After that, the day went pear-shaped. And it went pear-shaped in the worst possible way: Excruciatingly slowly, in gradual increments that slowly became a cascade.
Feel free to read on – I get that reading about things going wrong can be interesting! But the tl;dr version is that after a long and frustrating series of delays, I arrived at the Pullman at 10pm, over seven hours later than expected.
BKK does its security screening at the gate, so I left the Lounge at 10am, giving me plenty of time before my 10:50am flight. I’d made sure that I didn’t have any liquids in containers of more than 100ml, and that I’d packed them all in a clear plastic bag, as per the BKK website’s repeated and clear instructions. At the gate I discovered that none of that applied and they just waved everything through.
Things got worse at the gate itself. Soon after I arrived, the gate agent announced a 30-minute delay due to the need to “prepare” the plane. There was no other announcement for well over an hour. I could work out from FlightRadar that the delay was due to the weather and that plenty of other flights were delayed both arriving and departing. But no flight information was updated on any website. This screenshot, for example, was taken just after 12pm:
View attachment 522806
Of course the airline can’t be blamed for the weather. It can absolutely be blamed for its poor communication.
At about 12:20pm 90 minutes after the scheduled departure time, and just as I was rueing the hours I’d spent at the gate rather than in that quite lovely Lounge, the word came through: we would be boarding in 10 minutes. About 15 minutes after that, the gate agent animatedly called “Business Class! Business Class!”. With some relief I came forward, had my boarding pass scanned, walked into the aerobridge, and out of it again onto the tarmac and a waiting bus.
View attachment 522807
As is normal in these situations, once the bus was uncomfortably packed, we set off on a rather long drive to the remote gate, and our plane. I boarded it at about 1pm. This is the Business Class seat on a Thai domestically-configured A320:
View attachment 522808
Then nothing happened. It seems that the bus had to drive all the way back to the terminal to collect the second bus load of passengers. They boarded at 1:30pm. At that point — finally — the internet gave us a new departure time of 2pm.
2pm came. The cabin doors were closed. The safety briefing was given. And the captain announced that Air Traffic Control had advised of a further 30-minute delay.
2:30pm came. A VietJet 737-8 pulled up alongside us. A few minutes later, our plane started to move … for about 50 metres. Then it stopped.
View attachment 522810
At 2:43pm, the Captain announced that there was a “technical problem” with one of the engines which would necessitate a return to the bay while it was looked at. At 2:50pm — exactly 4 hours after our scheduled departure and almost 5 hours after I had left the Lounge, the plane pulled back in.
At 3pm the crew came through and gave every passenger in Business and Economy a small chicken wrap and a bottle of water.
View attachment 522811
It tasted quite good and it was great to eat something.
More good news came through in the form of an announcement a couple of minutes later: engineers were performing their “final checks” and they were preparing for departure.
But at 3:10pm the cabin doors were opened again. Two engineers came on board and knocked on the coughpit door. They walked in, and five minutes later they walked out.
Nothing happened. Again. The passengers started getting up, stretching their legs, using the Business Class toilet … and who could blame them? The cabin door remained open and even the flight attendants started to look forlorn.
At 3:45pm, three hours after the boarding call, and almost six hours after I’d made my way to the gate, the announcement was made: we were to take all our belongings and get off the plane. As we disembarked, the Captain met us at the door and apologised.
We crammed onto buses again and were taken to a gate area in the airport.
A whole lot of Thai Airways staff in hi-viz yellow vests were standing around, occasionally talking into walkie-talkies. They all looked like they were under 25 years old. Eventually one of them shouted at the top of his voice to be heard:
Weather permitting, they were attempting to organise a departure at 5:30pm. Those who wanted to fly on it were to gather to the staff member’s left, and those who did not were to gather to his right. In the meantime, there was a muffin and a bottle of water for everyone.
For over an hour after that, nothing much happened. The staff were still huddling with each other and their walkie-talkies, occasionally breaking off to say goodness-knows-what to agitated passengers who wanted to know what was going on.
I sent an email to the Pullman at Khao Lak, explaining the situation and begging them to not cancel my booking if I didn’t arrive.
At 4:52pm I received an email from Thai Airways, informing me that my flight had been delayed. No kidding. New departure time: 5:00pm. Not possible. As of 5pm, we were still all stuck in the gate area.
By that stage the physiological implications of my 2 hours and 44 minutes of sleep the previous night were beginning to manifest themselves. But at 5:45pm it happened again: boarding was commencing. Back on the bus, which drove us past our old dysfunctional plane, over to another A320. A couple of minutes later I was in my seat again, 12F: second row of Business Class (of 3 rows in total), on the window. Best of all: no-one sitting next to me.
Given the time of day and my sleep-deprived state, my agenda was simple: eat, then sleep. If I could get a 20-minute doze in, that would be priceless, and probably all I needed to get to the hotel in one piece. Scheduled flight time was 65 minutes.
Of course, things still did not go smoothly. At 6:15pm the captain announced yet another delay: “ten to fifteen minutes”. But we started to move after 14 minutes.
The flight itself was very pleasant, albeit too short to provide me with sleep time.
Dinner was chicken rice. Very tasty.
View attachment 522818
I asked a member of the cabin crew what “Thank You” is in Thai. He taught me how to pronounce it and a couple of minutes later he brought me this:
View attachment 522819
That act of kindness was probably the highlight of my day.
Finally we landed at coughet seven and a half hours behind schedule. After a long, escorted walk to International Arrivals to collect my bag that had been checked through from MEL, it was another long-ish walk to the designated Grab pick-up area. From there it couldn’t have been easier to order and find my car, and after a 90-minute drive I arrived at the Pullman, weary beyond words, just before 10pm.
Positives? Well, I made it to the Pullman. Seven hours after I expected to, but I made it. And the fact that the disruption occurred at BKK rather than a Thai Airlines outstation meant that they could organise and put us on a new plane relatively easily. A seven hour delay, while frustrating, is better than a 24-hour delay!
Negatives? Well, Thai’s communication – both online and in person – left a lot to be desired. For huge swathes of the day we just didn’t know what was going on and how long the delays were going to be. Thai Airlines isn’t responsible for the weather, and the engine breaking down was just one of those things. But they could have done a much better job of telling us about it.
