Guided by the Stars (Alliance)

[VPS]

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?

I certainly hope so

 

[Scarlett]

I had a good sleep, updated some more of this trip and noted some emails from World Tracer Aero that my luggage was already making its way FCO-DXB-SYD with EK. It would be getting in to SYD about the same time I’d hopefully be getting into MEL!

Shuttle back to the airport and over to the SQ desk to speak to the staff and see what needed to happen with my ticket.

I don’t know how to describe what happened here as I’m not sure myself. I explained I was there to get the booking ticketed and that I expected to have to pay extra for change fees. One girl tried to do something on the screen in front of her then handed the task over to a guy who I think was more senior. After a short while he said he was calling the reservations line and he went through the menu of press 1 etc. Then he just handed the phone to me.
I asked the res person what the local desk here at BKK had told him and what he needed from me, but they’d told him nothing, so I repeated my story to him. He then put me on hold for about five minutes then came back and wanted to confirm I was at the BKK airport desk. When I said yes he asked to speak to the staff. The staff member moved away a little so I don’t know what they were talking about but it went on for a couple of minutes then he hung up. That male staff member then had to go away to do something else so he left me with what he indicated was the station manager lady. If I had to guess, I don’t think they knew what to do.

She spent about 10 minutes working on her computer but I had no idea what they were doing: ticketing the booking or doing fare difference calculations. When I asked for an update the issue seemed to be that they could ticket my first flight in whY to SIN, but that the Y+ segment to MEL was overbooked. Given that no one had mentioned anything about additional costs I asked if I could be checked in for the first flight and then given an update in the lounge on what would happen with the second flight. She didn’t think the lounge would be able to help but suggested I could go to the transfer desk when I got to SIN and they should have a confirmation for me. This sounded fine to me!

Her colleague at the adjacent desk took about one minute to print my boarding pass and she did initially print a second one with SBY which I assume was Standby for the second flight. When I asked her to swap my *G number in the booking for my Velocity number and if I could have a window seat she did that and ripped up the boarding passes and only gave me one for the BKK-SIN flight.

Excellent.


Next stop was the SilverKris lounge and some tasty green curry beef with roti canai. I still didn’t know what was going to happen in SIN, but this was going okay.

 

[Scarlett]

SQ709 BKK-SIN
A350-900 9V-SHF
Dep: sched 1530 / actual 1544
Arr: sched 1855 / actual 1840

On the walk from the SQ lounge to the boarding gate I passed this view:

Not the Scoot jet, but it just happened to be those two sitting beside each other over the back there. Made me smile.

Actually, I then did look at the TR jet and saw its name:


Serious Bonza vibes from Bazza! Anyone know why TR has a jet named like that?

Boarding was well advanced so I went and took my unremarkable whY seat for the two hour hop down to SIN.

During taxi the flight deck crew remarked that there might be some turbulence shortly after departure.



The dark clouds covering half the sky spoke truth to the comment.

I’d already eaten in the lounge so just had some water, watched us track south almost following the Malaysian coastline and listened to some music.

I could see this yellowish discolouration on the wing in a couple of places. I wonder if that is what QR and Airbus were in such a tiff about a couple of years ago?


SIN landing was unremarkable and I made my way off the aircraft to one of the T3 transfer desks.

 

[Scarlett]

I was braced to offer up options of going to BNE or SYD if the flight was overbooked and they wanted me to be flexible; I also had my hand twitching toward my wallet in case I was going to be expected to make some extra payment.

Instead I handed over my passport and first segment boarding pass, explained what BKK had told me and waited to see what the news was. The staff member simply printed out my onwards boarding pass and I walked away. What an anticlimax! In a good way.

So off to the T3 KrisFlyer Gold lounge for some dinner and a couple of hours of waiting.

Whilst in the lounge and as I now had certainty for my MEL arrival time, I did have to book my final MEL-CBR leg for the following day. A 3hr connection to VA was the result. I tried to use the QF flight credit from yesterday’s cancellation but it said not allowed online and to call QF.

 

[OZDUCK]

This is Scoots explanation as to why that aircraft was called Barry. Supposedly public suggestion.

Scoot's first two aircraft now have names

Wonder why it has to be "Goin’ Scootin" for the first aircraft and "Barry" for the other?Following a Facebook campaign that generated close to 10,000 submissions, Scoot, Singapore’s ...

www.yahoo.com

 

[Scarlett]

SQ227 SIN-MEL
B777-300 9V-SWG
Dep: sched 2200 / actual 2221
Arr: sched 0825 / actual 0810

The plane was full. Y+ was full.
I’d been allocated a bulkhead aisle at the front of the Y+ mini cabin. So settled in to that, put some pjs on (yes I’d had them in my backpack the whole time - had used the top on the longer EK flight. I go with the VA black top (for those old enough to remember when VA flew long haul ) and QF grey bottoms) and tried to get closer to AEDT body rhythm by going straight to what passes for sleep in a partially reclined chair.

