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December 20th 2009

Published: December 20th 2009

THE RETURN HOME

At midnight, two hours after the flight was supposed to take off, JetStar informed us that the flight was not leaving that evening as the pilot would exceed his flying time. Fair call - except surely they knew that an hour or so earlier when the flight was already delayed.

After making a pathetic announcement to all the waiting passengers without using a microphone (ie/ so most of us could barely hear what they were saying) we were all asked to return our duty free to the JetStar staff and to follow them. Instructions were terrible. When we got to passport control, the lady from JetStar had disappeared and no one told us whether we needed to fill in passenger cards again, and if we did, what we needed to write in some of the fields (address = unknown, last post = technically we have just left Singapore, length of time staying = hopefully only a day, etc etc).

As we were all going through immigration we were told to stick together, but when the JetStar lady disappeared AGAIN everyone started to walk down to baggage reclaim as we had been told that we were going to have to collect our bags and would then be put on a bus to take us to a hotel. At this stage they were advising that the flight would leave at the same time the following evening.

We all stood at baggage reclaim for about an hour before they finally told us that the bags were staying on the plane and that we would not be re-collecting them. We got put onto a bus and the best, and most, communication we had about what was happening was from the guy from the hotel - the Carlton. He told us how they were going to check us in, what we needed to fill in on the registration forms and told us about wake-up calls, breakfast, supper and what time the bus would leave the next morning for our 10:30am flight. Nice to know when our flight was going to be as JetStar had told us it would be 10:30pm the next evening. Mind you - they still couldn’t confirm that - just said that it was probably going to leave at 10:30am.

Got to the hotel after 2am, grabbed a quick bite to eat at the free supper and headed to bed.

Some not-thinking person from JetStar called me at 5:30am local time to let me know that at my Darwin to Melbourne flight had been confirmed and would leave Darwin at 5:30pm the following day. Even in my barely-awake state I could figure out that, since we were only landing in Darwin at 4:30pm (I asked her) that that would not give me enough time to clear Customs and Quarantine, grab my bags and re-check into the next flight. At that point though I was more annoyed at having been woken in the middle of the night.

Got my wake-up call at 6:30am and went down to breakfast at around 7am. Bus picked us up at 8am and took us all back to the airport, where we all had to line up and ‘re-check’ in - although we kept the same boarding passes, seats, etc. So that was also a waste of time.

As it was, the flight didn’t leave until just after 11am. Before the flight took off, the pilot actually stood at the front of the plane where we could see him and explained what had happened and ‘sincerely apologised’ for any delays. He said something about an IT problem caused other flights to delay until it finally got to our flight.

Four hours later we arrived in Darwin. By then I had already missed the 5:30pm flight I was supposedly booked on. Everyone on the flight had to go down to the service desk and find out what was happening - but rather than thinking ahead and maybe finding an extra staff member for an hour - they let one girl handle it while the Melbourne flight that many of us were on was delayed further. Many of the people going on to Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney were in actual fact having to overnight in Darwin - except this time the passengers were having to organise it themselves and then claim the money back from JetStar. Glad I was flying onto Melbourne instead.

Flight left Darwin at about 6:30pm and arrived into Melbourne just before 1am on 16 December. Ended up being a 12 hour delay - but making the return leg of my journey that much longer at the same time!!

Did a quick recall of flights in my head - in the last five months I had had 15 flights (including these two) with nine budget airlines (Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizzair, German Wings, Aerlingus, Belle Air, Air Asia and Air Asia X, and now JetStar) with barely any hassles - only my final two flights to get me back to Australia do I run into problems. Typical.

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