The Raptor is back! And he’s got BALLS!
I remember you Aussie bastards… 
One of these days I will pen the rant to end all rants on airline travel. Will deserve it’s own thread
One of these days I will pen the rant to end all rants on airline travel. Will deserve it's own threadI’ve got one from today… which probably affects others here too!
I booked with Tiger Air (I know… but they were dirt cheap) to go up to Gold Coast for round 1 next year. Get there at 9am, return that night after the late arvo game.
Today I got an email telling me the second flight has been cancelled, and they have re-booked me to an alternate return flight that day… at 9:30am. They seriously suggested I’d want to go up, get off the plane while they clear it, then get back on it fifteen minutes later and fly back.
And to change that return flight from the perfect option they’ve provided me, they want $50.
I’ve made the counter-offer they put me on a Sunday flight, free…
But this is my “favourite” story…
Boomerang World Cup in 2008. Plan was Melb-Syd-Tahiti-LAX-Seattle (the Tahiti flight was way cheaper than anything else, and there was a direct flight from NYC to Tahiti that we used on the way home).
Soooo… it went like this:
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We get to Tulla at the crack of dawn. QANTAS’s booking system has crashed, so it takes forever, and we only just get on our flight to Sydney. It’s running late, so we’re worried about checking in for the international flight. But the QANTAS bus to get from the domestic terminal to the international one is efficient, and we make it just in time to…
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… find out the Air Tahiti Nui plane is broken. We’re re-booked with Air New Zealand via Auckland, to leave at 3pm. We tried to bargain an alternative and more direct flight to Seattle, but the problem was that the LA to Seattle flight was booked separately at a discount rate. So Nui have no obligation or inclination to help us there. Luckily there’s a United desk at Sydney that opens in a few hours, so after a second breakfast we go over and are rather surprised when they don’t even seem to consider charging us for the change to a later flight from LA to Seattle. At first it seems the first two flights we could re-schedule to are full, but they decided to bump us up to Business on the first one rather than make us wait for the third and final flight from LAX. Sweet! So the new flight is booked, we send off emails to the guys picking us up in Seattle, and we wait for 3pm…
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… at which stage the Air New Zealand flight doesn’t leave. It leaves just under an hour late. This is a worry as we have a one hour layover in Auckland. The flight doesn’t go any faster to pick up any time, so we run across the airport to the connecting flight and…
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… it’s still there. Hooray! We think we’re going to leave shortly, but no, it too leaves an hour late. We send an email noting we may miss our re-scheduled flight from LA to Seattle, which we now know would put us, if we’re lucky, on the last possible flight into Seattle (the second one being booked out, you’ll recall).
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So we’re on the plane from Auckland to LA, and watching the clock and the flight progress with much more attention than usual. It’s a quicker-than-scheduled flight, and we get off in LA at just the right time to meet some short immigration queues. We might just make our re-scheduled flight to Seattle! And as I get to the front of the queue, the first bags from our flight start coming out in the background — and one of my bags is literally in the first few out. Holy crap, we’re gonna make it! We pass immigration, grab that bag and …
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… bags continue to come out. Our other three bags are nowhere to be seen (and two of them contain the boomerangs we need at the World Cup). Finally, the bags stop coming out… and the other three bags haven’t shown up. Eventually we discover the conveyor belt has broken…
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… and just six bags, three of them ours, are stuck in there. That’s too few bags for anyone to really care, so it takes what seems forever to get them plucked out manually from the tunnel. We run across the concourse, stinking it up in the afternoon sun, and …
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… the effin’ United plane left on time. Effin’ competents!
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We ask for a re-re-scheduling. They say sure, no cost. And in fact they find slots on the second flight that was booked out before, someone cancelled. Economy this time, oh well. Grab the new tickets, and head up to enter the secure zone where there are computers we can send yet another notification email from. I take my shoes off for the security circus, and as I do so, I actually look at the ticket they’re given me…
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… and it’s for a freakin’ ANTONIO CARRASCO. Who the BEEP is ANTONIO BEEPING CARRASCO?!?
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I put my shoes back on, we go back down, and I get my fourth set of tickets from United. Free. No obligation on their part. Credit where due. And it’s in Business! We wait the few hours, board that flight, and the plane pushes back dead on time…
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… and 10 metres back, all power on the plane dies. The lights are out, the aircon is dead. At this stage, dear reader, I was in a foetal ball on the floor, moaning softly and foaming from the mouth.
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A minute later, the power returns. A short pause, and then we leave as usual. Apparently they’re not worried about the plane falling out of the sky…
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The hostie comes down with the drinks tray, and asks what I want. And as I form the words, my voice breaks. I’m a weak weak man, and stress is nasty stuff. So I scared people for the next ten days with my hoarse voice.
The good news is that after we got into Seattle about midnight, the Germans had already arrived and occupied a bar. So we went and drank the night down with them… well, until the bar closed half-an-hour later. C’mon.
I also note that in 2010 the same two of us had a 24 hour delay getting to Rome thanks to another broken plane.
I don’t fly with Craig any more.
Tiger have agreed to my counter-offer, yay.
tiger sound terrible. Never heard a good story, and I’d never book with them.
Jetscare is bad enough, but that’s more to do with the clientele.
I flew Rex on Wednesday…Mount Gambier to Adelaide. Perfectly good.
Never had a problem with Jetstar. It’s Qantas with no food.
Tiger is another story.
Stop buying jabberjeeno fares you cheap bastards.
Boooooo… my last post here has been wiped out by the restore. I’m claiming the win, though.
I really fancy a baked potato come to think of it
Oi. Stop trying to steal my back-to-back wins tomorrow morning.
Digger won
OK, I’m hiding the saga forum. I can’t take it any more, it’s all too depressing.
can someone let me know if something significant happens re: appeal etc? thanks.
hmmm. appears we can’t hide sub-forums any more?
hmmm. appears we can't hide sub-forums any more?You can check out, but you can never leave.
Just saw an ad on Gumtree for a bloke looking for new roommates. He had 3 rules for prospective roomies…no gay ■■■■, no spiders for pets and no Carlton supporters.
Just saw an ad on Gumtree for a bloke looking for new roommates. He had 3 rules for prospective roomies...no gay ■■■■, no spiders for pets and no Carlton supporters.
2 out of 3 ain’t bad… 