Buyer Beware

Don't believe the late night last minute "flight cancelled" BS. We got a call at 8pm in Darwin on the night before our 6.40am flight back home to Brisbane. Operator said the flight had been "cancelled". We were shocked! Why we asked. "Operational reasons" we were told. She then said they could fly us to Sydney that same day and then do a transfer to Brisbane. We would have arrived 7 hours after we were supposed to arrive. Alternative was to wait to following day when they "could still not guarantee the flight would take place". We asked "What are our options...can we get a refund?". She then said (and only then) that they could offer us a $200 voucher if we agreed to move but not if we cancelled. We said we needed to think about it and would call her back in the next few minutes. She said "I've been instructed that we would prefer to stay on the line". We started looking at alternatives - Air North for instance. She could hear all this discussion. We told her we were searching for other ways to get back home. All of a sudden she said "Oh! I've just had advice that the flight is now going ahead...sorry for the inconvenience". We got to the airport the next morning. There was a queue of people (took 30 mins to get to baggage drop). We asked several people in the line "did you get a call last night?". No one else had received a call. We asked the hostie when we got on board if the flight had been cancelled and then reinstated. She said that it was "news to her". She then said that the flight was "completely booked out". So let me make a guess. The flight wasn't booked out - it was over booked and they were trying to offload the people who had paid the least (we had booked months before).

Don't believe them if they say its been cancelled. Ask the operator this question "So you are telling me that if I go to the airport tomorrow at the time when my flight was due to leave.....that there will be no one else there ready to fly on that flight?".

They lie.