Guided by the Stars (Alliance)

[Scarlett]

Whilst I was up golfing, the family drove past the airport. FNC has steep drops at both ends of the runway. As part of a recent upgrade where they lengthened the runway they used pillars to build out over a cove.







It’s an impressive structure.

 

[Scarlett]

To get back to mainland Portugal from Madeira, I redeemed TK miles for the three of us. J internal to a country via A* awards cost 15K miles per person (was increased this year from a previous 10K - that was a bargain in places like the US!)
The best timed flights were actually FNC-OPO-LIS on TP rather than direct to LIS, so that is what we flew.

TP1710 FNC-OPO
A320-200 CS-TNU
Dep: sched 0840 / actual 0855
Arr: sched 1030 / actual 1033






Backtracking along the elevated runway.


Eurobusiness seating on TP. Cabin only about half full.

Note that there was no TP lounge at FNC, just a small generic ANA lounge. Not ANA as in NH, but rather ANA the Portuguese airport operator. The lounges are used by many operators and are generally small and disappointing.

Flight was a bog standard narrow body ride into OPO where it was overcast and clearly had just finished raining.

We only had an hour on the ground so waited again in an ANA lounge. Again crowded, but this time with a 10 minute line up just to get in. The line seemed to be mostly due to the lady at the front desk who seemed to be having a miserable day and just took a long time doing anything. Maybe it was by design…

After a coffee and a quick snack it was off for the short sector back to LIS, this time operated by Portugalia, operating as TAP Express, sort of a QFLink to mainline TP.

TP1927 (…ish ) OPO-LIS
ERJ-195 CS-TTW
Dep: sched 1200 / actual 1223
Arr: sched 1300 / actual 1300

Yes, only a 37 minute flight. But with a few extra minutes taxiing. Still served a snack and a drink in their 2-2 J cabin.



It was actually more comfortable than the A320 earlier in the morning.

We had a final night in Lisbon with a transit hotel booked at the LIS Holiday Inn Express. Mediocre hotel - wouldn’t stay there again as required an Uber there and then to go anywhere from the hotel. But it was much better value than the airport Melia right in front of the terminal.

 

[Scarlett]

<brief interlude of reality and note that Murphy has taken an absolute stranglehold of my return flights. I should be writing up flight notes but instead am just scrambling to find a way home… isn’t it nice how when I leave gaps and overnight stops in the travel plan everything goes well, but as soon as I plan for a couple of hour connections, it all falls apart>

 

[Scarlett]

And so it begins.
I will record here for posterity, that my return flights home should have been:
LIS-MAD-CAI (IB) / CAI-ADD-BKK (ET) / BKK-SIN-MEL (SQ) / MEL-CBR (QF)


IB8871 LIS-MAD
CRJ-1000 EC-LPN
Dep: sched 1230 / actual 1448
Arr: sched 1455 / actual 1637

The first hint of a problem was an email from IB stating there would be a delay of the flight, but with no timing of what that delay was. The email arrived during the short shuttle ride from the airport HIX hotel. Check in staff didn’t mention anything about a delay. A look at FR24 indicated a one hour delay. The departure boards inside the airport were also being coy about an issue.





FR24 subsequently updated to an estimated departure of 1355. It should be noted here that my booking had a 1hr 40min connection, so this planned delay was going to eat up most of that.

We board through a bus gate, so that’s going to add more time.


Our jet is out past the engineering and cargo area.





Those hold areas where the guy in the orange jacket are used for the gate check baggage and seem a very useful feature for a regional jet.


It’s not a Mitsubishi.

The bags from the arrival flight were still being offloaded as we were boarding! Then we just sat there, all boarded and waited. And I watched my connection time disappear!

 

[Scarlett]

We finally pushed back and then taxied around for a while (ie: not to a close runway… of course) and once airborne it was actually a fine flight. As we were on finals was about when my connection should have been departing.

I spent the flight reading the Covermore travel insurance pds to review the relevant delay sections and inform myself of possible options. What I didn’t remember well enough was that the missed connection limit for the international policy was only $3000.



