SNAFU at Lisbon Airport

Dalilah, our driver picked us up on time at the Andaz Hyatt Hotel and dropped us at the airport with time to spare. The first thing we noticed about the Lisbon Airport was that there were no signs telling us where to go. Dalilah had said that international departures were on the second floor, so we would need to go upstairs. Inside Terminal 1 we saw one sign indicating “International Departures,” with an arrow pointing diagonally upward. We could see no stairway, elevator or escalator, so we kept walking. At the other end of the terminal building we finally found an escalator to take us up. We got through security after a short wait in line.

We knew we had access to the Star Alliance Lounge, and after another considerable hike, we saw a sign directing us to the VIP lounges. We finally found the lounges, and an agent told us our lounge was next door. The attendant scanned our boarding passes and admitted us. An information board gave us the first information we had seen about our flight. We were to begin boarding in about two hours at Gate 43, so we settled in and served ourselves a little snack from the buffet.

About an hour and a half before our flight was to start boarding, Glenda glanced at the sign again and it said we should proceed to Gate 43. She asked the attendant for directions. The attendant said we should go back downstairs, and go through passport control before proceeding to the gate. We asked where passport control was located, since no signs had said anything about passport control. She said it was beside McDonald’s.

Once back downstairs at McDonald’s, we saw people in a line whose end was not in sight. We followed the queue to its end. To do this we had to walk about 15 minutes. The line was over half-a-mile long.

We took our place at the end of the line, and a young man from Texas just ahead of us was to board the same flight we were scheduled to take. He asked a security guard how long it would take. She guessed it would be about 2 to 2.5 hours.

He said, “We have to board in an hour. Is there any point of staying in this line if I know I will have to get a later flight?”

The security officer shrugged.

The young man asked me, “ What are you going to do?”

I said, “I’m not getting out of line until they tell me our plane is in the air and I have missed my flight.”

Soon the line started moving. The passport control must have opened other lanes. In about 45 minutes we showed our passports , he gave them a quick perfunctory stamp and sent us through the gate.

A sign said that Gate 43 was a seventeen-minute walk, so we hoofed it. Hard.

I yelled back to Glenda, “I found Gate 43,” but I was wrong. There were three Gate 43’s. I passed first Gate 43-B with an airplane going to Heathrow. Beyond that Gate 43-A had a flight going to Detroit. Finally I found gate 43 with our flight going to Newark.

When we arrived the airplane was still there at the gate. We waited for several minutes in a boarding line. There were no signs or other indications directing us to the place where we should board. Glenda risked getting out of our line and found another queue for priority boarding.

We got in that line, and after several more minutes we faced an airport agent who wanted to see our passports. Again.

She asked us why we had come to Portugal, if we were carrying any kind of powder, how long we had been in the country, what other cities we had visited, what hotel we stayed at in Lisbon, and how much we paid for our hotel room. She did all of this while visually scanning our passport. Again.

A line of other passengers waited behind us, sweating because they thought they might miss the flight.

Finally, she waved us through, and we boarded our airplane minutes before the flight crew closed the door.

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