I was excited in March last year...I turned fifty years old...But that's not what got me excited...It was the gift my wife got for me that had me feeling good. You can take a look at the post here if you're interested. If you don't want to then I'll break it down...
We were flying to Tasmania for a week off and Faith had arranged an hour-long aerobatic flight in a World War Two fighter-trainer in which the pilot does dog-fighting, strafing runs, barrel rolls, dive-bombing and anything else one wants. The post I linked above shows video of it. I was very excited and looking forward to it on the 28th of March.
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The restrictions around the pandemic meant our flights to Tasmania were cancelled. We rebooked them for October at the cost of an additional $600 and...They got cancelled too. Oh, and in the interim period our Scandinavia trip was cancelled as well...What a debacle!
The Scandinavia flights were refunded in full fortunately, although it took a long time. The other airline, however, gave us credits for the Tasmania flights as over the period they had gone into receivership. Talk about a comedy of errors right?
The aerobatic flight down in Tasmania was not refundable though; He kept it assuming we'd make it down there for the flight sometime.
That was back in October last year and a few weeks later Faith's mum was diagnosed with a secondary cancer and given a fairly short life-expectancy date, was operated on and is still convalescing; She will succumb to it at some stage as it is not curable and so we're really focused on the Tasmania trip; We would like to take her with us.
This week we started talking about trying to make it happen but, we've come across some seemingly insurmountable roadblocks.
The pilot has limited time this year as his Air Force commitments are keeping him on the mainland. The airline is not playing nicely with our flight credits either. We can't book online you see, we have to ring them and they keep telling us there's no seats available for when we may want to fly, despite us showing a lot of flexibility. They are being assholes about it.
Having to line up my work, Faith's work (she runs our business), her mum's health requirements, the pilots availability and the flights to Tasmania all at once is really hard...The fact we could have border closures and quarantine issues at any time also doesn't make it any easier.
We're really struggling to bring this together and considering the no-refund policy on the aerobatic flight we don't have much choice but to work at it...Losing the $1000+ isn't something we want to do.
I'm not sure how this is going to play out...There's many variables. I'm really hoping it's third time lucky though and we make it there but at this stage I don't know, I just don't know.
How about you? Have you had similar scenarios over cancelled flights or bookings? The pandemic has cost so many people a lot of money and lost opportunity and the hits keep coming. What has happened to your own travel plans if you were were booked or were supposed to travel?
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
Discord: galenkp#9209
This is my first post in the Rant, Complain, Talk Community and whilst this is not really a rant, more of a I'm really frustrated post I'm working up a decent rant about it I think. Stay tuned.
