Our flight left a little after midnight, a problem with the entertainment system caused the hold up. They didn’t want a plane load of passengers complaining about no TV or Movies! So Deb had a few minutes of her birthday in LA after all.
The flight went pretty well, I think we had 2 glasses of champagne before the plane took off. We had a wonderful Flight Attendant looking after us, Jo. She was such a breath of fresh air and so joyful. I think she enjoyed celebrating Deb’s birthday almost as much as Deb did. Deb did pretty well on the sleep side of things, maybe up to 7 hours, I think I may have got 4 or so. Might be a bit tired tonight.
A couple of hours out from Brisbane, Jo came up to Deb and presented her with a bottle of Champagne as a birthday gift from the crew. I think she would have enjoyed sitting down and having a few with us.
We arrived in Brisbane a few minutes late, but we breezed through immigration, our bags came out quickly and we had an express pass to get through Customs. Deb almost sprinted to the Qantas transfer desk at the International terminal to get our bags checked in so we could make our flight, at that stage we had about 40 minutes until it was due to leave.
It wasn’t until we saw our bags disappear away on the conveyor that I saw that we had been put on a later flight. The woman at check-in didn’t bother to tell us that is what had been done and didn’t seem to care too much either!!
So we had an extra 3 to 4 hours in Brisbane before we could get a flight home. I let the people at the Qantas Lounge know of our displeasure, and apparently there were a number of people in the same boat, and none of them had been told of the change either. The change had been made by Qantas Domestic before our flight had landed! We had 17 flights prior to this all through South, Central and North America, and it took Qantas to give us the hiccup on the last leg. Go figure, huh!
OK, breath Greg, Glad to get that out!!
The up-shot of all that was that when we landed in Adelaide at about2:20pm (instead of our scheduled 10:30am) Deb had to take a taxi off to make her hair appointment and I got a separate taxi home with all the bags!. But at least we made it all in one piece.
It was so good to get home. No more living out of a suitcase (for a while anyway).
Thanks to Deb for being such a great travel buddy, we are doing this better and better all the time.
Thanks to everyone who has left comments on our blog while we were away, we really do appreciate your comments and feedback.
Till next time ……………………
Lots of people I talk to have had problems with Qantas. We have booked & paid for a holiday in Hawaii for 2 weeks in September. It includes a 1 week cruise around the islands. We are flying Air New Zealand. Not had a problem with them so far. We have never had a problem with LAN either. I bet you are glad to be home.
Chris
How exciting another holiday I look forward to your photos. Yes it is lovely to be home