I arrived at Christchurch airport at 5:00am, an hour and thirty five minutes before departure. The queue was extremely long and there appeared to be only two or three check-in staff.
The queue of customers barely moved for the first hour and we were very patient, but we eventually became very frustrated after waiting for over an hour without being told what was going on. It was not until well after 6am that the check-in staff had the initiative to open a separate queue for passengers travelling to Sydney. It seems that passengers for Melbourne and Sydney were in the same queue, even though the flight left at least half an hour apart.
After over ninety minutes wait it became obvious that I was not going to board the flight in time for departure. Up until this time there had been no announcements or updates from Jetstar staff.
Finally, we were told that we were unable to board and that the pilot was unable to delay the flight because there was fog in Sydney. I later discovered this to be a blatant lie!
After over two hours in the queue I was finally able to speak to a Jet Star staff member. I was told to come back at the same time tomorrow, or to get to Sydney via Auckland or Brisbane. I elected to go to Auckland but was later told that this flight was full. So, my only choice was to fly back via Brisbane which would get me to Sydney at 10pm instead of 8am!
As a consultant, I only get paid for the hours I'm actually in the office, so not only did I miss out on a day's income, I also missed a key sales meeting I had been working towards for weeks and dinner with a potential new client which I was unable to reschedule.
This is the second time in two months Jetstar has failed me. I arrived at Sydney Airport in April expecting to go to Perth but the flight was canceled without any explanation.
I didn't even want to travel with Jetstar. I booked my return flight to New Zealand with Qantas and was disappointed when I saw the return leg was operated by Jetstar. The final insult was being told at Brisbane airport that I didn't have luggage allowance between Brisbane and Sydney!
I finally arrived home at 10:30pm after being awake since 2:30am Sydney time. Total travel time over 20 hours! What a joke!
A valuable piece of advice from my taxi driver on the way home. Fly Emirates and don't ever trust Jetstar.