Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams

At current count… 3 planes and a car. Oh and a luggage trolly. And the stair thingy’s you use to get off a plane in the country when you don’t have air bridges. I don’t know it was specifically me that broke them, but the common denominater in all incidents was me.

My week didn’t get better. Some would say it got worse. Let’s recap shall we?

Sunday 13th - arrive at the airport to be advised of a 6 hour delay, meaning I’d miss my flight from Brisbane. This was apparently partially due to a broken plane, and partially due to a computer error. I ended up in a hotel in Brisbane.

Monday 14th - the car sent to take me to the airport broke down en route, nearly causing me to miss my 6am flight to get to uni on time (I was half an our late!)

I was sure the trip home could not possibly be worse. I was wrong.

Friday 17th - I was on the 9:35am plane from Sydney. When I arrived I heard on the PA the 9:05am plane was delayed due to the incoming flight being late. Mentally thanking myself for picking the later flight, I boarded my plane unaware of the disaster about to rain down upon me. As we boarded I heard the 9:05 flight arrive. Before we got anywhere, we were advised of a mechanical fault on the 9:05 plane, and that all the passengers would be transferring to our flight. An hour later we are ready to leave, and as we back out of the bay while our attendents run through a safety briefing, something else goes terribly, terribly wrong.  As we return to our bay, the captain advises that the ground engineer has noticed a leak from one of the drainage holes. While, yes, it’s designed to drain, it apparently isn’t designed to drain what appears to be oil. Now, I’m not complaining, any investigation of things leaking on a plane before I take off is fine by me.

After a while we were advised a container in the freight cargo hold had leaked oil, and they would get us off the plane while they investigated further. Two hours later another plane had been found and we were loaded onto that to be told that the oil had leaked all through the hold, and would take at least 24 hours to clean up.

Finally we were on our way, leaving Sydney about 30 minutes before my flight was due to leave Brisbane. Did I mention there’s ONE FLIGHT a day. Miss that flight, you’re stuck. I had allowed a 2 hour stopover, which clearly wasn’t enough.

When we arrived in Brisbane at 2pm, I missed the flight to the next closest airport by 5 minutes. The airline kindly booked me on the next flight which was 5:15pm - two hours after I was supposed to be home. The nearest airport? 2 hours drive away. I called Hubby and he got the girls and came down to meet me. We landed about half an hour late (not worrying me by this stage). Then little things. Like there only being one set of stairs to get off the plane, because the other was broken. The truck broke down to bring in the luggage - 20 minute delay.  At this point I was waiting for my luggage to not arrive at all. But thankfully it did. And I made it home at 11:30pm.

After last year’s plane stress, I’m thinking next time I’ll just drive to Sydney.

Still no broadband either. Doing uni assignments will be fun…