‮⊥ɥǝ Ιɐup poʍu-nupǝɹ

Nobody said flying to Australia from Europe is easy. Qantas ever so proudly exclaim how it's only 23 hours from Sydney to London, which is true for the flying time but doesn't accurately include all the time wasted with checking in luggage, going through customs, immigration and security, waiting for the plane to be loaded, unloaded, and so forth. By the time I'm done, those 23 hours will have turned into 36 hours very easily.

Problems seem to be everywhere on this trip though, after waking up to −4℃ and heading to the train station to catch the illustrious airport express, I found it was arriving late due to ice on the tracks from where it was coming from. Somewhere out in the sticks, I presume. Now, two minutes late for a train isn't massively terrible, except that I have never known the SNCB to be late!

After arriving at the airport, I was greeted by British Airways staff who happily told me there was a problem with my e-ticket being unpaid, but because I'd booked it through Airstop who had booked it through Brussels Airlines, I had to talk to them about it. After trudging over to them, they told me the ticket was issued, but couldn't tell me if it was paid or not. Logically if it's issued, I've paid it, right? Apparently not.

Brussels Airlines told me to talk to British Airways, who told me it's not issued but they can confirm that it's paid. They wrote down a huge code on my ticket for the check-in staff to decipher. By the time I'd gotten around to checking in around, I'd lost an hour and obviously my emergency exit seats — the one reason I get to the airport so early. As they entered the fancy code into their system, their ticketing system crashed and we held everyone up by 30 minutes. Lucky I work with computers, or I'd be rather angry at this point.

Oddly enough, security was a breeze, since Brussels has a somewhat hidden security line that nobody seems to notice. A whole two minutes and I was through, if that. Finally arriving at my gate, I found my flight had been delayed by 45 minutes because of fog and ice at Zaventem Airport. Perfect opportunity to grab a coffee, or so I thought. Typically, only one coffee place was open, and their coffee machine was broken. I wound up being given something that vaguely resembled coffee and has some sort of coffee related smell, but tasted more like hot water with milk.

After finally getting on my flight to Heathrow, I arrived to find that we'd landed as far away as possible from everything and my flight was already on last-call. The purser told me that the legal transfer time in London is an hour and a half, so I need to talk to the transfer desk about getting another flight. This came as a surprise to me, since I've never actually had friendly customer service from British Airways.

Heathrow's Terminal 4 has improved their transfer security enormously, moving everything around and again security was breeze, only taking five minutes. Ordinarily it would have taken about 20 minutes. I arrive at the transfer desk and bluntly get told that the flight is on last call and they will not do anything, try to catch it anyway. Fine, you stupid old cow.

I manage to catch the flight, which turned out to be a code-shared Qantas flight via Hong Kong. This was good news, since Qantas have friendly staff and British Airways apparently only have one member of staff who is friendly. This was also very bad news.

A very long time ago in Qantas' history, they decided to turn into a safe airline by creating a dedicated pilot's school for passenger flights, and repairing every technical fault found before each and every flight. This is one of the reasons why Qantas has a very good reputation for safety. However, every flight I've ever taken with Qantas has been delayed because they've found some technical problem and repaired it!

This flight was no exception. After pushing off, we sat around for about 30 minutes. We were told that the number two engine was not starting automatically, so they were going to try to start it manually by using compressed air from the other engines, or something terribly exciting like that. Another 30 minutes passes, and we're told that the engine wouldn't start, and we were moved off to an apron for repairs to the starter motor.

After three and a half hours, the starter motor was replaced, complete with on-going technical commentary from the captain, and we finally took off. Why, during this time, couldn't we have been let back into the terminal to stretch our legs? Well, as you'd expect, airlines pay money for arrivals and departures, and time spent at gates. Spending an additional three and a half hours at the gate would have cost them even more money and extra paperwork, so they left us on board.

Now, this is pretty common, especially in regions with aging fleets such as North America. It's also disgusting. I feel that fixing a plane so it's in excellent condition for the flight is important, and I appreciate that most airlines feel the same way, but prolonging a 14 hour flight by an additional three and a half hours is really unfair, no matter how many snacks you throw at the passengers as extras.

The flight itself was uneventful, and Qantas now have a well stocked video-on-demand system in their 747-400ER's, with a very good variety. Although, the chair I was in had a few bugs. Some videos wouldn't play properly unless I reset the system (yes I'm a geek, and yes I found the reset button under my chair) and games would quite often freeze.

The notion of crashing my chair, inside a plane, amused me, at least until Hong Kong.