Our first challenge occurred at the Bellingham Airport of all places. We discovered that our Australian ETA app was not working.
The young Alaska employee was less than helpful, and made it clear she wouldn’t let us on the plane to sort out in Seattle.
We remembered we’d received a confirming email from the Australian government, retrieved it from storage, and presented it to her.
This was the only occasion in our dealings over many years with Alaska Airlines that we sensed an employee wasn’t trying actively to assist us. In any case, she printed out boarding passes for all three flights and we flew to Seattle, then onward to LAX.
Our research reveals a lot of problems with this app, including this one occurring during the same time.
Once we’d traversed the tunnels and arrived at the international terminal, we dined in the Qantas First Lounge, a nice benefit of holding OneWorld Emerald status.
Eventually we made another long walk to the American gate where our LAX-SYD flight would board.
We boarded and got settled in. Kathy’s seat wasn’t working properly, but she kept that information to herself until we were well in the air, given that passengers are sometimes transferred into economy seats in such situations for safety reasons.
We decided to eat dinner on this 13-hour flight before sleeping, a schedule that helps us adjust to the 17-hour time difference.
We were just dozing off a little over two hours into the flight when the pilot announced we had turned around and were returning to LAX.
It was impossible to heat the cockpit, and the temperature had already dropped to 50 degrees F (about 10 C) with 11 hours of flying to go. We were landing at LAX about 3:30 AM.
Soon, those of us with American apps got the message we’d been rescheduled to an 8:00 AM flight. Bravo AA!
Unfortunately this was not true. When we.landed, confusion abounded.The AA reps eventually announced that this was a sort of phantom message. Not to worry though, because the system would rebook us automatically once our original flight was officially cancelled.
Yeah, sure…
While we stood in line at a nearby American lounge to rebook, we connected with an AA phone agent who booked us on a Qantas business class itinerary via Brisbane to Sydney.
At this point, we were issued hotel vouchers for the Sonesta Hotel. Here’s a travel hint: don’t stay there. Between a one-hour wait for a shuttle, a lengthy check-in ordeal, and a saggy mattress, we were quite happy to return to LAX a few hours after our 5:30 AM arrival at the hotel.
The Qantas counter wasn’t open yet, so we passed the time with ten-dollar Cappuccinos in paper cups. Our AA meal vouchers wouldn’t work either.
Finally at the Qantas counter, we discovered we were seated in different parts of the business cabin, despite what the AA rep had told us. We had reached our last straw, and almost cancelled the trip.
Fortunately we carried on. At the Qantas Business Lounge, a young employee listened to our tale of woe and found us seats across the aisle from each other in Row 2, a perfectly satisfactory arrangement. Why the agent at the front counter couldn’t accomplish that 15 minutes earlier is beyond us.
We dined for the second consecutive night in the Qantas First Lounge (we recommend the Minute Steaks with Chipotle butter), boarded our Qantas 787, and fell asleep as soon as we were airborne.
After a number of ups and downs, we were on our way to Australia.
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