Bye Bye Queenstown…

4/30/2009

We check in at the Qantas Counter, there’s a memo saying that our flight may be cancel due to poor visibility…it wasn’t that bad. Apparently Qantas has to have 100% visibility, because they have crappy navigation equipment. Well our flight was cancelled. A voice came over the loud speaker telling us to pick up our baggage and call some 0800 number to sort out our flights. Since everybody was calling we could not get through. Our only alternative was to take a bus to Christchruch and catch a flight to Auckland from there.
While seated on the bus before our departure a rep. from QF told us a QF rep will meet us in Christchruch to help us with our flight to Auckland….Ok good. While on the bus we struck up an alliance with this English couple that where living in Queenstown for the last 10 months, they had gotten through to QF and had confirmed that there was an 8:20PM Air New Zealand flight that QF had reserved for us, our bus was supposed to arrive Christchruch at 8:00PM. With 2 hours to go Christina was feeling uncomfortable about the flight details so she asked our English friends for more info. They ended up letting us use their Mobile phone ( for some reason I could no get through on mine) I was on hold for about an hour before getting through to QF. I told them our situation, and they confirm we where on the 8:20 flight. I felt bad for using the phone for so long but our English friends were really cool about and didn’t care…it was a free call for them.
We arrive in Christchruch and there is no won there to greet us, in fact QF didn’t even know about it. We then went over to the Air New Zealand counter. Our English friends and us were the only ones from the bus booked on the 8:20 NZ flight. Whoever did not confirm with QF got f’d!!! Since this was the last flight out to Auckland they had to spend the night at there own expense and fly out in the AM. We are so grateful for the English for letting us use there phone and Christina not trusting QF. 11:00p we arrive at our last Hotel, very plush and cheap. Our trip is all most over.