Arrived into MAD and as we taxi in I see my connecting flight is still not ‘live’ on FR24 so that’s a bonus as it still means the aircraft is at the gate.

What really didn’t help was that we pulled up at T4 and at a bus gate so that meant I couldn’t even start running, just had to stand and wait for everyone else to get off. I had advised the cabin staff of the connection problem but they either didn’t care or couldn’t do anything to expedite my transfer.

When the bus got to the access door of the terminal I was off and running for the automated people mover to transfer over to T4S. Of course on the day such that I was having I get to the platform to see the train pulling away. Next one was only three minutes later. Once into T4S (the T4 satellite terminal used for non-Schengen departures) it was more running upstairs but then I hit border control to depart Spain and it was packed. I talked my way through a helpful staff member in about two minutes and was then quickly stamped out. More running, through the stupid curvy duty-free store design that predominates modern airports then looking for the gate. When I got there it was of course empty of people, but the jet itself had just pushed back and was sitting perpendicular to the terminal about to taxi off to CAI. Missed it by that much as Max Smart would say.

And with that I knew my life had just become a lot more problematic!

First stop was here:

…where a lady tried to explain for me to go somewhere else (near W8???) to collect the mis-connected flight voucher for a hotel, that she could see was already in the system for me. Why she couldn’t actually help me then and there will remain a mystery.

I went to find the other service desk she had described but it made no sense so I went into the T4S IB J lounge and one of the angels on the front desk again covered the hotel voucher, except she actually printed it out and printed out my boarding pass for the same flight I had just missed, but for the following day. I explained to her that I needed to be in CAI earlier and looked up options on Google flights but she told me she couldn’t do anything and that I’d need to go to their proper service desk in T4 for other flight options. It was now about 1730 and my ET flight from CAI was at 0320 the following morning. There were still a couple of options to get there in time if IB would play ball.

Next was getting back over to T4 so I jogged back to immigration and was confronted with this sight:



That’s a line of people coming OUT of the hall area where the immi cattle runs were. I tried to go up through the (unstaffed) tight connections lane; I tried explaining my misconnect and urgent need to get to the service desk to the staff, but those on duty didn’t care. I held a boarding pass for a flight tomorrow and so they saw no urgency.

75 minutes.

That’s how long it took just to dawdle forward every 10 seconds or so in the massive lines of people and finally enter back into Spain. I spent the time watching my options dwindle and then started working on a new plan of what to do once I got to CAI. I even started working out whether it would be simpler to just book something completely new one way back home from MAD.

By the time I got to T4 I was resigned to the fact that I would be a no show for the ET flight at CAI and that I’d be spending the night in the NH hotel Bajaras that IB had provided for me. So first call I decided to go and try and get my luggage back. The first IB guy I spoke to coordinated to have my luggage found in the bowels of the terminal somewhere and delivered back to me. He reckon it would take 30 minutes and it’d be delivered to a specific belt helpfully adjacent to the oversize belt where my golf clubs would be returned. He also noted that there were service staff in the same office area as him so all I needed to do was walk around the other side of their area.

His reservations colleague took a bit of convincing to look for options other than the flight IB had already given me the following day. My plan now was that I was going to call ET and see what refund I could get from them and cancel the return leg (CAI-ADD-BKK) of that ticket. Then I’d use the missed connection travel insurance ‘money’ (more a future hope of reimbursement) and book my own one way CAI-BKK to be able to catch up with my planned flights. I was aided by the fact that the ET ticket had a 16 hour stopover in ADD (where they’d give me an STPC hotel again and where I’d planned to spend the day going to see the Ethiopian national museum in Addis), so I did have options to get to BKK in time, if I could get to CAI early enough.

I presented the IB staffer with the options that would meet the timings I needed and although she didn’t rebook me onto exactly one of those she did get me on a very similar routing of IB MAD-FCO and then AZ FCO-CAI, still in J per my ticket, with the first leg the next morning. So far so good.

