This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Home again..
Feed Title: Michael Lucas-Smith
Feed URL: http://www.michaellucassmith.com/site.atom
Feed Description: Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life
The longest leg of the trip. Not by design. From the time we left Canberra to the time my head hit a pillow in Tacoma it had been 30 hours. It was 36 hours from the time I left Seattle to the time I stepped foot in home on the way back.
First things first: Fly direct, do not stop off in Auckland. On the way back we were hit with some terrible bad luck that had not happened to Auckland airport in 15 years. It fogged in so badly no one could land or take off. Mind you - at first it was only that no one could land and people happily took off.
And that's where the trouble started. There were over 10 people on my flight, NZ5, that had a connecting flight NZ103 which had decided to leave without us in the fog. Wonderful...
We spent about 3 hours on a military base east of Auckland stuck in the plane because the planes interior is still International space and they naturally couldn't fly out a customs official to bless a hanger or something.
They then needed to fly out an engineer because the fuel pump at the military base wasn't designed for a 747. They had to wait for the fog to clear in Auckland before they could send him out.
Once we finally got in to Auckland, we discovered chaos. No one was there to help fix up connecting flights. There was one flight leaving pretty much straight away that would have kept us on schedule - then another flight that would have put us only a bit behind.. then another. Time passed. We were waiting in the line that never moved.
Some silver haired moron had managed to be up the front of that line for 45 minutes before we started getting really irate. Finally we got some answers by capturing a lady who we decided needed to experience some of our bad day.
The answer: We were already moved to NZ105 which was going to take off at 3:30.. wonderful, why didn't they have anybody around finding us to tell us this and fix up our boarding passes etc?
Answer: Go sit in terminal 2 until NZ105's crew arrives and the people at the gate will fix it up. Naturally, the lady at the gate denied that she was allowed to do this and found herself facing an angry mob of international accents.
I suppose she got her own little chuckle, as she carefully took down the details of our luggage and promptly failed to make sure they were even on the plane. Yes, that's right - I'm down to my last few pairs of very old illfitting underpants right now. My luggage is out there somewhere being sat on by somebody who has trouble saying 'Six' correctly.
When we finally arrived in Sydney we discovered (by walking to one end of the large airport) that Air Newzealand had -not- booked us on to a new connecting flight to Canberra. So we had to walk to the other end (of the large airport) to talk to Air New Zealand, who immediately weren't sure if they should be giving us what we wanted - a frellin' flight home.
They yielded when they started to hear the strain in our voices. They managed to book us on a new Regional Express flight. They gave us a nice piece of paper. Off we trekked/shuttled to the domestic airport.
More trouble, Regional Express had never seen such a piece of paper before and when they checked their computers they said "All is well, you just have to pay now".. which got a glare and gruffling noises from us. There was no way we were going to pay. Air New Zealand was definitely going to pay.
It didn't take long to convince the Regional Express girl that this indeed was what was going to happen too. She tapped away filling out the rest of the important details that Air New Zealand failed to fill in, grumbling back at us that this was the worst booking she'd ever seen entered in to the system.
Finally.. only about 5-6 hours late, we step on to Canberra soil. No bags, just what we had on us. Qantas is looking for our bags and will give us a call when they get them in to Canberra Airport. Here's hoping I don't have to start buying a whole new wardrobe (travel insurance covers this!)
So anyway, I won't be flying Air New Zealand again.
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