the phuket problem
Missing the flight out of Phuket caused a slew of troubles in connecting flights that I am only starting to catch up on. Apparently there are a few major conferences in Asia that have caused many of the airlines to be fully booked out; let alone the 500+ Juniper folks that are departing Phuket enmass. I tried to jump on a TG flight to BKK which would then have connections to Sydney, but the flight was fully booked out; a fact that I was not able to fully verify. Expertflyer.com showed Y and M class availability, and even the airline’s website showed availability, but the local agents insisted the flight was fully booked out. I am sure that sending me on the same day on another route, open jaw, would have been cheaper for the airline than what it ended up costing them when that tug drove the tow bar under the wheel of the aircraft. 3 Chartered Coach buses were hired from the airport which took us to a booked out hotel back into Phuket; all paid for by SilkAir. The funny thing is that the Thai immigration gathered everyone’s passports at the airport and held them until people rebooked back in the next day. It was told that this was the only way that we could go back to the hotel because we had already cleared immigration, and if we were to go back into Thailand, we would be “totally unaccounted for”. We were told we would be picked up at 6am, which ended up being more like 9am. Unfortunately for me, I woke at 5:30 only to have to wait it out.
SilkAir struggled to properly organize the herds of tired and irrate passengers that continued to pour back into the airport this morning. Hongkong expat mothers with Indonesian nanny’s queued up on the wrong lines, only to be told to rejoin lines that stretched from one side of the airport to the entrance. Angry is not the word. I calmly made eye contact with the staff to ensure that they viewed me as “an easy to deal with customer”.
Finally made the flight to Singapore this morning. Waited here more than 10 hours, but I made some good time of it: went to the premium lounge in terminal 2 and relaxed with a back and shoulders massage, then took a 3 hour nap. Feeling back on track and ready to handle a trip to Auckland in about 2 hours.
Originally published on truman.net. See the archived copy.