Then went and waited for my bags, with my suitcase appearing on the belt as expected but no golf clubs. Return to IB luggage desk and speak to a different staff member who again makes calls to someone down in luggage world and tells me to go back and wait. Fed up with waiting I return for a third time to the desk and get yet another staffer who again calls someone and tells me they are on the way. Wouldn’t you know it - nothing. On my fourth visit to the desk it was now after 2200 and I was very direct in explaining what had happened and that they needed to get them now. I may have swore. The fourth staff member was very apologetic, seemed to indicate that members two and three were idiots and hadn’t actually passed on the correct message and assured me it would come up within five minutes on a different oversize belt and that she’d called the hotel shuttle to make sure it would be at the terminal pick up point to get me at 2245. That all happened as she said.

Get to hotel. It’s basic but fine. I’m allowed international calls so ring ET and ask what can be done about that ticket. After some calculations apparently the one way fare on the day I bought the ticket would have exceeded the return cost and so I’d get nothing back. I could also defer the flights for up to a year and pay fare difference when I go to rebook. I can’t see that I’ll be using a CAI-ADD-BKK ticket any time soon but left it at that.

The hotel would serve dinner up to midnight so I could get some food too before going to sleep.

Wasn’t going to worry about breakfast at the hotel the next morning as I could get that in the IB lounge.

 

[I love to travel]

Sorry a little confused about why you needed to call ET - were you calling them just in case your flights in the morning did not get you there in time?
Hope it all worked out well.

 

[Scarlett]

Sorry a little confused about why you needed to call ET - were you calling them just in case your flights in the morning did not get you there in time?
Hope it all worked out well.

I was calling ET because I hadn’t had the chance to read through the J fare conditions on my ticket. Usually if you change or cancel before check in closes there are more options, or at least less costly change options, but once it gets to no show territory, tickets have less residual value. I was calling ET before I became a no show but the person I spoke to basically told me from the fare conditions that I had no refund if I cancelled the ticket.

I’ll read through them in slow time when I get home and see if what he was saying was correct or not. Didn’t have time to HUACA or even argue from a point of knowledge so that was that.

 

[Scarlett]

Up early next morning after only about 4 hours sleep thanks to IBs dick-around with getting my new ticket and getting luggage back.


It was still dark and drizzling in Madrid.

I was concerned getting to the foyer and finding plenty of others waiting for the same timed shuttle back to the airport. But, props to either the hotel, or to IB if they sent lots of people to the hotel, because the 0600 shuttle was actually the standard shuttle van which was apparently going to Terminals 1-3 and then this coach which would take those of us going to T4. Good job to whomever organised that.



15 minutes back to the airport, through the IB J check in desk quickly and then into the nice modern IB lounge. I think it was the Dali lounge, but had plenty of seating, all the standard breakfast options and allowed me an hour to catch my thoughts and see what to do with my new travel plan.


The lounge is an open area above the main concourse.

The first order of business was a coffee, ‘double shot maaaate!’ and some bacon and eggs. Then to choose what I had narrowed down as my two preferred options for getting from CAI to BKK in time to catch my booked SQ flights back to Aus.
There were a few more Y options and two in J. As I’m basing my decision making on being able to be reimbursed by the missed connx travel insurance I decided that this new ticket was replacing a J ET booking and I’d go with J flights. Both options were about $4K so I’d still be out of pocket even with a travel insurance claim. Final options were:
EK CAI-DXB-BKK
TK CAI-IST-BKK
The EK option was tighter with timing at Cairo but left me more time at BKK if those flights were late.
The TK option was a bit the other way and was ultimately what I chose. I figured I’d need a longer buffer at CAI to collect bags, re-enter the airport through preliminary security lines and then check in for the flights, whereas BKK should be less hassle. So I pulled out the BankWest credit card and did something like 100,000 Egyptian pounds worth of damage to it. Had turned my Aus sim on to receive the bank sms to authorise the transaction, whilst still doing the actual booking via the EscapeSIM connection via local Spanish mobile network. Modern technology win.

With that I was all set and headed for the gate for my amended plan of travel.


