My tweets

  • Tue, 12:45: If Australians have a popular kink it’s evidently refusing to prominently mark restroom locations in their airports.
  • Tue, 12:54: Good news everybody! The flight from Sydney to Brisbane that we got bumped to four hours after the one we were originally booked on is leaving on time!

  • Tue, 14:18:

    We got rerouted!

    A flight itinerary that was originally scheduled to take 20 hours wound up taking 29 and a half hours.

    We missed our flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane because our connecting flight out of SeaTac was delayed three and a half hours. This included a downgraded aircraft size swapped out for the one we were supposed to get on but which had mechanical issues; and even boarding and then de-boarding the replacement aircraft when they realized the Security Officer wasn’t going to get there for another hour. Lots of unhappy people on that flight, as you can imagine.

    So: first flight so far delayed, the next best option was to re-book for a flight out of Los Angeles to Sydney, so we wouldn’t have to wait another day just to get out of Seattle. We then had a connecting flight out of Sydney back up to Brisbane.

    The 15-hour L.A.-Sydney flight was the only leg of this journey that went off without a hitch.

    We landed in Sydney early this morning. Went through customs. We really thought we’d get bumped to a flight an hour later because of how long this took, but the flight to Brisbane was delayed 10 minutes so they said we would barely make it.

    We took the 10-minute shuttle bus from the International Terminal to Domestic, breathed a sigh of relief, brushed our teeth. Then: Qantas Airlines paged Shobhit to their customer service desk. He had been taken off the flight due to some “camping equipment” in his suitcase.

    What??

    Some of you may recall the clearance canisters Shobhit got at Total Wine & More meant to hold alcohol. They are in the shape of gas cans and have HOLIDAY FUEL stenciled on their sides.

    Sydney airport security pulled Shobhit off the flight because they thought they might be fuel canisters.

    After that, it was too late even to make the next-hour flight we initially thought we’d get bumped to, at 11:05. No seats at 12:05 either. Or 1:05. We wound up booked on the last seats available at 2:05, delayed yet another four hours from our initial Sydney-Brisbane flight.

    And all this time we had been worried about landing in Brisbane at 5am and not being able to check into our hotel until 2pm! Well, that’s one less worry I guess. https://t.co/c49CfPmwLv