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Flying is NOT for Wimps

Tuesday, September 18, 2007
That's right. Flying is stressful. Not the actual flying part, although watching a news story about a plane crash while flying doesn't build confidence.

No, the stressful part is the fact that a) there is only one flight a day to my local airport, and b) I did not have ONE FLIGHT leave on time the whole weekend. When you're catching 4 planes in 4 days, and have certain connections to meet, flights leaving on time is important. I've caught planes before, lots of times. It's the short connections that stress me. Anything under 2 hours is not long enough in my book.

My first flight was only a few minutes late. Congestion at Brisbane we were told. Oops! That's ok, I had a 50 minute change over in Brisbane, plenty of time to be 5 or even 10 minutes late. Which we were.

Second flight to Sydney, well. Apparently it was windy in Sydney on Friday, so one runway was closed. This meant certain flights were cancelled. Thankfully not mine. Although this did mean a certain amount of juggling was required to get everyone from the cancelled flights onto other flights, including mine, meaning we left late. And had to wait to land. Half an hour late.

Coming home the flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30am. To be checked in by 8am, I needed to leave the university at 6:13am on a bus to the train station. I thought I would have plenty of time, but I got on the bus, walked straight onto the train, changed trains and never had more than a minute of waiting on a platform before arriving at the airport and checking in by 7:55am! Phew, that was close.

Apparently not. Still windy, so one runway again, meaning incoming flight was 30 minutes late. Not to worry, we should only leave 5 minutes late.

Or not. Due to leave at 8:30am, we boarded the plane at 9am, which was when we found out what the problem was - lack of runways, so a delay. Oh and by the way it's really windy in Brisbane too, so landings are delayed, so we need to take on extra fuel (operational requirement of Brisbane airport - fair call I say. I've seen Die Hard 2). And as we're waiting, waiting, waiting, I'm starting to panic. I only had 40 minutes in Brisbane to change flights. Thankfully I had no luggage checked to worry about, but still, I didn't have a watch so no real idea of the time. I eventually was stressing so much, cause Hubby had told me about Kiki being sick, but I didn't know how sick, I asked what the plan would be. By this stage it was nearly 9:30, and even with a 60 minute flight, making a 10:35 flight would be tough. Thankfully there was nearly 30 people on the plane for the connecting flight. Holding the other flight until we made it would be cheaper than accomodating us on other flights and overnight (one flight a day remember). She did say that often if there's only one or two people they don't hold the plane.

Strangely thankful for school holidays, I relaxed a little, and we finally took off at 9:45. Not only had Virgin held the plane for us, but they'd moved the plane once all the other passengers were on board to the gate next to our arrival from Sydney, to get everyone (and luggage) on board quicker. Taking off 15 minutes late from Brisbane we were just 15 minutes late getting home.

But boy do I NOT want to go through that again. I'm also thankful next time I do that trip I'll just be going from Brisbane to Sydney. There's like 500 flights a day between Brisbane and Sydney. And I'm sure that's not much of an exaggeration.

So am I the only one, or does this sort of thing stress out other people too?

8 comments:

  1. Unknown said...

    I love flying but dislike connections too, either have to rush and stress or have too long between flights and get bored!!

    Last time we flew was when we moved here from WA. We had a 3 hour wait between planes at Brsibane airport and couldn't go and see our 2 dogs BUT from up in the terminal we could see them going back and forth on the back of a buggage trolley, being taken all over the airport. My staffie had his tail wagging!!

    September 18, 2007 at 10:35 AM  

  2. Kin said...

    Ali that's cute - I assume they were happy? Being driven everywhere LOL.

    September 18, 2007 at 10:55 AM  

  3. Unknown said...

    They were happy ~ when we walking to board the little Dash8 plane at Brisbane airport the baggage hander was lifting our dogs into the baggage conveyor belt to go into the plane and the little Cairn Terrier was just sitting in her cage and Luther our Staffie was so excited lol :)

    September 18, 2007 at 11:07 AM  

  4. Snoskred said...

    I had a really bad connection experience once. We used to do Adelaide - Sydney - Tamworth a lot.

    It will be easier now you go just from Sydney to Brisbane. ;)

    Cheers!
    Snoskred
    http://www.snoskred.org/

    September 18, 2007 at 12:24 PM  

  5. River said...

    You didn't have a watch??? How do you manage time without a watch? I got my first watch at age 10 and have had one strapped to my wrist ever since. I seem to always need to know what time it is.
    Anyway, glad you got home earlier than you expected, and is Kiki okay?

    September 18, 2007 at 4:51 PM  

  6. Kin said...

    Snos yeah, I'm not going to stress so much from now on. I hate the whole connections thing.

    River, I'm usually the same, but my watch doesn't fit at the moment :-( (loving the pregnancy swelling) and I usually have my phone with me anyway, but it was switched off cause we were flying, so I had no idea of the time.

    September 18, 2007 at 5:38 PM  

  7. Anonymous said...

    LOL Kin, as I have never flown on a plane (i have been on one once when i was in year 2 and our class toured the brisbane airport lol we walked through a plane that had just landed, i remember it was really dirty with rubbish stuffed in the pockets of the seat infront etc) I cant really comment on plane connections yet (taking first flight next month ballina to sydney with virgin, was nice to hear your comments on how nice virgin staff are and how they held adn moved the plane) but i can say i have had trouble with connections at train stations. I find it funny listening to some sydney people saying their trains are never ontime, because we had to run with full backpacker bags and dragging two kids who both had schoolsize backpacks on to get from one train to the other intime, thankful that we had permanent tickets rather than having to get new tickets for each train. The entire time we were there the longest we waited between trains was 3 mins. So yes, its not just you that gets stressed by these things, and the stress is oh so much worse when you have little kids with you.

    September 19, 2007 at 4:14 AM  

  8. River said...

    Ah yes, the pregnancy swelling. I totally forgot.

    September 19, 2007 at 4:15 PM  

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