Day -3 — Bangkok and London (again)

The Plan (the whole Plan)
Day -3 : Fri 18 May : David & Rupert arrive in England

The first significant diversion from the plan, as this page refers to Mark's adventures rather that David and Rupert's.

But as yesterday, the plan was reasonably simple.  Mark had been working in south-east Asia ahead of the trip, and needed to get back to Britain.  Just like David and Rupert one day earlier, this involved his getting the Qantas flight from Bangkok to London.

Now, Mark was only using the Qantas flight because they'd been able to confirm him a couple of weeks earlier while BA could only waitlist him.  And he assumed that David and Rupert's adventures were just a one-off and so his flight would be pleasantly smooth.  He arrived at the airport in plenty of time (as he still had some work to do) but not so early as to offend against the 4-hour rule that had prevented David from checking in the day before.   So what could go wrong?  Well, once again we'll grade Qantas' efforts.

Qantas scorecard:

Checkout assistant spent five mins looking at the screen and giggling (to the disapproval of colleagues) causing Mark to wonder whether his name means something rude in Thai.	-10
Checkout assistant's boss arrived...	+5
... not to ask her to get on with it but to tell Mark that they'd oversold the flight and couldn't allocate him a seat...	-20
... and the plane was going to be about 2 hours late anyway.	-25
The business lounge had a reasonably good glass of chardy...	+5
... and plenty of free computers so Mark could finish his work.	+10
The reception desk almost got Mark's name right when they paged him.	+2
But they were paging him to tell him that he was being downgraded to economy class.  (Yes, we all detect that very few hearts are bleeding over this but we're still deducting points for it.)	-20
Reception looked reasonably attentive when Mark suggested that, given that he is about 10 feet tall, they might at least downgrade him to a seat near an exit and give him some legroom...	+5
... but told him there was no chance.	-5
They gave him the seat which is under the leak in the ceiling where the condensation drips though when the plane pitches, so he got soaked at take-off.	-10
Cabin crew acknowledged that this was "a pain".	0
13 hours later they soaked him (and an inoffensive woman behind him) again at landing.  (The seats to avoid are 38G and 39H, if you're ever on this plane.)	-10
Cabin crew tried to bung the leak with a cloth	+5
It didn't work and the wet cloth landed on Mark's head	-5
As yesterday, burned lots of fuel to gain an hour on the way to London	+15
And as yesterday, spent that hour on the tarmac at Heathrow waiting for a gate	-20
Total	-78

Oh and David went off to see his friends Colin and Sam.  And some beer was found.  And Colin and Sam waited for David to doze off before they finished drinking it all.

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