Upgraded to Nowhere

I expected to upload my first post on this arctic trip  from somewhere else, but here I am still in Melbourne!

Last night, I had a very leisurely check in on my flight to Hong Kong and then on to Oslo and Helsinki. I was delighted to find that I had been upgraded to first class on the Melbourne to Hong Kong sector. Jill and I had dinner together at the Hilton before I was due to leave.

We boarded the plane at 10:15 pm for a 10:50 pm  departure, only to be told of a short delay. The main flight data computer was  not operating and the back up one was only operating intermittently. Qantas sourced a replacement from their engineering centre at Avalon, but after waiting an hour for it arrive and repeated attempts to fix the problem,  they couldn’t get it to work. By this time it was 3:00 am and we were still at the gate. I had managed to get an hour’s sleep on my nice first class bed, and then at 3:30 they announced that they would need to fly a replacement part from Sydney in the morning. The flight was given a new departure time of 3:00 pm today and we all collected our bags and settled into the Airport Hilton for the remainder of the night.

Oh well, first class was great,for the few hours that it lasted.

After a complex set of calls this morning, I was able to reroute my flight via Singapore and London on a Qantas flight and then catch a BA flight from London to Oslo. I nwleave melbourne at 3:30 pm. This connection arrives in time for me to catch my original Iceland Air flight from Oslo to Reykjavik, so nothing is lost other than swapping an overnight stop in Oslo for one in Melbourne.

Many thanks to Qantas and Kris at Harvey World Travel in Lower Templestowe for their help with my revised arrangements.