With the Olympics taking place the Chaos decided to partake in our own gold medal worthy sprint. What was originally a 55 minute connection in Frankfurt turned into 45 minutes. If you’ve never been into the Frankfurt Airport just know that it’s seemingly the longest airport ever and on par with O’Hare. We’ve connected with less time but flying into the US from Russia requires being screened again in the EU during your layover. We were prepared for this by having ALL of our electronics in one collapsible backpack which tripped us up last time.
A picture 6 hours earlier in Moscow since there was no chance for pictures in Frankfurt
What we weren’t prepared for was getting selected for the dreaded special screening (SSSS). Again, we’re thankful to several passengers that were also pulled aside stepping up to carry carseats when we discovered that getting to the more intense security area required going down several flights of stairs. Again, we handle stairs regularly but it’s not quick and we could already hear our names being called for final boarding.
Nothing will make you more persuasive than the thought of being stuck in an airport for an extra 10 hours before a 12 hour flight with 3 toddlers. After convincing other passengers to let us skip to the front, we politely asked the security team to do whatever they could to get us through as quickly as possible. They didn’t let us down and we’re able to get us through security in record time while still being thorough. They helped us skip the duty free store and enter directly into the terminal. From this point, we had the dash of our lives for almost half a mile. We didn’t make it in time but due to other events the gate had to be reopened and we were able to board.
Still red faced and out of breath we had two carseats, 3 bags, and 3 cranky toddlers to wrangle quickly into seats. The kindest mom and her 10 year old daughter jumped into action taking as much as they could and finding places for it to go. So simple but so big in that moment. Despite being in disarray, we got to enjoy the upper deck of the A380 and meet some incredible people along the way. The flights went significantly better than our other recent ones. Hopefully our luck continues since we’ll be flying a half dozen times in the next few weeks. Wish us luck!
View from the upper deck of the A380