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Well, that was a bit of luck!
Looks like I made the right decision in holding off. Fair Work Australia ruled Qantas had to start operating again at 2am and flights were going to be leaving from lunch time pending approval from CASA to fly.
So I got to the airport at 9am and up to the Qantas desk at about 9.30am it was completely deserted apart from me and 4 others, plus the channel 7 and 9 news crews! I walked up to the desk and told the lady I was due to be on the 12pm flight to Melbourne and she said ok next one is at 4pm I can put you on that?
SWEET!
A 4 hour delay I can handle, so off I popped through to the departures lounge, to well, lounge for 6 hours.
The first flights were meant to be at 2pm but by 3.45pm they still hadn't had approval to fly so I was beginning to think I wouldn't be leaving on time when right about then the woman announced they had approval and all flights would be leaving ASAP. It was quite funny really because, she sounded relieved and a little bit over joyed to announce it so was sort of rallying people almost and then all the passengers in the departure gate, cheered and clapped and whistled (not sure why but I thought that was a bit odd)
Anyway, we boarded the flight in record time and I was stood up waiting for the other passengers (I had an aisle seat) when the Captain announced we would be out of here once the other flights had gone first which would be about 20 minutes, it was then that I asked a crew member if this was everyone on the flight and she said yes, and to feel free to spread out.
The plane was literally less than half full and I was totally perplexed. It had only been a few hours since Penny had rung me to ask if I had gotten on OK as they were showing the airport to be chaos as passengers had turned up trying to get flights once they heard that Qantas were flying again (I definitely timed that one right!) so I couldn't understand how they had a 40% full plane going to Melbourne the day before the Melbourne Cup!?
I put it down to people having transferred flights or gotten other transport down over the weekend to ensure they got there on time, but I guess we'll see soon enough!
I arrived back at Xenia's to find Stu was there and we were all going out for dinner and he was staying over for our Melbourne Cup day tomorrow - it's gonna be a good one!
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