MAD T4

 

[Scarlett]

IB3230 MAD-FCO
A321-200 EC-IJN
Dep: sched 0845 / actual 0944
Arr: sched 1110 / actual 1130

Boarding came up on the monitors in the lounge at the expected time about 0815, so I walked to the gate and found people standing around. Joined the five or so others in the Group 1 lane and waited. At about 0845 they did make an announcement that engineers were checking something on the aircraft and that they expected to be boarding shortly. Boarding came about 0900. I knew I had about 90 minutes connection in FCO so wasn’t too worried at that point. Then we did what seemed to be the standard IB procedure and sat on the fully boarded aircraft for another 30 minutes doing nothing.

Whilst boarding I did note the name on this adjacent aircraft being pushed back.


Standard eurobusiness J seating on a narrow body airbus. After finally departing an unremarkable ham/cheese breakfast roll was served, along with tea/coffee/juice.

We left the cloud behind approaching the Italian peninsula and touched down into a gloriously sunny FCO outside the capital.
We pulled up to a gate beside this:


I’ve never heard of Bulgarian Air before, but found it interesting that they call themselves out as the ‘National Carrier’ on their aircraft.

Due to schedule padding our late departure didn’t concern me greatly and by the time I’d entered the FCO terminal I still had 45 minutes to connect. IB had not been able to issue my AZ boarding pass so I set off to get that.

Saw this Alitalia graveyard from the terminal:


The screens showed my flight to CAI departing from a different set of gates to my arrival so I headed in that direction. I passed an ITA Airways lounge and ducked in there to ask the desk angels if they could print my boarding pass. All I had was a boarding pass sized print out from IB showing the booking ref and AZ flight. They didn’t seem concerned and told me to head to the lounge in the other terminal (non-Schengen). It took about 10 minutes to walk to border control and I could use the auto gates with an AUS passport so that was all quick and easy. Then into the mall like terminal for the extra-Schengen flights. Passed my gate and headed another couple of hundred metres up to the other AZ lounge.

Guy at the desk there seemed flustered when I presented him the IB card and asked for my boarding pass. Monitors still showed ‘go to gate’, so figured I’d have time for a quick coffee in the lounge before heading back to the gate. But, no. The chap was professional about it and made it happen but he couldn’t believe that I had even been let into the terminal without a boarding pass, and that because check in had closed, I wasn’t even listed on the flight!

He made some animated (in Italian) calls and entered a bunch of data into his computer, including passport info and the details of my bag tags (which were tagged through to CAI), then printed out my boarding pass and told me to hurry to the gate as the flight was boarding.

Never got to go in but the AZ lounge looked nice.

 

[Scarlett]

AZ896 FCO-CAI
A321-200neo EI-HXF
Dep: sched 1240 / actual 1253
Arr: sched 1655 / actual 1642

I had seen pictures of the AZ ‘Azzuri Blue’ jets before and saw a couple distant whilst taxiing in with IB, but when you get up close to them they are gorgeous. We had to go through a bus gate to get out to an apron with about six of their jets parked in a cluster.





The paint is actually what I guess you’d call an optional extra ‘mica’ colour on a car. Not sure if this image shows the flecks within the paint that gives it that glow, but it is beautiful.



I had another nice surprise when boarding. The baoarding pass I had been issued was for 6A so I’d assumed more eurobusiness seating, but how wrong was I.



THIS is how you do narrow body J!





I’m pretty certain there was even a separate Y+ cabin behind us.

What a pity the flight was for just less than three hours. Full J lunch meal served, wine list etc. You’d be hard pressed to even recognise this as a narrow body in flight experience.

Very glad I got to have that journey to CAI and I left impressed by ITA Airways!

But of course this being my return journey from hell, it couldn’t all be smooth sailing. I had done a cursory check of my luggage AirTags as we started taxiing and had seen this:


That displays me as the blue dot inside the aircraft taxiing out to the runway, but my suitcase and golf clubs still apparently in the terminal at FCO. Now I know there can be lag with the system, but using inflight wifi confirmed that I’d just hit another snag in my journey.

