Flight from Jakarta to Bali in 12 hours, anyone?

Have you ever been in the longest domestic flight in Indonesia?

“A little story about me and my favorite airline.”

I started fresh in the morning and rushed to the airport from home at 09.25 to catch my 11.30 flight. Arrived at the airport at around 10.20, enough time to relax, enjoy some tea and snacks at the lounge.

I am kind of person who from time to time always look at my watch whenever I am in the airport (I had bad experienced in the past when my flight left me and my wife, because of literally several minutes difference. We’re about to go back to Indonesia from HK then. Well this is like 11 years ago, another airline, another story), so when my watch showed 11.10 and no information heard, I began asking the lounge officer if she heard something. “Nothing sir, will let you know once the plane is ready”.

15 minutes passed, I made another inquiry. Same answered. Repeating it every 30 minutes until finally at 14.10 we’re called. Finally after 3 hours!

So I got on the plane, found our seats (oh I forgot to mention I am traveling with a friend of mine). When we finally sit, we said “this is it, we need to take a rest”. Well since the aircon was still off, we thought we just wait until it’s on. The plane then heading to the taxiway, and stopped. 25 minutes or so passed and no sign of working aircon and the plane was still in the same exact position.

Until I felt that the plane started to move again, finally… but wait! It’s heading back to the aprone! What now!?!

No words from the crew until 10 minutes later, when one of the crew in broken english mentioned that they need to do some maintenance, and the ground engineered had been called to do the inspection and refuel the plane. Now this is what I don’t like from them, bad communication and gesture, all passengers were not informed until last minute.

At this time some passengers were getting restless and starting to get off the plane.

Several minutes after that, the aircon turned on. But we’re just like nobody living in an isolated place no information given until maybe 10 minutes after when somebody claimed to be the captain (again with broken english) said that he need to bring back the plane because of the aircon failure and asked all the passenger to sit relax while at the same time
also confirming that the plane need to be refueled.
(So they’re saying we planned to go without fuel in the beginning? Wow, that would be another experience!).

Again more people getting off the plane. Well I tried to sit relax and continued my reading while at the same time taking notes on what’s going on in my head.

Suddenly after probably 5 minutes, the crew ask all passengers to go down and need to change the plane, no clear information of what’s going on. Only AC and fuel?

I am sure they were not being very honest from the beginning. They knew something was wrong with the plane, that’s why they rescheduled the flight from 11.30 to 14.30. But for what? For another 50 minutes in a broken plane?

Now next flight is 16.20, do the math: 11.30 to 16.20, if you’re on business trip (which I do, fortunately not a meeting) then what will you or partners say?

So you think this is over, not quite… read on..
We finally got on a different plane at 16.20 which starts taxiing to the runway around 20 minutes after that.

From there everything runs smooth, the airplane finally fly. Horrayy! I didn’t go with the original plan to rest, decided to continue reading my book, managed to read like 4 chapters of my book (which I bought while waiting at the airport, titled “90 minutes in Heaven”, a very good book), then I suddenly realized, my friend who sit next to me seemed very confused looking at the window all the time, until he said we’re heading back to Jakarta. Hah?

And it’s true, not long after that, I heard the captain saying clearly that he got the order from control tower to bring the airplane back to Sukarno Hatta. Whatt???? Not again …

The time was already 17.00 when the captain said that, and I saw Java island was already on my left window, so yes it’s already on the path back. The captain then explained that our plane was not on the control tower’s radar. And according to the aviation rules is not allowed to fly. I don’t know anything about flight navigation, but I guess what he was trying to say is the radar couldn’t identify our plane. We are now officially a UFO! No, I mean another broken plane!

So, we got off the plane again. Frowned face shown from most of the passengers, they started questioning with high voice to the duty manager of what’s happening. Some wanted the money back, some angrily asked to be rescheduled tomorrow.

We, tired with all this, tried different approach. Tried asking as nicely as we can for what they can do about this, but our message was clear we don’t want to be in the flight number 406 anymore, enough with that. The duty manager then ask one of the officer to bring us (with several other passengers) to the customer service. Waited for maybe 20 minutes until they give us a new flight number (at the same time they also found a replacement plane for flight number 406, but we ignored it).

My friend asked for a free upgrade because of what’s happening, and they gave it to us no question at all. So finally we got the new flight, which is flight 418 a widebody airbus heading to Korea and transit in Bali. It’s scheduled to depart at 20.55, well who cares? We’ve survived so many hours before, just another one or two hours shouldn’t hurt at all.

This plane then took us to Bali, I slept. Touched down in Bali at 23.52. By the time the door opened it’s already 00.05.

So, that’s one longest domestic flight! Thank you Garuda for this, we love you!

Sharing buat kawan2, dan minta maaf karena postingnya dalam bahasa Inggris, karena tadinya direncanakan untuk di posting di facebook gw.