Revenge
Member
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2016
- Posts
- 277
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- Virgin
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I just got into Melbourne last week (Thursday) from Canada after spending 3 months there visiting my wife’s family (we needed to go for 3+ months to get the travel exemption needed at the time). I travelled back with my wife and one-year-old toddler, and wanted to share our experience which was rather bad due to a lot of covid-staffing-related cancellations and delays. The ticket was booked with United original route was meant to be Victoria – Vancouver – LAX – Sydney – Melbourne. Very long (23 hours) but manageable, mainly because we had booked business class.
We did a rush turnaround (next day) PCR test the day before departure to satisfy both the US and Australian testing requirements.
We were meant to depart Victoria at 2:30pm on Monday but our Air Canada flight was cancelled just as we got to the airport. The Air Canada staff put us on the next flight from Victoria to Vancouver which was at 5:30pm. Although it’s only a 30 min flights, this made it quite tight to get our connecting flight in Vancouver which was meant to leave at 6:51pm.
We went through all the check in details for Australia and USA, including vaccinations, covid tests and right to enter Australia.
Then the 5:30pm flight ended up being delayed to 7:30. I then spent over an hour with the Air Canada check in staff trying to figure out an alternative. In the end the check in staff changed me to the 6:30pm flight to Vancouver and booked me on the direct flight from Vancouver to Sydney on Qantas! Hooray, that would be much better than flying via the US. It would be a tight connection as the Qantas flight departs at 8:25pm, but it should be fine. They had to redo all the document checks again but we were happy that we’d get a direct flight from Canada to Australia.
But then the 6:30 flight to Vancouver also didn’t leave until after 7:30, and we only landed in Vancouver at around the time the Qantas flight was meant to leave. To our surprise we saw on the boards that the status for the flight was still boarding, so we sprinted the very long distance to the gate at the other end of the airport with our toddler and significant amounts of hand luggage, and made it to the gate while the door was still open! “You’re the business class passengers we’re waiting for,” the gate agent said. I was so happy that we made a connection home until they went to board us and said that our ticket wasn’t valid. Air Canada must have rebooked our ticket because they thought we’d miss the connection. I was almost in tears that we had sprinted and made it after a stressful afternoon of travelling, only to be denied the two vacant business class seats that were sitting there waiting for us. The Qantas gate staff said we need to talk to the Air Canada ticket desk, it’s not their problem.
We then had to exit the international area by going through immigration and customs again to be left in the very busy check in area to find help on where we were meant to go next. We eventually found someone from Air Canada who said there was nothing wrong with our ticket, they could see it as active, and that QF should have let us board! It then took them about 3 hours to get us rebooked on a flight to Los Angeles the next day to take the United flight to Sydney the next evening. It was after midnight by the time we had got our boarding passes (having gone through the whole document check for the third time). Air Canada put us up in a hotel (albeit a very grotty Travelodge, it’s all they had left) and paid for a taxi to the hotel and back to the airport.
The next morning, we flew to LAX as planned, everything ran on time for once. We had a 10 hour layover in LA so I booked an airport hotel so we could get some rest, as we only got a few hours sleep in Vancouver. When we got to LA I noticed that our flight from LAX to Sydney had us sitting apart, so I went to the United terminal to get our seats changed before exiting the airport to the hotel. To my horror I then found out that the flight from LAX to Sydney had been cancelled that day and United wanted to fly us to San Francisco to instead get the flight to Sydney from SFO. There were no better options so we got back on a plane and headed back up North to San Francisco, after pleading with the hotel not to charge us for the room we had just booked a few hours earlier.
We had a nice layover in SFO, visiting the very good Polaris Business Lounge. The very nice "lounge dragon" said it was day 1 of the lounge's reopening post covid, and was very insistent that it's the best place in SFO to spend our layover and said "it's one of the best lounges in the world". I agree. We we were able to get a good meal and some rest in the quiet suites, and have showers in very nice shower suites. The baby wellness room is also amazing!
We were very annoyed that when we finally got to the gate they wanted to check all of our vaccine and covid test documentation yet again (now the 4th time on this booking) because it had us standing with our baby in a massive doc check queue at the gate, even though we could have easily done that earlier having been waiting at SFO for the last 5 or 6 hours. It’s good our PCR tests were still within the 72 hour time frame because we’d only got them the day before we were originally due to leave.
Our flight to from SFO to Sydney was thankfully quite smooth (not literally though, it was actually very turbulent) and we made it to Sydney just fine. Although we were a bit disappointed by the lack of food. Solid meal after take off and a good breakfast before landing but for the remained of the 15 hour flight we were going hungry and there were only snacks offered (cookies, candy, pretzels, etc.). Would expect better catering for a flagship business class product.
Sydney immigration and customs was a breeze. No different to pre-covid.
International to domestic transfer was a different story. We had a 1.5 hour layover in Sydney to connect to a Qantas flight, which was just about impossible because the Qantas domestic connections area is closed. We had to collect our luggage, go outside, find the inter-terminal bus, drag our luggage, pram and toddler onto the bus amongst the other people all trying to squeeze on and confused about where to go, and then check in again at the domestic terminal.
We had well and truly missed our connecting flight to Melbourne and were put on another one 2.5 hours later, and bumped to economy class because they didn’t have any business seats. That was not a big deal of course as it’s only an hour flight, and turned out to be mostly empty anyway.
