It seems like an age ago now but the fact is less than 14 days ago my wife and I were staying with relatives in Auckland, New Zealand without a clue about how we would get back to Australia.
As it happens, we were two of the lucky travellers.
For starters, after a very enjoyable and much delayed two-week break with close friends and relatives we did have somewhere to stay - if the planes were to be grounded for up to another two weeks as the media were speculating.
But more fortunately for us our flight finally left on time – we didn’t actually miss a beat.
That’s not to say we were confident right up until my wife and I were both strapped into our 380 seats and the inflight movie had started.
Which is a wee bit of an exaggeration since the airline website actually announced the good news first thing in the morning on the day we were to leave - with our ETD (Estimated Time of Departure) being unchanged.
Since we were to depart at 1700 (notice how I’ve slipped into airline jargon here - must have been the influence of my two jumbo pilot nephews) we had virtually a whole day to make our last minute arrangements.
However, what I did learn from the whole exercise was exactly how dependant we have all become on websites to deliver
up-to-date news … and departure times.
Have you ever been overseas and tried to ring an airline help desk in an emergency?
If you thought getting hold of your local telco about getting a reduction to your humungous smartphone bill was difficult, try the 1300 of an airline based in Dubai.
To be fair, the company website worked as it should. That is, flights leaving for the next 24 hours were in fact posted first thing in the morning.
However I’ve got to say the gap between getting the news that we might be delayed indefinitely and finding out we weren’t was not without trauma.
But whether a team of airline staff could have manned the phones at such short notice is debatable - it was after all the biggest ‘hiccup’ in air travel since 9/11.
The facts are we are both back in Oz and life is already returning to normal. And any thoughts of an extended unplanned sojourn in the Shaky Isles are already fading to a distant memory.
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