NEVER fly Ethiopian Air

At 11:00am on Sunday Grace and I received a call from the airport informing us that our bags had arrived and were NOW READY TO BE PICKED UP! Finally!

I should have foreseen the hellish nightmare that was before me, given the very odd reason my bad needed picking up in the first place, but I did not. Going only off of what I knew about baggage claim and retrieval in U.S. airports I assumed I knew what to expect. It was nothing like the system I was familiar with.

The rest of this post is going to be a long-winded complaint- I'm just warning you now:

To begin, it was an hour-long drive to the airport- one which required Grace and I to hire one of the Sanyu drivers.

When we arrived at the airport I thought "Okay, walk in, find the lost baggage desk, show the paperwork I spent the hours of 2-4am on Friday filling out, get my bag and go. Since they called me at 11am I assumed my bag would be sitting waiting for me and I would be in and out in 10 minutes.

False.

I was stopped at the main entrance of Entebbe Airport by a security woman, mind you this is the general entrance to the airport, its not a specific gate or anything- I'm just trying to get INSIDE the airport. She told me I'm not allowed in that door and to go up the 2 flights of stairs behind me and use that door. Whatever. I go up the stairs and am about to walk into the upstairs entrance when another security woman tells me that I can't use this entrance, I have to use the one downstairs. The one I was just told I couldn't enter. I explain this to the upstairs security woman and she says "Oh, well then walk around to the other side of the building (the building being the AIRPORT!) and get a ticket from the farthest office along the side wall and use your ticket to walk in the downstairs entrance. So I walked around the side of the airport to the very last office and asked for a ticket to get inside the airport. The woman there told me tickets aren't issued for that purpose and I should just go back downstairs and re-explain that I need to enter...

So I went back down the 2 flights of stairs to the entrance I was originally at and tried to walk inside again. Who did I see there but security woman 1 and 2 having a chat. They both stopped me and security woman 1 reminded me that I'm supposed to use the upstairs entrance. Security woman 2 says "Yea, the upstairs door." I look at her and can't believe my ears. I tell her SHE'S the one who refused to let me in the upstairs door and now she's telling me that's what I was supposed to do? I asked her if this is what she's telling me now then why didn't she let me in when I was upstairs? She ignored my question and told me to go upstairs. I told her No, I am not going back upstairs only to be told, for the 4th time, to go back downstairs, JUST TO ENTER THE AIRPORT. She was still refusing to let me in the downstairs entrance and telling me to go upstairs when I told her I was not going back upstairs unless one of them went with me and guaranteed I would make it inside the door. Woman 2 rolled her eyes and stomped all the way up the 2 flights of stairs and let me in the door.

I was now inside the airport. From there I took my paperwork and asked the info desk where I could find lost luggage. Guess where the lost luggage desk is? It's about 20 feet to the right of the downstairs door I tried 2 times to enter and was turned away from. In other words I could have walked in the front door and turned directly to my right and been where I needed to be. Instead I walked up the stairs, around the building, down the stairs, and back up the stairs, stepped inside, walked down the inside stairs and across the room to get the exact same place.

Now from here I could actually see in the distance the pile of unclaimed luggage. Unfortunately for me, baggage claim is blocked off by a glass wall and a very particular security guard. I showed him my paper work and asked to go retrieve my bag and was denied and told to sit against the wall and wait for one of the airport employees to take my paperwork and find my bag for me and bring up to the glass and if it was mine they would bring it around to my side of the glass and I could take it home. I've never been in an airport where baggage claim is in a blocked off section of the airport. I ask why can't I just get my own bag and go and I'm told only people with red passes and white tickets are allowed to go into the baggage claim area and I have neither. I ask where to get these things. I go to both offices and am denied both times. One time, ironically, was because I had already filled out the paper-work. Apparently, if I hadn't I could have gotten a pass and gone and picked out my bag but because I had I didn't qualify and had to go back downstairs and "be patient." I wait one hour. I ask again if someone could please take my form and get my bag for me which I'm not allowed to identify myself. I'm told that the airport is busy right now and this is a bad time, I should have come after 3pm. It's now been about 2 and a half hours since the airport called me and told me I could not get my bag. I ask them why if not one single person in the whole airport could spare 5 minutes to grab my bag and check it off until "at least 3pm" did they not say on the phone "you can get your bag after 3pm" instead of "you can get your bag NOW at 11am? No one answers my question, and I'm told to be patient. Consider the added burn that for every hour I'm forced to wait I have to pay to park at the stupid airport parking lot, and I have an hour-long drive home with I also have to pay for.

Another hour goes by and I'm still told that the entire airport is too busy to help me. At 3:15pm someone comes to take the top page of my paperwork and look for my bag. I myself was not allowed to pick it out among the entire flight's worth of lost baggage, the airport employee uses the description on my form to find it and bring it to me and I confirm if it is or isn't mine. What did I say on my form? Large black suitcase.

20 minutes later the employee comes back with a half dozen suitcases and asks if any of them are mine. Yes, in fact, one of them is mine. My bag is moved behind a counter where a woman asks for the rest of my forms to confirm that I am taking the right bag and then I can go. I know what my bag looks like- I say Yes, this is my bag. The baggage tag on the back of my original boarding pass, which I brought in addition to the paperwork, matches the number on the tag attached to my suitcase- there is no question that this is my bag.

But at 2am on Friday when I originally filled out the lost baggage report, the Entebbe Airport employee was required to take my form and copy the information onto HIS form and my original form was thrown away and his version of my form is what was saved. That employee mistranslated some information. He wrote that I was missing a large GRAY suitcase, and this deeply puzzled the woman behind the counter. She was very reluctant to hand over my bag despite the undeniable fact the the tag number in my hand matched the one attached to my bag, repeating, "but is says GRAY..." I remind her about the undeniable tag fact, and told her that MY copy said a large black suitcase, that I'm positive I know what my own bag looks like and that it doesn't matter what the employee from Friday wrote on the copy of the copy of the form.

To this she said "FINE" and threw her pen at me. I signed for my bag, and was told before I could go that my bag had to re-go through customs and then I could leave with it. I yelled at this too and she said "justtakeit! Go!" So, after over 3 long hours of nonsense, I finally left with my bag.

Then I had to pay for 4 hours of parking and pay for my hour-long drive home.

What should have been a 10 minute process turned out to be a costly, 5 HOUR process. My bag shouldn't even have been "missing" in the first place!

Never fly Ethiopian Air.

(Post Script: Lufthansa Airlines was very professional and hospitable. I would recommend them)