Www.ihatepacificblue.com
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
6
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Cairns / Brisbane / Melbourne,
Australia
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
I got to Cairns at about 5:30am, went to the domestic airport and waited for 6 hours for my flight to Brisbane. Or Brissy, as they call it, which for some reason I find kinda creepy.
Flight to Brisbane was fine and dandy, with amazing views of the east coast which enabled me to look out the window and ignore the American guy talking at me about how he had citizenship in so many countries.
Transferred to the international terminal for my flight to Christchurch and prepared for about 4 hour wait till I looked at a screen and saw my flight was cancelled.
Having never had a flight cancelled before I assumed, obviously by some insane logic, that there would either be some kind of announcement or that someone at the airline enquiries desk would know what was going on. No. The guy said he couldn't help and suggested I wait till someone came to the gate in a few hours. Eventually I managed to get someone to help me and turns out I shouldn't have got through customs and that I was supposed to be back in the domestic terminal, taking a flight to Melbourne and then another flight to Christchurch. They bundled me on a flight to Melbourne and when I asked about my bags they assured me they'd be on the flight, which seemed kind of impossible as they'd only just managed to get me on it.
So I get to Melbourne and my flight isn't even on the departure board. The customs guy assured me it was fine and to just go to the gate. So I did. It was shut and there was no one there. I asked someone else and they said the gate had been changed and the flight would be leaving 2 hours later.
Eventually they announced we'd be leaving from a different gate so everyone waited round, only to be told our flight was cancelled. But it was ok cos they'd put us up in a hotel and put us all on a flight the next morning. So 4 hours after they cancelled our flight, made us walked back and forth through the airport, drive us halfway round the city and back to the airport and out again we finally got to hotels.
Oh yeah and funnily enough, they'd left my bag in Brisbane.
We eventually got on a flight the next morning, but even that was a couple of hours late, but at least I got to Christchurch in the end. But minus my bag, which was arriving later.
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