To start things off, I have to connect to another airport in New Zealand before flying to Australia. Usually I fly through Wellington, since I used to live there and I'm familiar with the airport (also it's small). This time, however, I had to fly through Auckland. Auckland is a fucking mess of an airport. It has both a domestic and international airport, and you have to take a fucking bus to travel between the two. I have problems walking long distances, so I needed a wheelchair to get to the bus. That was fine, they did that. They said there'd be someone waiting for me at the other end but there wasn't -- thankfully a very nice woman helped me off the bus (also, someone gave me their seat without me prompting them). I then had to wait at the special assistance area for ages (once I found it). Eventually I got wheelchair'd to the gate. Cool.
The flight was delayed by about half an hour or so, which happens. I was one of the first people on the plane (thanks mobility issues!). They loaded the other passengers on, went through the usual schtick of the safety video, etc.
Then we didn't take off. Captain came on the intercom to say that the engineers discovered scrapes on the outside of the plane while doing their final checks and were deciding what to do. That took about twenty minutes. Turns out, they decided that it was safer to put everybody on another plane. Unloading everyone, all the luggage and the food took ages. We then had to wait around forever before boarding the new plane. Aaaaand there weren't any available gates, so the plane was parked miles away from the building we were in and I had to take another bus with all the unaccompanied minors (of which there were 7) and another person in a wheelchair. Then there were stairs up to the plane that I took a while getting up.
Once all that's done they did take off and the flight was fine. No issues other than that I was at the back of the plane and they ran out of the in-flight meal option I wanted, but oh well. I was hungry enough for the other.
Because of the almost 3-hour delay the airline was understaffed (also it's Sunday night and it's a public holiday in Australia tomorrow) and they couldn't find anyone to wheel me to arrivals, so I had to hang around with the unaccompanied minors. It took ages getting through customs (I assume customs also were understaffed due to the flight delay). It was roughly an hour or so before I got through customs, got my luggage and was at arrivals. Thankfully the people who were picking me up knew that the flight had been delayed and were there to greet me.
I woke up at 8AM (anxiety!); got to the airport in my town at 11AM. I didn't get to the place I'm staying at tonight until 11PM NZ time. I'm still awake because I was waiting for my dad to get in (he was flying home from the UK) -- which he did like an hour ago (it's 10:20PM here in Australia, which means it's 1:20AM in NZ).
by Starra » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:06 pm 
. It's still a bit silly though, I have dreams about it from time to time and they're really vivid. 
