Day -4 — Auckland, Sydney, Bangkok and London

The Plan (the whole Plan)
Day -4 : Thu 17 May : Rupert flies to Sydney. Rupert & David fly as far as Bangkok before the plane gets tired.

The plan was relatively simple. Rupert had a six hour stopover in Sydney - long enough to have lunch at the Lord Nelson and get on the same plane as David for the remainder of the trip to London. In all its essential aspects, the plan worked. Qantas made it really interesting, though, and we thought we'd grade their efforts.

Qantas scorecard:

Made Rupert empty his underwear out of his carry on bag at the checkin desk -5
Got Rupert to Sydney 0
... 20 minutes early +5
... even though Sydney airport was closed due to fog +15
Did not tell David that Rupert's plane had landed -5
... or where to meet him -2
Would not let David check in because the flight was more than four hours in the future -5
Called David at the pub to tell him our flight was delayed two hours. More beer! +10
Did not call David again when our flight was delayed a further two and a half hours -10
Told us our flight was cancelled, even though it wasn't -20
... but only asking us if we were in business or economy class -10
Would not let David check in because the flight was more than four hours in the future - again -10
Wandered off for a smoko while David was trying to check in -40
Told David to go and get meal vouchers while he was waiting to check in +2
Told David he could not get meal vouchers until he checked in -50
Closed business class checkin (already understaffed due to aforementioned smoko) so David had to check in with the plebs -3
Put priority tags on David's luggage even though he was travelling economy +2
Mostly paid for a quite nice meal at Sydney airport +7
Showers at Bangkok +10
Running out of the orange/tropical fruit juice thingy we were drinking at Bangkok -1
Only had right-handed soup ladle -1
Burned lots of fuel to gain an hour on the way to London +15
Spent that hour on the tarmac at Heathrow waiting for a gate -20
Total -131


Humble finds some consolation in a bottle of Shiraz