The SQ staff did wake me to ask if I wanted dinner and seemed surprised I didn’t. I asked them if there was breakfast before arrival in MEL but they advised it was only a small snack. This confirmed for me that other than a very slightly wider chair and some more legroom, this is very much a closer to whY product than some other airlines, such as QF, offer. I would not pay for Y+ on SQ again.

I pretty much just dozed for the entire flight.

After landing it took me 25 minutes to be sitting in the VA lounge and contemplating how many coffees I was going to order.



In more good news the AirTags showed that my baggage was at SYD T1.

 

[Scarlett]

VA267 MEL-CBR
…
Nothing interesting happened. I’m home.

And for closure, my bags have just arrived at CBR on a QF flight from SYD and I’ll be heading into the airport to collect them from baggage services shortly.

In slow time I’ll do up a lessons I learnt from this experience and a final comment post.

Why fly direct when you can connect? BECAUSE IT’S MUCH BLOODY SIMPLER AND CHEAPER WHEN THINGS GO WRONG!

 

[Scarlett]

 

[I love to travel]

VA267 MEL-CBR
…
Nothing interesting happened. I’m home.

And for closure, my bags have just arrived at CBR on a QF flight from SYD and I’ll be heading into the airport to collect them from baggage services shortly.

In slow time I’ll do up a lessons I learnt from this experience and a final comment post.

Why fly direct when you can connect? BECAUSE IT’S MUCH BLOODY SIMPLER AND CHEAPER WHEN THINGS GO WRONG!

It sounds like you still have your sense of humour about it - well done. I hope the travel insurance came through.

 

[drron]

I am in awe of your persistence. What a nightmare. And it was going so well until you turned to come home. I enjoyed the first part of the TR a lot more than the last part.

But you have reinforced our decision to only take 1 international flight per day. So we have a good nights sleep and nearly always daylight flights.

 

[QF_Flyer]

SQ227 SIN-MEL
So settled in to that, put some pjs on (yes I’d had them in my backpack the whole time - had used the top on the longer EK flight. I go with the VA black top (for those old enough to remember when VA flew long haul ) and QF grey bottoms)

Sounds like you've had a hell of an adventure! Wanted to chime in re the PJs, VA's black PJ tops are my favourite, I have several sets from my frequent travels on their MEL-HKG route, all gradually getting worn out, and I'm sad to think I'll never get a new set (they were lovely when newly unpackaged!); I pair them with EK or AA's bottoms, EK for comfort and most importantly pockets, which seem a rarity, AA much the same but they can pass as joggers, as the bottoms are cuffed, so if I need petrol at 23:00 or something, I'm disgraceful enough to go out in them (although I'll use the BP or Ampol apps to avoid interacting with people if possible!).

Re an earlier comment about SQ's logo, your Googling did yield some semi-accurate info - I believe the logo is stylised on a bird crossed with a Keris, the handle of a Kris, which is a type of dagger from that region - the bird itself I've read is a Garuda, a mythical creature from (you guessed it) Indonesian folklore (but also other countries).

As an aside, SilverKris being superior to KrisFlyer Gold (as in the lounges) always baffled me until I read this - the dagger (the Kris) was generally Silver (I suppose a gold one would be expensive and soft?). Would be happy to be corrected/enlightened, it's the kind of avgeekery that's intrigued me enough to look it up in the past, so all knowledge appreciated!

 

[Scarlett]

Some good news: Covermore travel insurance have finally agreed to pay out for my missed connection in Cairo from this trip.

To summarise the claim:
- I missed my separate-ticket connection, for which I had allowed five hours in CAI.
- First ticket was an IB J ticket LIS-MAD-CAI (and which, due to the LIS-MAD sector being 2.5 hours late and making me miss the connection MAD-CAI, was subsequently invol rerouted in MAD to be MAD-FCO-CAI about 14 hours later).
- Second ticket was the return leg of my ET J BKK-ADD-CAI booking.
- As I was a no show for the return leg, ET repriced the ticket as one way and stated that was a cost more than I had paid for the return ticket and therefore no refund was given.
- I purchased a last minute one-way J ticket with TK CAI-IST-BKK whilst in MAD, to replace the missed ET flights.

The limit for missed connections on the Covermore policy is $3K, the TK ticket cost $4K and the Excess was $100. So I have been paid out $2900 as expected from my claim.

 

[Scarlett]

On the related matter:
IB refuse to even acknowledge that they are liable for an EU261 delay claim. I’ll try one more call and then it may be time to go through a specialist claims mob based in Europe.

They should be liable for €600 for a planned journey (LIS-MAD-CAI) longer than 3500Km that was delayed more than 4 hours.