28/29 October 2011, Singapore OASIA Hotel

Singapore
28-29/10/2011 Friday-Saturday.

Well, the wheels fell off my planned journey home. We got to Changi Airport, Singapore, and Qantas had called a total strike/lockout, grounding all planes. Major upheavals to travel plans of all the passengers and with no definite "end-date" to the grounding. It was a mess, with all the Qantas flights into and out of Changi grounded and the passengers having to find their luggage and be booked into local Hotels.

We were due in at 3.30 pm and I was due to catch my connection to Brisbane at 8.40 pm. Just enough time for a meal, shower and clean up at the Changi Qantas Club. What actually happened was that we were kept on the plane for 3/4 of an hour while they sorted out their instructions from Qantas, then we were allowed off into the transit area to wait for instructions. Following a 3 hour wait some passengers on code-share flights were transferred to the partner airline and flew out. Other airlines took a few more, and the rest of us were to told we would be housed in local Hotels for the night.

What this meant for me was: waiting until the lists were decided, then after not getting on a flight, filling in appropriate forms (we were to go out through customs), finding my luggage in the bedlam downstairs in Arrivals, being processed by customs/immigration, then being allocated and transported to a hotel. All the cancelled flights had passengers trying to find luggage and going through this "process" at the same time so it was totally chaotic. People (a "mob" by this time) were really stressed, and very unhappy.

By 9.30 pm I had found my bag (on a completely different carousel to the rest of the flights baggage) and got through the over-worked customs controls. We then waited en mass for allocation to a hotel and for the buses. It was about midnight before that all happened and I cleared the Airport by overcrowded bus. I am writing this "blog" at 1.00 am after getting registered in the Hotel and finding my room, on the 20th floor (i.e., it took 9.5 hours to get through the mass chaos). I got three meal vouchers and I found the Internet connection so I could warn everyone I was not going to make it for Sunday lunchtime.

A shower then I sleep!