There is no doubt in my mind that when it comes to arranging travel you are best off doing it yourself.
I got to the airport at 6.10 and attempted to check in for my flight to Cairns. The man behind the counter checked and rechecked and announced " sorry sir you are not booked on any flights today", sounds familiar? Yes it did to me too. I rang Anthony as I figured seeing I had to get up early he might as well too and informed him of the situation. I then hung around to see if any of the others would show up but no such luck. So half an hour in the taxi and I was back at the office.
Just after venting my spleen about the travel coordinator and settling in for a days work the telephone went. Could I make the direct Brisbane - Port Moresby flight at 10.55. So back in a cab and off to the international terminal where it was total chaos with far more people then were ever going to fit on aircraft trying to check in. An airline employee went through the crowd asking who had onward connections to catch, those of us that did were checked in first, tough luck to every one else. Of course this being a code share flight with Air New Guinea this wasn't where the fun stopped. The departure time came and went and without any announcement whatsoever the departure was postponed by an hour and a half. I made some enquiries but didn't get much further then "technical problems". Ah well... the plane did actually leave an hour and a half later and three hours of a luckily smooth flight saw me disembarking at Port Moresby's new terminal.
Things started to look up. The new terminal is clean, air-conditioned and fairly spacious, it's no Changi but that is hardly necessary for a country like PNG. The next bit of good news was that they actually had held the charter to Moro for us, so only ten or fifteen minutes after our arrival we were on our way again and just on six o'clock we arrived at Ridge Camp my base for the next few weeks
