Thursday, June 15, 2006

Oops, where'd my face go?

So my wait for my flight yesterday got extended an extra 5 hours. We didn't even leave until after midnight. By the time we arrived in Jakarta I was the walking dead. I lost my temper a bit with the Air Asia people after they casually announced that our plane had been delayed for four hours 10 minutes before it's scheduled departure (7:20pm) and then provided no further information. At 11:15 (the new time was supposed to be 11pm) there was still no announcement, only a couple of Air Asia employees hanging out in the corner, joking and messing around. I finally went and asked if they knew when we would be leaving. Two giggling girls dismissively said they didn't know, and that we were waiting for a plane from Jakarta. BUT, they knew the plane was in the air. Finally they directed me to a guy in a baseball hat who opened up his phone and told me the exact time the plane would land at our airport. When I asked him how long he'd known this he said, oh about 2 hours.

So it's now 11:20, there is a lounge with about 100 tired passengers, many with cranky, crying children, two or three who had already missed connecting flights (one couple missed their flight back to Canada), and no one there but this goofball had any information about when or if we would get to Jakarta last night (and it was his JOB to pass on that information). *%#^$%@&!!!!
After my brief tirade, he went down stairs and asked them to make an announcement about the flight.

In the end, it turned out it wasn't about technical failure. It was about the flight not being full, so they decided to just cancel it and put everyone on the same plane. Nice, eh? Especially since you pay a premium for taking the 7:00 flight vs. the 11 pm flight.

Yes, I lost face. I got angry. I wasn't screaming, but I definitely lost my ability to use my Indonesian or be polite to him anymore. My bad, but they're worse.

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