Qatar have a plan, sent via Whatsap to us late yesterday.

1. Meet at  Brisbane International Departures at Qatar counter at 12 midday. A bus to pick us up at 10.30. We only found this out at 9.25 this morning. No immigration or customs to get on the plane, obviously our bags will go through security.
2. 3.00pm (4pm NSW time) fly to Sydney, land at International. Get rushed through transit and across to Domestic to meet our plane to Dubbo
3. If we are on time, we hopefully will get our flight to Dubbo at 6.45pm ( NSW time) otherwise we’ll be staying in Sydney tonight.   

It’s a punt by Qatar that this will work. Anyway the whole thing had been exhausting, but we’re nearly there, thankfully I don’t have to go to work tomorrow because I couldn’t. A few days recovery is needed I reckon.

The Uber wad booked to pick us up at 10.30, now we know there’s a bus we cancel it with 2 minutes to spare.

OK, so it’s a bit of a mess, I’m doubtful they will be able to get us to our plane in Sydney in time. The mob in Brisbane are oblivious to what we need in the way of assistance to get us to Domestic and our flight in Sydney, they say talk to the staff in Sydney. We’ll see!

We’re sitting the plane in Brisbane for ages, another major cluster f…. up. I don’t think the issue isn’t  Qatar’s fault, it’s Menzies Aviation who manage the check ins, baggage etc for Qatar, they’ve f….d up the count and now they need to do manual count and check all the bags. They had dribbling staff at the boarding gates who delayed boarding and were so disorganised it wasn’t funny. The Qatar staff on the plane are livid with them, the Captain explained it to us over the pa and I think he’s pretty pissed as well.

Our mates who visited Mecca are on board, and I’m guessing they might start to get a bit annoyed if we don’t get off the ground soon. The 3pm take off is now 3.45 and counting. I’m pretty sure now we’ll be spending the night in Sydney.

It takes until 4.15pm for Menzies to disengage the air bridge, meanwhile we’ve been sitting in the plane for an hour not moving, babies crying, anxiety levels high due to warm air and claustrophobia sitting in a metal can not moving for so long. And I didn’t think it could have got worse than the boarding process!!!!

I’ll post this sitting on the tarmac in Brisbane still waiting for a slot to take off. A mix of, Mother Nature showing who is boss, lack of communication and incompetence has mucked up the end of a good holiday.

Ciao

Pauolo.