A little difficulty...

It all began when the travel wallet carrying our passports, visas, air tickets, and ashes tickets went missing in transit. The holiday was fantastic, a great time in Melbourne with the family and meeting our beautiful new niece, then two days in Sydney and onto Singapore. In Melbourne, we were able to replace the passports, the Indian visas, and I even got to go to the Ashes in Sydney. All the airline tickets, except the Air India tickets, we were able to replace easily as they were e-tickets. We had tried all week to contact the Air India office, to no avail, so decided to arrive at the airport earlier to make sure we made the flight. However, this is where the wheels began to come off a little.

The Air India ground staff told us they did not accept e-tickets or even the receipt we had with us, which had both our reservation numbers and booking details, and that we had to go back into Singapore city and cancel the missing tickets and buy new paper ones. This would have meant an extra two-night stay in Singapore as the next day was Sunday and the office was closed. Obviously this was far from ideal. However, after much negotiation and many “can I speak to your manager” comments, we finally came to the solution that we could buy two new tickets and get them delivered to the airport asap by a 24-hour travel agent, then apply for a refund on our return. So this is what we did.

This then enabled us to get through to the departure gate to our 9.20pm flight on time - plus as there were a few gifts we had promised to bring back to India, we were able to do a super quick trolley dash including my saying the phrase “keep the change” to a toy store employee – something she hadn’t heard much I’m sure.

Once we got to the gate, there were still passengers going through security and, in fact, we ended up waiting a little while before boarding. Once boarded, we eventually took off around 15 minutes late. However, all did not seem right. The cruising altitude seemed very low and the plane continued to turn from left to right on a regular basis. An hour into the flight we noticed that the seatbelt sign had not yet been turned off, the captain then announced that the radar was not working and the plane would have to return back to Singapore. By the time we landed in Singapore, it was around four hours since the original take off time. The organisation on our return to resolve the situation and establish the next course of action for each passenger was was slightly chaotic and a little reminder of our new home, India! No queue. No order. No chance.

However to be fair, an hour or so later we had managed to get our revised tickets onto an alternative flight, this time with Indian Airlines the following morning and were on our way to find somewhere to lay down for the seven hours we had until our new flight was due to take off. At this short notice the airport transit hotel was fully booked, so where did we end up…. That’s right a massage table in the Rainforest Spa with a blanket and pillow each! Air India covered the cost for this ‘bed’ and a shower and we did get a couple of hours sleep, despite the lights being near full beam, the Spanish guitar music still pumping through the speakers, and a man with the longest and possible loudest snore sleeping within 10 yards of our makeshift beds.

We had gone past tiredness at this point, but thankful we were safe and had a flight back home to Hyderabad, which meant we were both able to be at work the following morning.


Our makeshift beds...