 

[Scarlett]

On descent into Cairo there was a view of the Giza plateau through the window.


The iPhone image didn’t do it justice but there were views of the pyramids and sphinx through the Cairo haze.

Inflight wifi worked intermittently but well enough to confirm that my bags were indeed still updating their position as FCO.

On arrival I showed my pre-paid visa to Egypt and headed down to baggage claim. They don’t have airline agents there at an office as you’d expect elsewhere, instead the information desk pointed out a guy in a suit as the ITA agent for baggage. I let him and his offsider know my bags wouldn’t be arriving and asked to fill out the baggage irregularities form. He was a bit incredulous I was doing this before bags had even started arriving on the belt but eventually understood how the AirTags worked and could see my dot at CAI but my luggage dots still in FCO. Form was filled out but he wouldn’t give me a tracking number until all the bags had been unloaded so I waited and eventually got it.



I thanked him and headed out of CAI terminal 1 and walked over to T3 where my TK flight would be leaving from.

Whilst waiting in the security line to enter the terminal my TK app pinged me a message.

 

[Scarlett]

This is a picture from the app after the fact, but the message I received was the bottom one. 65 minute delay. Hmm. I have a scheduled arrival of 0005 and then next flight at 0135 local at IST. So there’s most of my 90 minute transit gone and that’s best case scenario.

Open up FR24 and look up the inbound flight to see where it is: hasn’t departed IST yet, but it shows the operating aircraft so I search by that. In fact the aircraft (an A321) had just landed from somewhere in France ISTR. So this was not going to be a 65 minute delay. Some quick maths in my head says at least two hours, more likely two and a half.

So there goes another plan out the window.

My mind was probably screaming:


Instead it was straight back into Google flights whilst waiting for the check in desk to open. (this transit in CAI had actually worked on time! I’d gotten to check in a couple of minutes before the desks opened). It was now about 1800 local in CAI.

There were EK and QR flights that would get me to BKK in time to make my SQ ticket. QR departing 1950 and EK at 2005. All I had to do was convince TK to get me onto them and to do it fast.

As soon as the J desk opened I spoke to the agent and then the station manager and he agreed I was going to misconnect. (at some point in this process was where the second message from the TK app appeared) He agreed to try to help and started working two mobiles, the desk phone he had and an adjacent desk phone. A quartet of Singaporeans also in J had the same idea as they were going to misconnect their two hour transit to the SIN bound flight.

After check in opened there was a lot of shouting in Arabic across the four or so TK desks and the station manager was getting increasingly frayed. But it appeared he was still working the problem. The Singaporeans were led away back through security, to the TK ticket office and I bid them farewell with a good luck.

The station manager assured me he was getting me onto EK flights but was still getting it sorted out. Eventually I too was led back through security and to the ticket office. It was a good sign that they were expecting me by name. I handed over my passport and waited another five minutes and then I was given the paperwork for my new EK flights.

As soon as I saw it there was another problem:



Sure, they’d rebooked me onto EK, but not the flight this evening. Instead I was going to be getting into BKK at 1825, but my SQ flight was scheduled for 1800. I pleaded my case to get on the earlier EK flight but they said it wasn’t even offered as an option by their system as it was too close to departure and that EK left from a different terminal. I tried looking again for all other options to get to BKK by about 1630 tomorrow and there was nothing. So by about 1930 I trudged away from the TK office wondering where I was going to spend the next few hours with access to power and coffee as I cued the A-Team music and got to work on plan 4.0, or maybe 5.0. F@$# it, I have no idea what plan number I was up to.

 

[Scarlett]

And to think, I did actually have a TK boarding pass in my hand for about five minutes between the check in desks and the ticket office. That would have been keeping with the thread title as an unexpected bonus *A airline for the trip. It would have also helped my TK Elite status requal.

I’ll have to chase them up later and see if they do a form of ORC.

 

[Askance]

Sure, they’d rebooked me onto EK, but not the flight this evening. . F@$# it, I have no idea what plan number I was up to.

So, was the Benny Hill theme music playing in the back of your mind by this point?

