Our Annual Trip to India - The Begining

[somebol]

Every year we travel to India over Christmas to visit our parents. Usually we are away for a month or so. We also tack on a trip to somewhere in Europe leaving the kids with their grandparents.

Our travel dates are tied to the school calendar, we usually leave in the last week of school. This year that date turned out to be 17/12, 16th being the year 5 graduation of my son.
So, in January this year I source 4 J awards using Air Canada points on SQ travelling MEL-SIN-HYD. I booked the return flights for my wife, son and daughter for Australia Day weekend using Air Canada points again on SQ HYD-SIN-MEL.

I’ve been using Air Canada points to book our travel for the past 3 years (since the great Amex devaluation made accumulating sufficient SQ points impossible). Generally MEL-SIN and return has plenty of availability compared to SYD-SIN.
I snagged cheap VA Y flights CBR-MEL-CBR during a VA sale to bookend our travel.

Mid may, I decided to use my last lot of Krisflyer miles to book SQ F award DEL-SIN-SYD with DEL-SIN to be on A380 suites. My sister lives in DEL so I wanted to spend a couple of days in DEL before coming back. I also booked HYD-DEL in AI J using 20K air canada points.

So, by the middle of the year our travel was all booked and set barring a couple of potential tweaks.
My son’s year 5 graduation was on 16/12 and we weren’t given a specific time for the event. So I booked us in VA284 departing at 18:50. Our first flight the next day was SQ248 departing at 6:55. Ideally I wanted to arrive in MEL earlier in the day to maximise sleep for the family.

I also booked flexible rates in both park royal and Novotel for our night in MEL. We travel with a lot of luggage so wanted the easy option of walking up to Park Royal. We will cancel one of them closer to the date.

So with everything booked and seats and meals selected, it was a matter of whiling away the months until our trip starts!

What could go wrong?

 

[somebol]

1/12
School sent out an email, graduation scheduled for 9:00am, excellent!. Immediately logged on to VA site to change to an earlier flight.
What’s that? $1200 in additional fare and change fees. No thanks! I will take my chances with fly ahead on the day of departure.

Best laid plans and all that…

13/12 10:00
I was reviewing our bookings checking seats and meal assignments and I decided to review the saved passport details as well.
Reviewing my daughter’s passport details I noticed that it expires on 7/6/25 not quite the required 6 month validity.

PANIC MODE ON!!

Jumped on to passports.gov.au to check our options. There is a rapid passport services that has a 2 business day turnaround with a couple of caveats.

1. The rapid passport applications are only processed by selected auspost outlets, in our case Canberra GPO.
2. Applications must be lodged before 12:00pm.

So, In the best case scenario if everything went smoothly we’d receive the passport on 17/12 which wouldn’t work as we’d be in MEL and our flight departs at 6:55. And I had 2 hours to lodge the application!!

10:30
Told my wife to pickup daughter from school and meet me at GPO.
Called a friend “the witness” and asked him to meet me in the GPO and stand in line in case he got there before us.
Meanwhile I furiously started filling out the passport application.

11:30
I reach the post office only to be greeted with a 20 person line. Luckily my friend had arrived earlier and was second in line!

11:40
We are served by a lovely lady, after hearing our predicament, started processing the application as fast as possible. starting with passport photo and verifying documents. She was quick!

12:00
The courier from the passport office arrives and we are not yet done with our application. Another post office angel persuades the courier to wait for our application to be finished. We manage to finish at 12:10 and the courier picks up our application and leaves.
I profusely thank the 2 lovely ladies for going above and beyond and head home.

After all of this, we still not out of the woods. I really needed the passport by 16/12 and the earliest guaranteed date was 17/12.

I needed a backup plan and Divine Intervention.

13:00
Once home, I jumped on seats.aero and air canada website to see what was still available. Being the week before Christmas I was not very hopeful of finding any awards and cash fares were ~$3k per person one way OUCH!!

I usually book our family on separate tickets, for flexibility, the boys and girls on separate bookings. this proved very useful today.
I managed to find 2 Y awards on TK MEL-SIN but nothing onwards to any city in India. I decided to book it, I could always purchase SIN-xx_ on a LCC if needed.

13:30
Then I called the passports office to see if there was anything they could do to expedite the application. The answer was negative, but they did give me the email address of the Canberra passport office.
I shot off an email to them detailing our predicament and begging for help.

We had done everything we could and now faced an excruciating wait over the weekend to see what our fate held.

My plan was to head to the passport office first thing Monday morning and try to get the passport issued on that day. Failing that I’d cancel my wife and daughter’s SQ tickets and they’d travel on the 18th once they got the passport.

15:00
Driving to pickup my son from school, my phone rings “private number”.
I answer and hear the words “This is x from the passport office, your passport is ready to be collected from our office!”

Crisis averted!! The passport was issued in 1.5 hours!!

To say I was overjoyed would be an under statement. I am really grateful to all the people who went above and beyond to help me today. From my friend who stood in line for me, to the two lovely Australia post ladies who assisted me and then held up the courier till our application was done and finally the unnamed passport office employee who read and acted on my desperate plea for help.

As an added bonus, I could free 24hrs cancel the TK Y awards for a full refund and no penalty.

 

[somebol]

16/12 - Travel day

Called VA at 6:00am and used my fly ahead benefit to move us to VA268 departing at 14:45

After junior’s graduation we got home finished few last minute things and were ready to start our trip!

"The Graduate"



Got to the airport by 12:00, used our priority pass restaurant benefit (thanks Citibank) to have lunch at Capital brewery
We were serenaded by the “Australian Girls Choir” singing carols while we had lunch.





After the carols, we spent an hour in the VA lounge toasting the start of our trip and our good fortune in the whole passport drama.


VA268 14:42 - 15:50
After an uneventful flight to MEL, we collected our bags and walked to the Novotel.

I cancelled my booking at park royal as the Novotel’s rates kept dropping and in the end I paid $100 less than my original rate.
The walk was painless and took us about 10 minutes. As we arrived I noticed the Novotel shuttle which we could have called and booked for free.
Checked in and booked us on the 4:00am shuttle.



Spent couple of hours in the lobby bar using my free drink vouchers followed by an excellent early dinner at Boccata.

Went to bed early as we had a really early start the next day. Try as I might, but sleep was near impossible for me. Around midnight got a text from SQ saying our flight was delayed by an hour due to late arrival of incoming aircraft. I was not too worried as we had a 7 hour transit.
Went down to see if I could change to a later shuttle, but no luck all booked out. Had another hour of fitful sleep then woke up, got ready in time for the shuttle.

 

[somebol]

17/12 - The real journey

After a painless checkin, security and immigration we were in the SQ lounge (forgot to take pictures).

Since I had access, decided to checkout AirNZ and Amex lounges.

Air NZ








Amex Lounge






SQ248 MEL-SIN 08:00 - 12:34

Don’t remember much of the flight as I slept through most of it.

Our preselected AVML, surprisingly bad for SQ standards




Arrived in SIN an hour late, we went landside and spent a couple of hours roaming around in Jewel and had lunch at another priority pass restaurant and then spent an hour or so in the SQ J lounge.





SQ522 SIN - HYD 19:59 - 22:01
The flight to HYD was pretty uneventful, I had dinner and then slept the rest of the way.

Ruchi Thali, much better




Once in HYD, we rushed through immigration and our bags were out first. We were in an uber 20 mins from touchdown and home an hour later.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I was wondering why you didn’t include the domestic connection on VA with your aeroplan ticket… but the 8am departure might have something to do with it!