It really never ends. It’s actually become quite comical. The wrath of QANTAS Beijing is still upon us. One of the changes we made was adding return flights to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from Johannesburg. Again, after much confusion, we believed that these flights were confirmed.
Much to our delight and surprise, we were upgraded to Business Class on the flight to VF, but we had less luck on the return flight to Jo-burg. In fact, we arrived at the airport only to learn that we were not booked on the flight at all. This isn’t good when the flight is fully booked for the next week. I guess our paper tickets were for some mystery flight. We’re still not clear. After some insisting and digging in our heels, we made our way onto the flight without a seat to spare. It really does help to have a paper ticket to wave in front of their faces. It seems to add just a little more legitimacy.
We suspect that we may not have been on the flight to VF, but that the airport staff passed the buck until we got to the gate and they realized that there were already people in our seats so they just quickly bumped us to solve the problem. That’s my kind of solution!
So now we’ll be calling ahead for every flight just to make sure (1) there is a flight and (2) that we’re on it. Sometimes those basic details are really important.