After an epic three weeks in Vietnam and Australia, our flight from Sydney to Auckland was the final leg of our journey. Given the number of years we have worked in travel and the number of times we have each been to Sydney this leg of our holiday was the least of our worries. Perhaps this is why we switched off and dropped the ball. Even elite sports teams have off days, this was most certainly ours.
But first, let’s rewind a few months. When planning this trip Murray was in charge of booking the flights, I took charge of the cruise, ground transport and accommodation in Vietnam. After everything was booked I prepared a detailed itinerary for each day of our trip and asked Murray to check it. Despite my best efforts for accuracy, I made an error on the detailed itinerary with the flight departure time from Sydney and, due to confirmation bias (self-diagnosed), every time I checked the flight time (which I did more than once) on the flight ticket I found the same incorrect number that I’d put on the itinerary all those months ago.
Back to Sydney. After a lovely evening staying with old friends in Mona Vale and spending a blissful afternoon cruising on Pittwater while sipping VB, followed by a delicious home-cooked meal and catching up with another old friend we transferred to central Sydney for a night in a hotel before our flight home on Saturday afternoon.
With a 1640 flight time on LATAM we decided to have a relaxed morning in the hotel, take a stroll at 10ish to Darling Harbour, have brunch, then get a train to the airport at about 1 pm. Murray ribbed me about ‘being dressed in my plane clothes’ at 9.30 am before he headed to the shower. For some reason (thankfully) he decided to check his copy of the flight printout once he was clean. He advanced and waved it towards me pointing and looking quite stressed. ‘Gilly, the flight leaves at 1135, it ARRIVES at 1640’, he frothed.
Current time 9.55 am. Oops.
All systems go. Luckily I had my flight clothes on already and we were mostly packed. We were in the hotel lobby by 9.57 am, and with no time for a stroll to the train and the ride itself, I started to book an Uber. At this moment the app reminded me that I didn’t have a current payment method as my credit card had expired since I last used Uber. As Murray paced anxiously beside me, with shaking fingers I navigated around the Uber app trying to add a new credit card and set it as the preferred payment option to secure our transport. Luckily I’m a tech whiz and by 10 am we were in an Uber and racing towards the airport.
During the drive, I tried to work out which of the 746 different number/letter combinations on the flight printout was correct to check in online with an unfamiliar airline. During this process, I discovered two things:
1/ The flight departure time was, thanks to daylight savings, in fact now 1235, and
2/ We had 0 pieces of checked luggage allowance for our flight.
A good news/bad news situation if you will.
Sprinting isn’t great after a hip replacement but Murray was up to the task and we raced to the departures board to find out where we needed to go inside the airport. We scanned the board up, and down, up and down.
Nothing, no LATAM flight to Auckland.
Spotting an information desk halfway down the terminal we set off at speed again only to be told we should be checking in exactly where we first entered the airport. While we weren’t the last people to arrive in the check-in line we were closer to the end than I’ve ever been in my life, usually, I’m a check-in early and wander the airport for hours type of traveller. After checking the LATAM website in the Uber and seeing that it would cost 75 USD per piece of checked luggage we planned to play dumb. Given how dumb we’d been all day so far we figured that would work out, and it did.
It was after 11 am when we finally reached the check-in desk and by then the staff member was about as stressed as we were, she clearly wanted to close up and run to the plane. We loaded our bags onto the scale like we fully expected to have no issues and we didn’t, labels were printed and our luggage was sent on its way.
Time to run again, this time through security, duty-free and to the gate, just in time to board LATAM’s Dreamliner.
All is well that ends well but… learn from my mistake and always, always, always check at least 10 times your flight departure time, that you’re not looking at the landing time and, especially if you can’t understand the 24-hour clock, that you have the correct time on lock.
Stress is not what you need on the last day of a wonderful holiday. Thanks, daylight savings, you saved our bacon.
Gillian Scott Creative 