Confessions of a researchaholic

After a calm night at the hotel without having much else to do in the morning after exercise (great pool!) and breakfast, I headed to the airport earlier than usual. This turned out to be a good decision as the immigration lines were very long and only a few agents were present. It took me an hour to get through while witnessing all sorts of complaints and line cutting (from passengers and flight crews), the sheer incompetence of the airport staff, and the indifference of the immigration officers.

A bunch of Indian folks behind me said that they have encountered similar situations in other airports in Europe.

If this is a sign of Europe, I am not sure if anyone wants to visit again.

[This post was typed directly into my WordPress site on an iPad, so bear with me for potential typos.]

Upon arrival at FRA from BCN I was notified that my flight to SFO has been canceled. Walking around the airport check-in area for about 40 minutes without being able to find any opening UAL counters, I finally bumped into a guy who told me to stay around for hotel arrangements (and all the UAL counters have been closed for the day). As you can imagine, there are hundreds if not more such stranded passengers all throwing questions and complaints to the guy.

Finally he led us to the hotel shuttle bus area, and I walked by him chatting him up. I told him that we were like a bunch of kindergarten kids following a teacher and he had to deal with all these unhappy faces. Turned out that he is an airport hotel relationship manager and doesn’t work for the airlines. He seemed happy enough that he put me into the hotel for business class passengers even though I booked only an economy class ticket.

When checking in at the hotel the receptionist only asked me to write down my name and the airline without checking any identification or flight ticket, so in theory anyone can just walk in and claim to be a passenger with cancelled flight (at least during the days with cancellations informed by these relationship managers)?

I was put into an executive suite and there is a nice indoor swimming pool that I can finally put my swimsuit to use (the outdoor pool in my Barcelona hotel wasn’t that warm so I just used the gym during my stay for CHI 2026).

Later I bumped into him again in the hotel lobby and asked for his business card.

Calmness during ordeals pays off.