Jetstar cancelled our flight home from Bali and chaos ensued. Couldn't get home for 3 days.

- On October 15th, we were due to fly home from Bali at 2pm. Our path was meant to be Bali, Stopover in Melbourne, then Auckland. After checking our bags and waiting at the airport, Jetstar sends a notification to say that the flight has been cancelled and moved to the next day at 7am. That means we are stuck in Bali for a night. This also means we will miss our connecting flight which was due to leave later that day in Melbourne.
- We gather at the Jetstar check-in area and pick up our bags which had to be taken off the plane, this took forever as there were 2 staff using one trolley to move the entire planeload of bags.
- While we wait for our bags, they let us know which hotel they would be putting us in for the night. Luckily, we got the Hilton near the Airport. Some less lucky people went to the Ibis, which was apparently atrocious.
- We get a provided shuttle bus to the hotel, where we are to wait until our flight the next day. We are given 30 dollars each to spend on food total, even though we arrived at the hotel at 2pm, starving for our lunch. We needed two full meals (lunch and dinner) but were only given enough for 1 meal. We order McDonalds for dinner as we have already used our allocated 30 dollars on lunch.
- While at the hotel, I contact the Jetstar customer service LiveChat. They proceed to tell me that my flight isn't cancelled, and I should be checking in and getting on the plane. I was so concerned that somehow I was mistaken, but the fact that I was literally sitting in a hotel they had transferred us to, and had received my bags off the plane made me feel confident the flight was definitely cancelled. Regardless - the LiveChat staff couldn't help as they had no idea our flight had been cancelled.
- Our flight the next day was for 7am, so we got on the shuttle bus to the airport at 3.45 am. A very early morning!
- Once at the Airport, I check my emails. Jetstar has sent me a revised itinerary. The new itinerary goes Bali - One night in Melbourne - Gold Coast the next day, then one night in Christchurch, and finally arriving in Auckland 3 days later. This new itinerary means they have also kicked us off the 7am flight to Melbourne, and put us on a flight at 11.45 pm that evening instead. We believe this is because they wanted to try avoid having to pay for us to stay in a hotel when we arrive in Melbourne, instead making us sleep in the airport. We find this out after arriving at the airport, ready to check in for our 7am flight.
- After waiting 2 hours at the information desk, we finally chat with the staff of Jetstar and they are able to put us on the 7am flight. What a relief! We just wanted to get out of Bali at that stage, and we didn't want to have to sleep in Melbourne Airport!
- During this time, I let my boss know I won't be coming home when expected and that I need to take an extra 2 days leave.
- We get on our 7am flight, arriving in Melbourne in the late afternoon. Once we arrive in Melbourne, we get our bags and head to the Jetstar information desk to organize our accommodation for the evening. We get there and they tell us we are at the wrong desk - and go to the one on the other side of the airport. We walk to the other side of the airport, to the other desk. That desk tells us we are at the wrong desk, so we walk back. Finally we convince the original desk to help us out. We explain we are displaced passengers that need a hotel booked and transport to and from the Airport sorted. They have no idea who we are and it requires a bit of explaining on our part to get a hotel sorted.
- The staff at this counter are absolutely inhumane. They laughed and talked about what they were doing that day, while we waited desperately to see if they could organize a flight home for us, or just the hotel for the night. We are so tired and unhappy and just want to go home, and we are looking at two more nights of transit before we get home. The staff really couldn't care less and we felt so mistreated. A simple sorry would have helped.
- Finally, we have a hotel in Melbourne for the night and we make our way there via a shuttle. Again, $30 dollars each for dinner, so we eat at the restaurant immediately next to the hotel, as we can't afford to travel elsewhere, plus have no idea where we are!
- The next day we don't have enough in our Jetstar allowance for breakfast, so we have to skip it. We take a shuttle back to the Airport and check in for our flight to the Gold Coast. Flight to the Gold Coast is smooth and we wait in the Gold Coast for 5 hours. During this time, we go to the desk and ask for some meal vouchers so we could eat, as by this stage we are starving. They give us an $8 dollar voucher each, and we had to convince them to let us have it. At one point, the lady at the counter said 'that's what your travel insurance is for'. Again, just an example of their complete lack of sympathy for their customers. Side note - I do have travel insurance, but I shouldn't have to use it when the airline has displaced me so terribly.
- We paid extra for food in the Airport as $8 dollars wasn't enough, then we got on our flight to Christchurch.
- On our flight to Christchurch, we finally had some sympathy from the Jetstar staff. The attendants were apologetic and offered us anything we needed on the flight. We asked for some blankets as we were expecting a long wait overnight in an Airport, but there were no blankets left.
- We landed in Christchurch at midnight, at this stage we are exhausted after a long day of travel, sitting in tight sits and waiting on hard chairs. It gets worse, as we have a whole night ahead of us at the Airport, our flight home to Auckland leaving at 6am.
- Because there was only a 6 hour layover, Jetstar would not organize a hotel for us for the night, nevermind the fact we would be stuck in the Airport during the middle of the night.
- We set ourselves up in the Airport on some dirty lounge chairs and tried our hardest to sleep, but none came. At this stage, we had been awake for well over 24 hours and we felt delirious.
- Finally, at 6 am, we boarded our flight home. This was 3 days after our original flight home was planned, we were absolutely exhausted, so upset and so emotional.
- It took over 5 days to recover from the severe sleep deprivation, my body was so rundown from stress and lack of sleep that I got very sick and had to take even more time off work.

International
Indonesia-Denpasar (Bali)
New Zealand-Auckland