 

[Scarlett]

I wandered around CAI T3 for ten or so minutes and could only see a Burger King upstairs as a seating option that wasn’t a token local concessions stand selling packaged cough, so I wandered over to T2 to see what I could find there.



Hopefully there would even be the EK office and I could confirm that TK had sent my ticket over. No such luck. Instead there was a Segafredo Coffee stand so I ordered a coffee and a beef & salad roll, plugged in the phone, connected to the CAI employee wifi and started working out what I could do once I got to BKK.

I couldn’t ring SQ reservations and from my reading of the fare rules it looked like my Y+ booking could be changed for about a AUD250 change fee and maybe some other smaller fees. I also found an option to email them to request a change and there was a field where you could fill in ‘compassionate circumstances’. Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I fired off the email asking for my flight to be changed to something a day later and included a photo of my TK INVOL REROUTE paperwork showing the new EK arrival time as the reason I was going to miss my flight. I did get an auto acknowledgement email in response but nothing in reply before I departed CAI.

Whilst sitting in the coffee shop I had the chance to observe the comings and goings of everyday Egyptians waiting around outside an airport. (the coffee ‘shop’ was between T2 and T1) Much smoking going on and of course obligatory car horns at every opportunity. As I was inside in an air-conditioned area the sound was muted. Also the complete disregard of parking signs.



Both those cars where there, with no one in them, for at least 30 minutes, whilst their drivers went off to do whatever it was they needed. The token police/security dudes sitting around every door didn’t seem to care. The upside of what I guess must be a generally honest society (when they’re not trying to fleece tourists) was when a lady came into the coffee shop and (I assume - it was all in Arabic) asked to borrow a phone charger, which the young guy manning the register freely gave over to her. She plugged in to a power point beside me for about an hour and generally minded her own business. Then she gave the charger back and wandered off.

To summarise my plan at this point:
- hope that SQ would see my email and change my flights for me to a day later. Otherwise I’d be paying about a $1000 for a new whY ticket BKK to MEL/SYD/BNE with either CX (via HKG - another connection - are you a complete idiot???) or direct with JQ (shudder). I’d completely disregarded the $200 cheaper JQ option BKK-PER-MEL as both legs were partially overnight.

Openflights informs me I have flown on nearly 90 different airlines in my nearly 1.5 million miles travelled, but this would be a first for me as I walked over to go check in for a trip on Bling Air, in J no less.

 

[Scarlett]

EK926 CAI-DXB
A380-800 A6-EEO
Dep: sched 0245 / actual 0309
Arr: sched 0710 / actual 0703

A minor hurdle at EK check in as there was no ticket in the system to allow me to check in from, but five minutes with the TK rerouting paperwork and the service desk chap had it all sorted out. Check in was very fast with no baggage and I was off to the CAI EK lounge. Had some after midnight dinner and completed a couple of the above posts and did my best not to look too much like a disheveled zombie.

It’s quite a large lounge but a little dated but filled with staff who wanted to do everything for you: reach for a bottle of water and they’d try to beat you to it! Boarding was called about 0230 and I walked to the gate. Well lookie here:



Normally when booking flights I know what aircraft I’ll be flying on and where my seats are etc, but I really had no idea and in my fugue state I hadn’t even looked up FR24 to see where my aircraft might be.

So that was a pleasant surprise and I boarded the upper deck via the separate airbridge. The individual J seat was nice, but all I recall is taking off, reclining my seat shortly after takeoff, popping eye mask and earplugs in and then getting about two hours sleep.

Far too quickly I was being woken by the crew to put my seat upright and we descended into DXB. This was also another first for me; over 100 airports visited but never through DXB to that point.



It was of course an impressive sight to taxi past so many other A380s and B777s.

Off the aircraft, into one of the massive terminals and I set about finding where my connecting flight to BKK would be departing from, then the EK J lounge.

