Departure Day

“the airport is the only place you can walk around with no shoes, a glazed look on your face, and sleep on the benches and no one judges you.”

Coriander Woodruff, The Call of the Spectacled Owl

Also true of my experience of Bus Stations, but that’s another story all together…

Outbound experiences of meet and greet parking, VIP Lounge at Manchester T1, Etihad to AbuDhabi, AD to Melbourne, car rental collection at Melbourne, getting to AirBnB, 1st Day…. Now that’s a books worth for starters, phew

I wrote the list for this page as a guide to see what the pages were going to look like when I played around with various formats but now we’ve been through the process I couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine the reality, not all bad I have to say but a lot of it was not for the feint hearted.  The drive from home to the airport, brilliant, left loads of time and got to T1 in less that 80mins which is standard, no queues for T1 Meet and Greet, it was well sign posted on the way in, their automatic recognition worked flawlessly and we dropped of the keys for the car at the check in desk immediately outside the entrance to T1.  Perfect.  Then realised I hadn’t actually removed our bags from the car yet so had to dip back in to the (not very secure) drop box I’d just put the key into, unlock the car, remove the bags, lock the car, deposit the key back in drop box.  Sorted.  On to check in….

Smooth, trouble free check where we were happily informed that the next time we would see our luggage we would all be in Melbourne, false hope.  Straight through security, passports etc all queue free and still with plenty of time in hand to check in to and enjoy our pre-booked Escape Lounge services which officially is for no longer than 3 hours before your flight departs, it’s safe to say that the Escape Lounge was lucky it closed at 8:30pm and we got our moneys worth on that deal.

The Escape Lounge itself was, we both thought, somewhat underwhelming, the choices on offer for both food and drinks were limited and for the price of what should in reality have been no more than just over 2 hours was at the maximum amount justifiable.  Their market research guys have got it spot on I suppose.  Would we do it again?  If I get a good deal on the flights and if there’s an offer for the car park, lounge combo then probably, yes. Just.  Comfortable surroundings, (limited choice) free food and drink, free wifi, charging points.  If you can claim it on expenses, do it.

There are departure boards in the Lounge but no audio announcements so you have to keep an eye on them for your flight details.  We did that and got the first notification that something might be amiss.  All it said in place of “Wait in Lounge” was “Next Info at 20:30”.  Bearing in mind our flight was scheduled to leave at 19:10 this wasn’t good news for us.  I tried all manner of websites for information and asked the concierge if they had any insider information but all we kept getting back was the same message “Next Info 20:30”.

We got down to staying comfortable and snacking and drinking on what was available, waiting for 20:30.  Unfortunately 20:30 also coincides with the closure time of the Escape Lounge, we got kicked out of their at the same time as our next update which was just to extend the “Next Info” time until 21:00 this came and went with an announcement asking all passengers to go to the information desk to each collect a £10 refreshment voucher, no info about the flight.

By the time the vouchers had been handed out, there were only two outlets open in the whole airport – Starbucks or the Bar.  Emma goes to Starbucks and spends the full £10, I go the bar and order drinks only to be told that the vouchers are not permitted to be spent on alcohol.  REALLY!!! So I get £10’s worth of crisps and nuts which at an airport is not many.  I pay for the drinks.

Information on the plane is eventually forthcoming from Etihad which was that the inbound flight got struck by lightning on the way in and is getting full engineering overhaul to make sure that it’s 100% before we can get anywhere near it and all passengers are split up to go to all manner of Manchester hotels as and when spaces can be reserved.  We do get a good shout on this one as we were reserved a room at the Hilton Garden Inn which is built in to the stadium surrounding Old Trafford Cricket Ground.  Couldn’t be bothered to wait for the official bus to pick us up to take us their so we jump in a cab and £30 later we are first to arrive at the hotel.  First in gets first pick.  We get a room with a balcony over looking the pitch which for a match day would be massive.  Got an early morning pic, that was a nice little touch to the end of a bad afternoon.

<off for breakfast in AbuDhabi now, then on to Melbourne, more later >

Following the pick up and transfer back to the airport we queued at the Jet2 check in desks to start the whole process again, unfortunately Jet2s staff really didn’t look like they had been briefed about what they were supposed to doing with an entire Etihad flight so there was another protracted delay before we were processed and given the details stating that once we got to Abu Dhabi our flight from there to Melbourne would start boarding 5 minutes before our inbound flight was due to land.  If our outbound flight was on time we were assured we would be fast tracked by ground staff in Abu Dhabi and we would make this connection.

Any thought or worry about running for connections through the airport at Abu Dhabi very quickly evaporated as the flight leaving Manchester was stalled for another 2 hours on the ground because some pieces of incorrect baggage had been loaded in to our hold, and we had to wait for it to be identified and removed before we could get off the ground.  The onward scheduled flight to Melbourne left Abu Dhabi a long time before we landed and we were booked on to the next scheduled flight a full 24 hours after our original scheduled departure.

Another hotel was reserved for us at the Abu Dhabi airport which also had our evening meal and breakfast expenses covered.  Even though our time in the beds was no more than 4 hours, the addition of the meals and the hot showers did help ease the pain.

From the moment we woke on Friday in the  hotel in AbuDhabi until the moment we stepped in to our booked property in Melbourne everything ran like clockwork, breakfast was hot and wholesome, check in and security was faultless, the flight was on time, the service on the Dreamliner was immaculate, the arrival at Melbourne and the processing of all passengers through security, baggage reclaim and immigration was as good as any transit anywhere, ever.  Full marks to Abu Dhabi, Etihad and Melbourne.  Our reserved car hire, which was by now 24 hours late for pick up, was there and ready for collection, we bought new SIM cards from Optus at a great rate and were activated immediately, we navigated to the property and gained access without any further hiccups whatsoever.

We had finally arrived. The page “Departure Day” will, if further adventures are logged, be relabeled more appropriately…

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Flight distances from Google Maps and stock image of Abu Dhabi airport