Yesterday, Steph and I arrived in St Paul, Minnesota to spend almost three weeks with our elder daughter, Hannah, husband Michael and their children Callum (aged 5) and Zoë (3). It was a long 12 hour journey from Birmingham (BHX) to the Twin Cities (MSP) via Amsterdam (AMS), although an hour less on the transatlantic flight than scheduled.

We flew with Delta, but with the BHX-AMS sector operated by KLM, Delta’s Skyteam partner. Fortunately there were no ticketing problems this time as we’d had experienced on a couple of occasions. Then, the Delta online system had somehow filed Steph’s middle name as ‘Clair’ not ‘Claire’. And knowing how these errors can sometimes lead to check in issues I had attempted to resolve this ahead of travelling. Delta’s ticketing and reservations in Europe are handled by Air France (KLM’s parent company). Not only does the AF online system not ‘talk’ to the Delta one, but by the time we traveled (this was a couple of years ago), it had ‘lost’ her reservation. When we went to check in at BHX, the ticketing agent could only issue boarding passes to AMS, and although he could see our next sector AMS-MSP, he couldn’t access them. We had a nightmare transfer in Amsterdam and almost missed our connection. Even though KLM assured us that everything had been resolved, it took a phone call of almost 90 minutes in the USA directly to Delta to have everything finally resolved for our return.

So you can imagine my concern and trepidation a couple of days ago when I checked in online, and being transferred to the KLM website, received a message that the system was unable to issue boarding passes because ‘of an issue concerning one or more members of your group’.

‘Uh oh,’ I thought, ‘here we go again’, even though all the information about our tickets and reservations was 100% accurate in the Delta system. We were advised to print our boarding passes at one of the self service kiosks at BHX the following day.

We arrived to the airport in good time.  It’s a bit of a long-winded process to access the self service system, and the outcome was that it still denied us our boarding passes. We had to pick them up at the counter. When I asked if there was any issue concerning our reservations, the agent told me there wasn’t. She then gave us just two boarding passes, and my heart sank. I thought we were going to have sort our onward flights in AMS, and we only had just over 90 minutes to connect. Fortunately there was no problem. Both flights had been printed on a single boarding pass—a new one for me.

Now I wonder if the issue was that I had flagged, at the time of booking our tickets, that Steph is ‘hard of hearing’. I now recall the counter staff at BHX mentioning this, and perhaps the system was alerted that we needed ‘extra assistance’. But the advisory message when we checked in was much more cryptic than that, and given our previous experiences, I had just imagined something more complicated or serious. It will be interesting to see if the same happens on the return journey at the end of the month when our first flight will be with Delta, only transferring to KLM for the AMS-BHX leg of the journey.

This year we opted to purchase Delta Comfort+™ seats, at £60 each both ways. They’re just Economy seats, with slightly more recline, but a valuable four extra inches of legroom. You wouldn’t credit just how much more comfortable that made the journey. Plus free booze! So I did enjoy a few Bombay Sapphires and tonic to keep me going on the long stretch. I think the flight attendants were also just that bit friendlier to us in the Comfort+ seats.

So what’s all this got to do with the Pinoy in me. We were met at MSP by Hannah and Michael and two very excited grandchildren. And early in the evening I posted a couple of selfies with Callum and Zoë on my Facebook page.

And I had mentioned that I was beginning my ‘apostolic duties’. To a non-Filipino, it must sound like I’ve found religion or the like. But no. It’s a term to describe being a good grandparent. Because the Filipino for grandchild is ‘apo’. And here I am in the two photos with my American ‘apos’, being very ‘apostolic’. And enjoying every minute of it.

My good friends Bing Villegas and Fides Bernardo (who devised and directed the IRRI 50th anniversary shows in 2009) commented on my Pinoy connections. No wonder really, since I spent almost 19 years in that lovely country.

Mabuhay!