 

[Scarlett]

My connecting flight to BKK was departing from gate B1 which seemed to be at the opposite end of where I’d arrived, or maybe even the start of the next (but joined) terminal. By the time I’d walked down there I had just over an hour until boarding, so continued on to the EK J lounge which was another couple of hundred metres along the B gates. The lounge was, as you’d expect, huge and also very busy. I found a spare seat, logged in to their wifi and prayed to any deity prepared to listen that there would be a response from SQ. There wasn’t.

I didn’t grab a coffee as I planned to get more sleep on the next flight, so instead grabbed some snacks and juice to power me through the next hour. If I was a drinker I’d probably have had multiple shots of whatever fire water the lounge provided.

I looked at the options in the QF app for my final flight MEL-CBR and could see that I had three:

- a change for fare difference, to a flight the next day would cost about another 50% on top of the original ticket price.

- cancellation to original payment method would only return me a token amount

- or I could cancel for a flight credit.

I had until the end of the day to make the decision, so decided to wait until I got to BKK and could find out what was going to happen with my SQ ticket.

I should divert here and note that I’d tried to set up Skype whilst waiting for my golf clubs way back at MAD airport. I’d also tried to find any way to call internationally via any number of the apps and websites promising to allow just that. They’re all lies of course. What I really should have done was just turn my Aus sim on and worn whatever the cost was to make some overseas calls. Hindsight is always 20/20.

The Skype thing was interesting as apparently I have a Microsoft account: when entering my email address to set it up, it told me so. (you have to use a Microsoft account to use Skype) I can only guess it was from when I had a Windows phone a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Yes I was that one user of a Windows phone and I thought it was great - did everything I needed and worked with everything on my PC and Windows laptop! I got in to the account and managed to purchase €10 of credit with my 28 degrees card. Well I thought I had managed to do that, except I couldn’t make Skype actually call anything. Turns out that Latitude had helpfully blocked the transaction as fraud and Skype had immediately ‘refunded’ the money, or something like that. I only found this out when I’d turned my Aus sim on in the IB lounge the next morning to buy the TK tickets CAI-BKK (to receive the authorisation code). Latitude had sent me three increasingly urgent sms messages to call them about suspected fraud on my account. Note that they didn’t send any messages to the Latitude app I have on my phone and that app seems to have no way to contact them online other than to ring them. So that’s a future Scarlett problem and I’m probably cancelling the card anyway once I get back from this trip (due the newly introduced $8 monthly charge).

About 30 minutes into my time in the EK lounge I had the brainwave to try the Wifi Calling thing I’d read other people talk about on one of the threads here. I don’t use Telstra so have never really thought about it. Turns out that because my provider uses the Telstra network back in Aus, that it exists on my phone. I played around with the settings and sure enough ‘Telstra Wifi Calling’ appeared on the top left of my phone screen. I’d be able to use the EK lounge wifi to call SQ: you little ripper! I rang their 24hr call centre number but as that’s in Singapore the call wouldn’t work. I think there was an Aussie accent message from Telstra saying something like wifi calling can only be used to call Australian numbers. Felt pretty dejected coming off what I thought was a win and then realised surely SQ would have an Aus number, but would it work on what was a weekend? It damn well did!!! I bounced through the various menu steps hoping the 15 minutes I had remaining in the lounge would be enough to get through to someone. It actually only took about three minutes of waiting on hold music and I was speaking to an SQ rep (with a Filipino accent).

I gave him my booking ref and asked if my email from the day before had been actioned but of course he knew nothing about that. So I then explained the problem of my impending no show in about 7 hours and asked if I could change the flight to a later time. As he tapped away (probably reading the fare conditions associated with my booking) my next EK flight came up on the screens as boarding. I slowly dawdled toward the exit of the lounge until Final Call came up and as I just left he came back with some options that my ticket could be changed to. Fearing I was about to lose the wifi calling signal I just yelled at him to book the first available flights the next day and to please email me whatever he got. It sounded like there was an option leaving BKK the following day mid afternoon but at that point the call started breaking up and so I just said over and over: ‘please book that’ hoping he got the message.

Then it was a quick jog to the gate, down some stairs and onto a waiting business class bus! Where we sat around for ten minutes before making the journey out to a 777 parked at what could only be the farthest point of DXB.

