It's been a very difficult time for us recently, trying to decide what to do travel-wise. We had changed T-chan and L-kun's flights to a week later (departing from Adelaide this monday evening for Sapporo via Narita). As I wrote early, we had heard that they were going to fly via Hong Kong now, to avoid crews sleeping in Tokyo (by the way, rumour has it there was a mini mutiny on a recent Jetstar Flight where the crew refused to stay in Japan).
Anyhow... I've been keeping an eye on the situation very carefully (even during my business trip today)... and you can imagine my surprise when I check out T-chan's Qantas booking online (amazing I could rememeber her booking number), when I found that they had changed her flights such that she had to overnight in Sydney, depart Sydney at 6am to arrive in Narita (via Hong Kong) at 6pm to connect with a 10am flight on the same day.... what the!?!?!? Ok, I trust Qantas is efficient, but I don't think even they are that good!
A (not so) quick phone call to our travel booking agent (travel.com) told us that we could ignore that itinerary as they would book an alternative flying via Hong Kong (flying Cathay Pacific) through Haneda to Sapporo. With 1 hour to clear customs / immigration / change to domestic terminal... etc etc. Admittedly this is infinitely better than the travel-back-in-time option they were giving us initially, however, it's pretty risky still (though we've never been to Haneda internationally).
Actually, I'm kind of amazed they could find a flight out of Tokyo with seats available... even under normal conditions it's difficult to get an internal flight with this much notice - let alone these sorts of conditions.
So tonight we go to bed just that little bit more stressed... and annoyed that no one bothered to contact us that the flights had been changed (especially to an impossible schedule). I'm glad I'm pretty anal about these sorts of things and check constantly.
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