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Published: November 20th 2022
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DISASTER!!!!!!
Early start today, got up at 5:30am to get ready for our airport transfer at 6:30am. Our friendly Nascar driver greeted us in the hotel reception 5 mins early, with a much newer minibus this time and we set off for a much calmer drive (he didn’t have rush hour to contend with today!).
Arrived at the airport and dropped our bags, whizzed through security and got settled in the lounge for breakfast. Maybe we’re becoming snobs, but the lounge wasn’t anywhere near as nice as the one in Heathrow, but that’s OK, we’d only be there a couple of hours. All was going great.
Then disaster struck, 15 mins before we were due to board the dreaded announcement was made that our flight was delayed by 4 hours. So, with the 2 hours we lost with the timezone change, instead of arriving at 3:40pm, we were now due to arrive at 7:50pm. We were already cutting it fine getting to Christchurch on a Sunday evening, car hire was closing at 8pm, as was the motel reception for check in…..
We called the car hire people who assured us someone would stay on the desk until
we arrived. The motel people were also fantastic, they said they wouldn’t be on the desk, but gave us our room number and said it would be unlocked with the key inside and they’d leave us some fresh milk.
So we settled back in our chairs and waited the 4 hours……
At 2pm, the flight information board told us the gate was open and we’d be boarding soon, so we left the comfort of the lounge and set off to the gate.
They weren’t letting anyone on though…. and the staff seemed a little uneasy, which is never a good sign. Then at the time we should’ve been taking off, they finally announced that it wouldn’t be leaving at the new time, but they didn’t have a new time slot for us. Another wait, then they finally announced what we all expected….. that the flight was now cancelled and would not be flying out until 6am the following morning.
Never travel on the 13th!!
At this point, they had a lot of very angry people at the gate, and unfortunately for them, very little information they could provide other than to say a manager would be arriving at some point to explain what would be done for the passengers.
Suffice to say, we were not at all impressed with the way Qantas handled what must be a fairly common situation for them. They focused on the people who lived in Sydney and some people who were trying to get onto other flights that night but left all the others (us included) who had nowhere to go, to just stand around not knowing what to do. They claimed they would ‘try’ to sort out accommodation for those left but also mentioned that hotels were very busy in Sydney tonight.
In the end we lost all faith in Qantas being able to sort us out so booked an airport hotel through booking.com, picked up our cases, went through security with the help of some very sympathetic airport staff and walked the 500m to the hotel.
So it seems our time in Sydney is not quite at an end yet! We’re spending the night (well until 3am if you can call that staying the night) at the Rydges airport hotel. Trying to make the best of a bad situation and ignore the cash we’re now out of pocket, we’ve had a lovely meal and are relaxing with a much needed bottle of wine.
Fingers crossed we do actually fly out at 6am tomorrow and manage to just about stay on track with our plans for the rest of our trip to New Zealand South Island.
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