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Mexico City is simply huge. Despite being located in a valley surrounded by mountains, the city stands at an elevation of more than 7000 feet above sea level. It is the most populated city in the world with an estimated 23 million inhabitants. Unfortunately, it also may deserve the title of the most polluted city in the world, and the smog is the first thing you see when arriving by air. The surrounding mountains hem in the emissions produced by traffic and industry, and as a result, the air quality of the city is often dangerously poor. That was just one of many things on my mind when we landed.
Exiting the plane, we were led on a long walk to Mexican immigration, where we stood in line and eventually provided our passports to an immigration officer. After clearing Immigration, we checked the airport monitors for our connecting flight information. Our flight was indicated at Gate B, but all the gates we saw were numbers instead. Finally, we found the area of the airport marked B, and learned that this was where passengers waited when their flight had not yet been assigned a departure gate. There we waited for a gate announcement. We waited and waited, and the time for our scheduled departure came and went. More disturbing was that the monitors indicated our flight status as 'Boarding' (actually 'Abordado') but there was still no gate assigned. I asked one of the girls providing information about this puzzling development, and she answered "No gate? No boarding." I went back to wait.
We found two seats in the crowded B area, and waited some more. Finally, I asked someone else, who recommended that I head further down the airport to an AeroMexico counter and inquire about the flight status. There was a large crowd gathered around the counter, in front of two airline agents who were attempting to answer all the questions. Both spoke very little English, and the best I was able to understand from them after getting to the front of the line was that there was no information about our flight, and I should check back in an hour. I'm pretty sure that 'Una hora mas' was just a way to get rid of me, but nonetheless I headed back to my seat to continue the wait.
Gate B was a pretty busy place. There were passengers headed for many destinations, some of whose flights were delayed for one reason or another. An elderly couple awaited their fate after a tiring day of travel. After a while, the woman became tired and wanted to take a short nap, but being self-conscious about sleeping in a public place, she covered her head with a magazine and slumped against her chair for a few minutes. Their destination was Mexicali in Baja California. The Mexicali passengers and the Guanajuato passengers waited, while flight after flight to Guadalajara, Monterrey and Puerto Vallarta boarded and departed. There we were still, in the airport purgatory of gate B.
It was there in the gate area that I met the Dunns, an American couple from Dallas who were in exactly our situation. After the Dunns and other passengers had gotten the same unhelpful answers at the counter nearest us, we decided to head to a different customer service booth for AeroMexico. I left Jan and Matthew in the gate area and walked down the terminal to the customer service desk. The single file line of customers waiting for assistance stretched quite a distance down the terminal, and I estimated there were two hundred people in line! Even worse, there was only one overwhelmed airline agent behind the counter. That was no help. I'd be there all night if I stood in that line.
Instead, I headed downstairs to the main AeroMexico ticket counter, bypassed a lengthy line of passengers checking in for their flights and managed to ask a question of one of the agents. Finally, I was told that our 5:30 PM flight had been cancelled about an hour ago, though the airport monitors still indicated the flight would depart from good ol' gate B. I asked how that would be handled, and the agent told me I should go retrieve our bags from baggage claim, and return to the check-in counter where arrangements would be made for us.
The first attempt to find our bags was ineffective, as I was sent from the AeroMexico baggage office to the furthest luggage carousel in a complete waste of time. Back to the baggage office a second time, and finally someone disappeared for a while and came back holding one of our bags. He continued bringing bags until there was a large pile of bags from our scheduled flight. Finally, I returned to gate B to get my family, expecting to be shuttled to a hotel, and rescheduled on a flight to Guanajuato in the morning.
With the assistance of our skycap, we were headed back to the check-in counter when we ran across the Dunns once again, and Ann's exclamation started another part of our long travel day. "Hurry, follow us, and this woman can get you on a bus to Leon!"
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