 

[Scarlett]

EK370 DXB-BKK
B777-300 A6-EGR
Dep: sched 0900 / actual 1100
Arr: sched 1825 / actual 1944

I had been allocated an aisle bulkhead seat in the middle block of the first row of J in the EK B777 2-3-2 J layout. The F suites were immediately in front of the bulkhead and from the view I had they looked… ostentatious. The middle seat beside me remained unoccupied. I think these were the older style EK J seats and may have even been sloping flat rather than fully flat. I knew I’d be sleeping on them no matter what.



Boarding complete, they closed the doors and we started push back and taxi. The safety video was playing the Arabic language version and I had put my Bluetooth earphones in and was listening to some music and partially dozing off. I don’t recall what did it but next thing I realised was we were stopped and it looked suspiciously like we were back in a parking position when looking across the A-B seats and through their window.

Captain Speaking came on and advised that due to a medical emergency could all pax please stay in their seats as paramedics would be coming onto the aircraft. There was no commotion in the J cabin where I was, so not sure what had happened. We remained there for I think an hour or so. I had reclined my seat a little and continued to doze. When the situation had been resolved there was another message broadcast saying they were just removing some items from the hold (what I assume was the affected person’s luggage) and we’d be on our way.

The flight to BKK was uneventful. I got about four hours solid sleep and then awoke and had something to eat. I recall it was a beef dish but the meat was a little tough. Maybe I’d delayed eating too long. There was enough time left to watch a movie, ‘American Fiction’, I really enjoyed it.



Then we descended into the lights of BKK.

During the descent and taxi in I was watching the clock like a hawk. Due to the delay in DXB it was getting ever closer to 2000 local BKK which was midnight in Aus and I had to do something with my QF ticket before the day of departure or I’d lose it. I tried to connect to a local provider via my Aus sim but that wouldn’t work, probably because I have some setting in place to prevent data use on overseas roaming… great! Agonisingly slowly we pulled up to the gate, and waited for the airbridge to connect. I reckon I was out of the door at minute 58 and furiously trying to connect to the BKK airport wifi. Originally I had only planned to transit through BKK so didn’t have an eSIM set up for anywhere except Europe. Once connected I went straight into the QF app and cancelled the booking for a flight credit. I have no idea whether I made the cut off or not as there was no info about how much that flight credit would be worth. Another job for when I get home.

 

[VPS]

I'm stressed just reading about your experience let alone living it

 

[Scarlett]

There was some good news in my email inbox, with an adjusted itinerary from SQ. They’d pushed my flights back to a mid-afternoon departure from BKK the following day. The email did note that I had to finalise the change by a given time the following day or they’d be cancelled. It read as a booking that had not been reticketed.

The third thing I did whilst still close to the jetbridge I’d recently arrived through, was to bring up Google Maps and look for hotels near Lat Krabang Rd just north of the airport. I’ve stayed in a number of different small hotels there when transiting BKK, because you can get a decent bed, as well as a shuttle to/from the airport, for between $40-80. Port Canary Hotel claimed 4*’s so I clicked on that, opened it in Booking.com and made the reservation. I also noted for the property that I’d be through immigration in the next 20-30 minutes and would go to the usual hotel meeting point on the second floor near door 4 to get the shuttle. Note here that I did check the rate for the airport Novotel and they wanted something over $300 so didn’t consider that as necessary.

Entering Thailand was a quick process and with no luggage to collect I set out to find someone from SQ and sort out my amended ticket. Unfortunately, with the late arrival they’d already completed their flights for the evening and all gone. The time advised in the amended reservation email actually meant I could go and see them before checking in the following day, so I planned to do that.

Then I headed for the hotel meeting point, read the messages from the hotel confirming they’d sent the shuttle and responded via WhatsApp that I was there and it all worked smoothly. After a 10 minute shuttle transfer I had a bite to eat, a shower (where I washed the one set of clothes I had and hung them up to dry overnight) and laid down in a real bed in relative peace. Surely I’m over the hump of bad luck and smooth downhill from here?