We loved New Zealand. I was (am) ready to move there. Any place that has more sheep than people is my kind of place. This was a trip with two major locations - first stop: New Zealand for 10 days and next, a stop over in Tahiti for a few days.
The New Zealand trip was driving through the North Island, crossing over via ferry to the South Island, and flying back from Christ Church to Auckland to catch our flight to Tahiti. About a week before we left for New Zealand, I booked our inter island flight to catch the Air Tahiti Nui flight to Papeete, Tahiti.
We arrived at the Christ Church Airport along with a large group of people. We were in plenty of time for our 9:00 flight, checked our luggage, got our boarding passes, and settled down to wait to board. When I checked the gate posting, I noticed there wasn't a flight for 9:10 AM. I checked and found our boarding passes were for PM and not AM. I rechecked my schedule and damn!!! I made a huge booking mistake. I booked us for a PM and not AM flight. This was bad, very bad. And it was going to get worse.
We needed to get to Auckland (domestic) to catch our international flight to Tahiti which departed at 2:30 PM.
I returned to the ticket counter and explained I needed to change my flights and found out that all of New Zealand was in a tissy because U2 was holding a weekend concert in Auckland. Every flight was booked, in fact overbooked. We were pretty much screwed. The entire journey to Tahiti depended on that connection - if we missed it, we would not be able to have our 4 days there.
I started to talk to every carrier that flew out of Christ Church to either Auckland or Tahiti. About one hour later we came up with one possible solution flying first class to Tahiti to the tune of $5000.00 PER TICKET. The trip to Tahiti was already paid for and it was either spend more money to enjoy it, or just kiss the trip off (along with all the prepaid arrangements). My plan was to ask for a discount on the first class tickets. I approached the Air New Zealand counter again to plead my case.
The Air New Zealand counter had a change of staff by this time and I approached the guy with my spiel. I humbly started, "This is not Air New Zealand's fault, it is entirely my own mistake, but..." I did not even get to the part about negotiating a discount for first class tickets. The staff member asked for my flight schedule and disappeared. After about 10 minutes he came back and that is when truly a miracle happened. He handed us two boarding passes for the next flight out of Christ Church to Auckland. I called Air Tahiti Nui and explained that we had a very tight connection (going from domestic to international terminals, which is a totally different building), get our boarding passes, get through security, pay airport tax, and get on the flight. We did not even expect that our luggage would be on the same flight - it was that crazy of a connection.
The flight to Auckland is a blur, we ran from the domestic to the international terminals and fortunately Air Tahiti Nui reopened the counter to give us our boarding passes and had an escort ready to speed us through the security, pay for the airport tax, etc. And of course the departing gate was the last one in the airport.
I collapsed in my seat (we were the last ones to board) and finally, finally started to breathe normally. My mistake nearly cost us, at most, $10,000.00 and at least we might have lost our $5000.00 we had paid in advance for the Tahiti trip. But the miracle was that some kind person figured out a way to get us past all those U2 fans and get on our 2:30 PM flight (which of course was on time that day). I like Bono and his lads, but I really LOVE that guy with Air New Zealand!
Oh, we had a great time in both countries. And our luggage did get on our plane to Tahiti. Amazing!
No comments:
Post a Comment