As Yogi Berra said, "It's like deja vu all over again." Why do I say that? Well, we started our trip and, of course, troubles began. It's gotten to a point for me that I expect SOMETHING to happen and if it doesn't i get really nervous. So what happened?
On Friday we drove to Karl cousin's house in So. San Francisco to spend the night so that we could catch our very early flight the next morning to Hawaii. We were scheduled to fly on Qantas because after we are through in Hawaii we are continuing to Australia and it was cheaper (less expensive?) to fly them and do Hawaii as a layover. The problem first started when his cousin dropped us off at Qantas and there was no body there! No agents, no clients, no lines, no nothing. In fact the counters weren't even opened. Oh boy, what now? On the itinerary that I got from Qantas there was a small legend that noted that the section from SFO to HNL was by "One world carrier". OK, fine. Who would that be? No name was noted and trying to call Qantas was a joke. Luckily we happened upon a flight maintenance man and he looked at the itinerary and he said that we were probably on American because that was about the time a flight takes off to HNL. So off we walk to terminal 3 from the International terminal (about a 30 minute walk). We passed the United counter first and after checking the departure board didn't see any flight at that time. Off we go to the next counter. Do you know how many ticket agent areas are in SFO for United? A lot! But we finally made it to the American counter and did see our flight. Getting up to the counter we are talking to an agent that didn't really seem to know what she was doing, but I explained to her that our flight was to HNL on them, but we then transferred to Hawaiian Air to Kona. I gave her the itinerary that showed the departure time and the flight number. She checks her computer and doesn't see any flights at that time - are we sure of the time? Well, yeah! I had the itinerary right there! Finally she says that she does see the flight, but it was flight #148. I looked at my itinerary and sure enough I had the same flight number! So I'm not sure what she was looking at. But we were able to have out luggage transferred to Hawaiian Airlines and it would follow us to Kona. Now if you haven't flown for a while the airlines have started to charge for just about everything. I wanted to have a few more inches of leg room so I did pay extra for exit seats. Our "wonderful" agent goes and gives us our boarding passes and we go off to the gate. Just as we were boarding we noticed that our seats were now 36E/F. Do you know where that is? Try the LAST row in the frigging plane!!! Needless to say we are going to have a talk with Qantas soon.
Now we are finally on the plane and are in HNL waiting for our connecting flight to Kona. We are to meet our friends, Tom and Debbie Struthers, in Kona and then fly together to Kona to enjoy a great week together. Karl turns on his phone and gets a message from Tom stating that because the flight crew got in late the night before the FAA wouldn't let them fly until they had their "required" rest time. So instead of them taking off at 8:50am they left at 10:45. Our connecting flight was at 1:00 (Hawaiian time). We checked the arrival board and saw that their new arrival time was going to be 12:35pm. Would they make it? If not what is going to be our plan of attack because Tom had booked the car. We boarded our flight and just before the doors closed here comes the Struthers walking down the aisle towards us. They made the flight so all our plans were for naught. By the time we got settled in the resort, found a bar for a much needed drink and a great dinner, we got back to the resort and fell into bed at about 9pm totally exhausted.
Tomorrow we are off the the volcano and the City of Refuge. I will post pictures for those that want to travel vicariously through us.
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