[QF009]

QF25 MEL-AKL, 29JUN2008, Business Class: The flight that almost never was.

I sank into the very nice Heavenly Bed in the wee hours of the morning, thankful to finally get some rest after the extremely long day I've had.

rewind

It's 5am in the morning and I've just commenced packing and other preparations for the trip. It had been an exhausting weekend; I've arrived home close to midnight after spending the previous 2 days in Sale - a town approx 212km away from Melbourne. No it was by no means an extension of my holiday - I had answered the call of duty to assist in a by-election effort in that area and have had very little sleep. Alas the results were disappointing though not totally unexpected; at least there was free alcohol at the commiserations party and I wasn't stuck at the Victorian/NSW border with next to zero mobile phone reception unlike some less fortunate comrades. But I digress...

So no I did not have the opportunity to commence packing and cleaning the house (feels a bit grim to come back to an untidy house) till then. The idea was to catch a few hours' shut eye, pack, and arrive at the airport by 9.20am for the 10.50am departure. And perhaps crash onboard on the comfy Skybeds after a few tipples for a power nap. At least that was the plan. Mission accomplished with the packing, and I got to Tullamarine at just after 9am. And I hadn't missed anything in the midst of it all, only an inadequately charged camera battery (which means no pics for this bit of the TR - sorry!).

I was a tad concerned at the possibility of flight cancellations or delays due to the QF Engineers' industrial action. Everything seemed normal when I'd repeatedly checked my booking online. Nothing looked out of the ordinary when at the departure halls, save for the presence of the QF queue dragon who looked quizically at my retro handwritten paper ticket and wasn't about to let me into the very much shorter JCL queue until I got a more experienced staffer from the service desk to intervene.

10.20am - I decided to head to the gate a little earlier to maximise time for champagne sipping. A "small delay" was announced as the aircraft was still in the final preparations for departure.

10.35am - Oops, message from the engineers: we would have a "slight delay" due to a maintenance issue with the aircraft. Something to do with a circuit breaker in the food chillers. Realising that it was going to be much longer than a "slight delay" I headed back to the Qantas Pub. My day was about to get much longer...

The new scheduled departure time was 12 noon. It was then became a rolling delay with a new estimated departure time every hour. I enquired at front desk for the possibility of being protected on other flights, however it wasn't exactly their domain and "central reservations in Sydney" weren't about to do anything until the flight was finally cancelled. They assured me that they could see my onward flight to HKG on CX108 the following day. And the QF duty manager was going to try getting the flight out until the crew ran out of hours - ie not till 8.30pm. I overheard from a convo the QP staff had with the duty manager that they were negotiating with the Hilton for day rooms but the Hilton had told QF to pound sand until the flight was actually cancelled per the terms of their contract. Damn bureaucracy...

The very nice QP lounge staff I spoke to were convinced that it was a "go slow" action by the engineers, as these things normally do not take this long to fix. They themselves appeared frustrated and were extremely apologetic. The CSM and another member of the cabin crew of QF25 walked around the QP at approximately 3pm to talk to pax and apologised repeatedly for difficult circumstances.

So the QP became my home/prison for the better part of the day. It was a pleasant enough place to spend time in, I guess. I had a new drinking buddy whom I'd met at the gate and invited into the QP - he was most grateful to say the least after it became apparent that this was not merely a "slight delay."

Boarding for QF25 was finally called at 6pm... At least I'd qualified to lodged a claim against my travel insurance company on the grounds of a flight delay, as the delay was more than 6 hours.

To be continued...