Overall a bit of a marathon but we are glad to be back in Australia. What was going to be a 20-something hour journey became a 50-something hour journey but we made it! And our little boy was a champion being dragged around the world like that and taking it in his stride.
Now our biggest challenge is trying to find some rapid antigen tests which seems next to impossible!
We did a rush turnaround (next day) PCR test the day before departure to satisfy both the US and Australian testing requirements.
We were meant to depart Victoria at 2:30pm on Monday but our Air Canada flight was cancelled just as we got to the airport. The Air Canada staff put us on the next flight from Victoria to Vancouver which was at 5:30pm. Although it’s only a 30 min flights, this made it quite tight to get our connecting flight in Vancouver which was meant to leave at 6:51pm.
We went through all the check in details for Australia and USA, including vaccinations, covid tests and right to enter Australia.
Then the 5:30pm flight ended up being delayed to 7:30. I then spent over an hour with the Air Canada check in staff trying to figure out an alternative. In the end the check in staff changed me to the 6:30pm flight to Vancouver and booked me on the direct flight from Vancouver to Sydney on Qantas! Hooray, that would be much better than flying via the US. It would be a tight connection as the Qantas flight departs at 8:25pm, but it should be fine. They had to redo all the document checks again but we were happy that we’d get a direct flight from Canada to Australia.
But then the 6:30 flight to Vancouver also didn’t leave until after 7:30, and we only landed in Vancouver at around the time the Qantas flight was meant to leave. To our surprise we saw on the boards that the status for the flight was still boarding, so we sprinted the very long distance to the gate at the other end of the airport with our toddler and significant amounts of hand luggage, and made it to the gate while the door was still open! “You’re the business class passengers we’re waiting for,” the gate agent said. I was so happy that we made a connection home until they went to board us and said that our ticket wasn’t valid. Air Canada must have rebooked our ticket because they thought we’d miss the connection. I was almost in tears that we had sprinted and made it after a stressful afternoon of travelling, only to be denied the two vacant business class seats that were sitting there waiting for us. The Qantas gate staff said we need to talk to the Air Canada ticket desk, it’s not their problem.
We then had to exit the international area by going through immigration and customs again to be left in the very busy check in area to find help on where we were meant to go next. We eventually found someone from Air Canada who said there was nothing wrong with our ticket, they could see it as active, and that QF should have let us board! It then took them about 3 hours to get us rebooked on a flight to Los Angeles the next day to take the United flight to Sydney the next evening. It was after midnight by the time we had got our boarding passes (having gone through the whole document check for the third time). Air Canada put us up in a hotel (albeit a very grotty Travelodge, it’s all they had left) and paid for a taxi to the hotel and back to the airport.
The next morning, we flew to LAX as planned, everything ran on time for once. We had a 10 hour layover in LA so I booked an airport hotel so we could get some rest, as we only got a few hours sleep in Vancouver. When we got to LA I noticed that our flight from LAX to Sydney had us sitting apart, so I went to the United terminal to get our seats changed before exiting the airport to the hotel. To my horror I then found out that the flight from LAX to Sydney had been cancelled that day and United wanted to fly us to San Francisco to instead get the flight to Sydney from SFO. There were no better options so we got back on a plane and headed back up North to San Francisco, after pleading with the hotel not to charge us for the room we had just booked a few hours earlier.
We had a nice layover in SFO, visiting the very good Polaris Business Lounge. The very nice "lounge dragon" said it was day 1 of the lounge's reopening post covid, and was very insistent that it's the best place in SFO to spend our layover and said "it's one of the best lounges in the world". I agree. We we were able to get a good meal and some rest in the quiet suites, and have showers in very nice shower suites. The baby wellness room is also amazing!
We were very annoyed that when we finally got to the gate they wanted to check all of our vaccine and covid test documentation yet again (now the 4th time on this booking) because it had us standing with our baby in a massive doc check queue at the gate, even though we could have easily done that earlier having been waiting at SFO for the last 5 or 6 hours. It’s good our PCR tests were still within the 72 hour time frame because we’d only got them the day before we were originally due to leave.
Our flight to from SFO to Sydney was thankfully quite smooth (not literally though, it was actually very turbulent) and we made it to Sydney just fine. Although we were a bit disappointed by the lack of food. Solid meal after take off and a good breakfast before landing but for the remained of the 15 hour flight we were going hungry and there were only snacks offered (cookies, candy, pretzels, etc.). Would expect better catering for a flagship business class product.
Sydney immigration and customs was a breeze. No different to pre-covid.
International to domestic transfer was a different story. We had a 1.5 hour layover in Sydney to connect to a Qantas flight, which was just about impossible because the Qantas domestic connections area is closed. We had to collect our luggage, go outside, find the inter-terminal bus, drag our luggage, pram and toddler onto the bus amongst the other people all trying to squeeze on and confused about where to go, and then check in again at the domestic terminal.
We had well and truly missed our connecting flight to Melbourne and were put on another one 2.5 hours later, and bumped to economy class because they didn’t have any business seats. That was not a big deal of course as it’s only an hour flight, and turned out to be mostly empty anyway.
Overall a bit of a marathon but we are glad to be back in Australia. What was going to be a 20-something hour journey became a 50-something hour journey but we made it! And our little boy was a champion being dragged around the world like that and taking it in his stride.
Now our biggest challenge is trying to find some rapid antigen tests which seems next to impossible!
. You’ll find a few stories about them on here!
