It’s 05:20 in the morning and I’m sitting in the lounge at Auckland airport.
Not only is this a horrible, horrible time to be awake but it’s also the same time that I should have been landing in Los Angeles on the first day of my latest trip.
“Engineering requirements” has kept the 747 on the ground for the last 12 hours and me away from a day in the US. To be fair though I’d rather have twelve hours on the ground than have an engine drop off over the Pacific ocean 🙂
In typical airline fashion the airline had booked us all into a hotel near the airport the “Grand” Chancellor. I put grand in quote marks due to the fact that it is so not. I’ve stayed there before when a flight to Hong Kong was delayed and had a shitty smoking room but this time it was even better as they ran out of rooms before I could check in! They said they could probably find us a room down the road but by this time I had decided that I would catch a cab into the city and stay where I normally do when I come to Auckland. A couple of phone calls later and I had booked a room and was on my way to somewhere I knew and trusted.
$255 and 8 hours later and I was checking out and back on my way to the airport to try again. It’s 90 minutes until we (hopefully) leave and there is still no gate number assigned……
After a lot of travelling you just have to sit back and accept that stuff like this happens. There were so many pissed off and stressed out people last night and there really is nothing you can do about it – shouting at some harassed person behind the counter will really not get you anywhere.
Mind you, if the flight goes ahead, it will be my first time upstairs in a jumbo jet! I didn’t get an upgrade last night but because a number of business class passengers moved to another US bound flight I think it freed up a number of seats on our flight – happy days 🙂
