Thursday 14 July 2022 - Amsterdam to Regina

 

It was a relief to catch the van to the airport at 10 AM for a 2:40 PM departure as opposed to the original itinerary of a 2:30 AM pick up for a 7 AM departure. The airlines and airports are recommending arriving four hours before departure to cope with all the delays. As we drove past the domestic terminal, we saw a huge lineup outside the building. The international terminal was not nearly as bad, and we progressed fairly quickly to check-in. We had not been able to check-in online and we now found out why. The flight was oversold, and we were on standby! We were directed to the line for security. It extended the length of the building, then around a corner into a back-and-forth line, then up some stairs into a very large holding area with many back-and-forth lines. 

It took about 1.5 to 2 hours to reach the security clearance, but it did not seem so long because the line was always slowly creeping forward. After walking what seemed like a mile in the terminal, we reached our departure area and waited to learn our fate. Eventually we received boarding passes – Carla and Tyler together and Celeste and I split up.

I was reading throughout the flight, but I had on the flight following program. We flew northwest off the east coast of Great Britain, east of Iceland, across Greenland and the northern part of Baffin Island, north of Hudson Bay, over Lake Athabasca and into Edmonton. 

I had considered trying to get from there direct to Regina but passed on the idea. Our WestJet flight to Vancouver also had a KLM flight number as a continuation of our previous flight. I was concerned about causing too much confusion around our luggage. So, we flew on to Vancouver and then Air Canada to Regina. We arrived about 45 minutes behind schedule and, after collecting our luggage and dropping off Carla and Tyler, we were home about 1 AM.