Disrupted again
Today I have an evening flight out of Bali to Brisbane and onwards home to Auckland. Upon waking up, I noticed an email advising of a 2h delay to my first flight. This seems miniscule compared to nearly 10h of delay on my outbound journey. But with only an hour’s connecting time in Brisbane, I’d miss my connection to Auckland.
Checking the flight schedules, I noticed that I could be re-accommodated on a slightly later flight from Brisbane to Auckland, so it wasn’t all together that bad. Retrieving my booking intermittently, I noticed that my booking details kept changing. The airline was still actively trying to minimise the delay for me by changing my flights.
When the dust settled, it looked like they had rebooked me on a flight to Sydney, leaving Bali only an hour later than my original one. And it would get me into Auckland about 30 mins earlier than they first tried to re-accommodate me on through Brisbane.
Trouble was the Sydney flight was chocka on the seat map and the Brisbane one was rather empty. I toyed with the idea of contacting them to be put back onto the Brisbane flight but fortunately I didn’t. I realised that night at the airport that it had been further delayed by 2h, making it a total of 4h. I would have had to wait substantially for the next connection to Auckland.
The weather was really bad in Bali this morning, so all this fluffing around on the internet wasn’t really taking up any useful time. I was a bit miffed that with all my travels, hardly anything goes wrong. But now, Virgin Australia has disrupted me twice in one trip. I was keen to understand more so looked at the various aircraft rotations involved.
It appeared though that my original Brisbane flight had been delayed by around 10h coming up to Bali due to bad weather on the east coast of Australia. This appeared to be an identical scenario from three weeks ago:
- My Brisbane flight was coming from Sydney, meant to have departed there at 1120 but delayed to 2120.
- The later flight from Sydney scheduled from at 1715 was only delayed until 1830.
- Virgin Australia seems to find it too difficult to swap the two Sydney flights around to minimise the delay for the morning passengers (of which I was one three weeks ago).
- Virgin Australia seems to put a low priority on Bali flights (which do not connect to elsewhere on their network), instead maintaining better on-time performance for their domestic and Tasman flights.
Killing time before leaving
I checked out at midday and killed time with a massage to keep dry indoors. Strangely, today and few days back, my feet have been really sore during the reflexology part of my massage. Normally, I find it a waste of time.
Fortunately, the weather was dry enough afterwards for me to walk around briefly. I got picked up by my Traveloka driver around 1845, getting to the airport at 1930. Seeing that the queue was longish, I checked-in on my phone so that I could go use the web check-in queue. I was airside soon after and had time to spend in a lounge before the 2230 flight. I checked-out the T/G Lounge beforehand but it was a rather crowded and the live kitchen was a little noisy. The food did appear better though. Incidentally, it had temperature control issues when I visited some months ago during the day. I decide to go next door to the Premier Lounge instead.
At the gate, there was a manual security check essentially to enforce the “no liquids, aerosol, gel over 100 ml” rule. Staff explained this was specific to Australia. I’ve heard that in Kuala Lumpur as well but the staff didn’t actually enforce it. It’s quite strange it’s not enforced from New Zealand.
I heard people who had been rebooked from the flight from Bali to Port Hedland. A cyclone cancelled their flight. They were rebooked to the next scheduled flight a week later! With that being unsuitable, they are now on my flight from Bali to Sydney, connecting to Perth before a final leg to Port Hedland. Their journey is now about 17h rather than just over 2h! It’s like my outbound journey taking nearly the same time as an Auckland to London journey!
We boarded Virgin Australia’s 737-800 by bus at a remote gate and departed about 10 mins late. The seats didn’t recline much; no pillows or blankets were available. I rolled up my pullover give me a makeshift recline but the cabin temperature was perfect for me. With the help of a pill, I dozed for about 4h before we landed at Sydney.