What happened next

So, picking up the story once again, after dropping off my hire car I got a lift in the hire car company’s mini-bus back to Melbourne airport from where it was just a short walk to the Ibis Budget hotel. It was after arriving at the hotel that I received the email from Jetstar telling me that their flight to Changi airport, Singapore, the first leg of my flight home, had been cancelled without providing any information on what I should do to resolve the problems this created for me.

I therefore decided to try to contact Jetstar on line and what did I get? A bloody useless AI chatbot which is what these monstrosities always are and the final conclusion that I derived from the interchange was that as my booking had been made by Turkish Airlines (so this is what they mean by ‘a partner airline’) Jetstar would take no further responsibility for the upset they had caused and that I should contact Turkish Airlines instead. However, it didn’t take me long to establish that the Turkish Airlines desk at the airport was closed and would not be opening the next day, Sunday, because they had no flights.

So I tried doing an on line check in for my itinerary the following day and received the notification from the Turkish Airline’s web site that it was not possible at that time and that actually gave me some hope as it seemed to me to indicate that they were aware of the Jetstar problem and were seeking ways to get around it. By then it was already past midnight and as there was little more I could do, I decided to turn in and get some sleep and see how things would pan out later on.

I rewoke at around 4.30 am and immediately fired up my laptop to see if there had been any new developments, and there had been as I found out when I again tried to do an on line check in. To my shock and horror I found that I could – but only from Changi airport in Singapore! OK, fine, but how the heck was I supposed to get there from Melbourne in the absence of the Jetstar flight?

So I then began to search to see if I could find any telephone numbers to ring in order to speak to someone in Turkish Airlines. I found one in Sydney and the main Turkish Airlines 24 hour hotline in Istanbul but these turned out to be of no use to me because, of course, when I tried to ring them neither of the two French SIM cards I had in my phone was allowing me to make calls. My situation was therefore becoming somewhat desperate to say the least and I decided that there was nothing left to do other than to go to the airport and find someone to speak to in person, from Jetstar as I already knew that there would be no one there from Turkish Airlines, it now being Sunday.

Total madness. By now it was just gone 6.00 am so going back to bed was out of the question. I rustled up a breakfast of sorts by pouring some of the Rice Krispies I still had into a glass and adding the last of the milk that the hotel had provided because, as I mentioned previously, I’d left what I’d kept especially for the purpose in the fridge at the motel in Torquay, together with the butter I’d also kept for the crispbreads I still had. I then dumped everything that was left over in the bin in my room, repacked my bags and headed off on foot for the airport at around 6.00 am.

I arrived there shortly before 6.30 am and found out that the Jetstar service desk opened at 7.00. I therefore parked myself next to the desk and was their first customer when they opened for business. I explained my predicament to a very helpful young lady and gentleman who listened intently and told me to sit back down again while they sorted things out, so no dramas.

After about 15 minutes or so the young man came over to me with a new boarding card and check ins for the whole of my return journey to Bordeaux, in the name of Qantas. Jetstar is the low-cost subsidiary of Qantas and they’d got me onto a Qantas flight to Singapore over an hour before I was previously due to leave on Jetstar. So what a huge relief that was as it meant that I’d be able to make my connections in Changi and Istanbul as per my original plans. They’d done an outstanding job and I made sure that I gave them my sincerest thanks before leaving.