Dear QANTAS

 Dear Qantas,

Our relationship is over.

I am officially breaking up with you.

I am sorry to have to tell you this way. I tried to tell you in person at the airport but at 8 o’clock on Friday night,  your desk was unoccupied.

The kind man driving the bus full of displaced and disgruntled passengers to Bendigo airport, a fate I had come to rescue Wallsy from, smiled politely and pointed us to lost baggage desk, unconcerned for the effect this was having on my relationship with you.

The woman behind the lost baggage desk only wanted the details of the missing luggage. She wasn’t interested in the impact this was having on my relationship with you either.  

Hence, I am writing to you now to explain the irreconcilable differences at the root of this separation.

It was a little over 12 months ago, when the cracks in our relationship first became apparent to me. Wallsy and I had booked a Saturday morning flight to Whyalla in order to attend my sister’s 50^th birthday celebration. Our flight from Melbourne was set to leave after work Friday night and we had organised a room at the Adelaide airport so we could arrive late and leave early the next morning.

The plan seemed like a good one, until  you sent a message indicating the Saturday flight to Whyalla was not going ahead and you had put us on a flight ex-Adelaide on Friday morning instead. There was just one slight hitch with this arrangement – we weren’t arriving in Adelaide until half a day after the proposed flight to Whyalla was leaving. As the two flights had been on the one booking, I would have thought you were aware of our travel plans, however, in trying to repair a problem of your own making, you had created a new and bigger problem for us to solve.

The obvious solution was to cancel the flight to Whyalla and instead (at great expense) hire a car to drive the distance. Perhaps you can see why, at this point, I became concerned with your disregard for my needs, after such a long and loyal relationship. Did you sense the despair in my eyes as I stepped off our flight on Friday night? Apparently not, because you spent the remainder of the weekend sending me cheery messages about preparing for the flight back on Sunday afternoon. You reminded me when check in was open, you blithely confirmed our arrangements and with forgiveness in my heart, I went ahead believing you were going to make reparation and return us home as agreed.

It was not to be. Without apology and with the same blatant disregard you had shown in failing to get us to Whyalla in a timely manner, you sent a glib message saying the flight from Whyalla was delayed. Leaving the luggage loaded in the hire car, we returned to my sister’s house for another cuppa, to await the newly appointed flight time. On delivering the hire car to the airport at the updated check in time, it was only to find, that yet again, you had nothing but disappointment to offer with further time delays – delays which would severely impact our ability to meet our connecting flight to Melbourne. I could do nothing but sit and contemplate your motives. Had you found someone else? Did you no longer value my love for you?

We eventually arrived in Adelaide, having missed our scheduled flight and with very little time to make the last flight out of the city of churches that night. I thought about where we would go from here as we were led running through the airport, down back-corridors and through staff-only doors, to meet the plane to Melbourne, just in the nick of  time.

Time moved on, and wounds healed. I had almost forgiven you for this debacle which you dismissed, citing ‘COVID related staffing issues’, when you did it again. It was last Friday night, Wallsy a long-time QANTAS stalwart (some might say, as I have been known to, a QANTAS ‘snob’) was due to fly home from his Brisbane-based conference. He had chosen to fly out of Bendigo for convenience, which meant flying to Brisbane via Sydney and then in reverse, back to Bendigo – a much lauded service according to the local media, which was generating a great deal of new infrastructure at the small regional airport.

This worked well on the way to Brisbane and seemingly, fleetingly, it was working well on the way home as well. He had reported to me when he was boarding the flight to Sydney and again when he landed in Sydney at 2pm. His onward flight was not until 4:30, so he settled into the QANTAS Club with plenty of time to spare. It wasn’t until 3:30 pm that he got any inkling of a problem and rang with the news that, hearing a boarding call for a Bendigo flight number that didn’t correspond to his number, he had made inquiries at the service desk. It was at this point that everything, including my relationship with you QANTAS, began to unravel.

Apparently, the flight Wallsy had heard called was the delayed flight to Bendigo from 09:55 that morning. Apparently his 4:30 flight was now cancelled, but no-one had communicated that fact to him. Apparently he couldn’t go on the flight that was now boarding because he had already checked his luggage in for the other flight – the one that wasn’t going. Apparently they would now have to put him on a flight to Melbourne. Apparently he would then be bussed to Bendigo airport where his vehicle sat waiting for collection. Apparently I could save him much time and further delay if I were to collect him from Melbourne airport at the new time of 7:45pm. However, no one knew what was going to happen with his luggage and he was told to ask the staff on boarding. So, I waited, phone in hand for the call that would determine whether or not I was driving to the airport that night.

On boarding the flight and inquiring after his luggage, the query was ‘Did you ask they ground staff?’ Yes he had, and yes he had been told to ask on the plane. With this a staff member was sent forth to ask the ground staff. Reassurances were made that should he wish to unavail himself of the offer of a bus to Bendigo, his luggage would be available for collection on the carousel in Melbourne. Hence, I was dispatched to the airport, to save him a lengthy trip to Bendigo and then further travel back down the highway home, all of which would take a considerable and inconvenient amount of time after an already over-long day spent in transit. I was less than happy, in fact I was very unhappy, with you dear QANTAS. In my mind, this was the last straw. You had well and truly done your dash.

After much swearing and ranting to myself as I drove down the dark highway into the melee of Friday night airport traffic, I managed to navigate my way into a suitable park and walk across to the terminal at the time the flight should have been connecting with the Melbourne tarmac. But no, there were delays due to low cloud and it would be a further 25 minutes before Wallsy’s flight landed. With no coffee available in arrivals at this hour of the night, I hung around the baggage carousel like a displaced person. Finally the board lit up with the words ‘landed’ next to the flight, and there he was, a slightly bedraggled and frustrated Wallsy. All we had to do now was collect his bag and we would be on our way home, so we thought.

We stood, with many others, as it had been a big plane, watching the luggage do its circle dance around the carousel, but after about half an hour we began to suspect that Wallsy’s bag wasn’t coming out from behind the magic curtain. At this point, Wallsy remembered his air tag and thought to look at the app which would pinpoint the location of his favourite blue bag.

‘It’s 763 metres away,’ he said squinting at the app, ‘It must still be on the tarmac.’

But then a shadow passed across his face, as he drew the phone closer to his eyes and he saw in horror, that it was in fact, 763 kilometres, not metres.  Again the QANTAS gods had failed to smile on us. Again we were suffering at your hand. The smiling (or was it a grimace?) bus driver, still holding his sign that read ‘Bendigo Bus’ in front of his chest, wordlessly pointed us to the lost baggage desk, our waning love for our previously much adored airline written clearly on our faces. 3 others, who were the reason the Bendigo Bus was still parked and not breezing down the highway by now, joined Wallsy in the lost baggage queue.

Finally, an hour after landing, we pulled away from the airport, sans luggage, sans coffee and sans love for QANTAS, but still on track to be home long before the luckless Bendigo Bus passengers. The car was retrieved on Saturday morning, the luggage arrived at the front door soon after, but our love for the airline whose boast is ‘the flag carrier of Australia,’ has been irretrievably lost. Wallsy may forgive you enough to honour our flights to Adelaide in October, but I would rather walk.

I have irretrievably, irreversibly, irrevocably, permanently and for all time, broken up with you QANTAS.