroflot customer service!
We are all very happy to be reunited.
