When you’re taking a long-haul flight from halfway across the world, one of the very last text notifications you want to read is that one of your flights has been cancelled. We flew on AA from JFK to LAX on Sunday, then had a long layover at LAX to get on our Qantas flight, originally from LAX to Melbourne. But due to a delayed incoming plane, our flight from LAX to MEL got cancelled. We got rebooked onto the next best option, which was to fly from LAX to Sydney, but obviously that would require a third leg (which I HATE) from SYD to MEL. I detest that flight for a few reasons: 1) it clearly prolongs the trip even more, which is especially annoying with a young child in tow, 2) it requires us to collect our checked luggage in Sydney since that’s our first point of entry into the country, then re-check the bag to Melbourne, 3) this also means leaving the secured area and going through security yet again, and 4) in Sydney, you actually have to take a bus connection from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, which is quite a trek. So if you have a tight connection, you could easily miss it.

So, we ended up taking a flight to Sydney, knowing we had to take a third flight to Melbourne. But we encountered even more issues we were alerted to once we got into the Sydney airspace: our flight had two sick passengers aboard, and upon landing, some medical professionals had to come on board to inspect them in case the passengers had any communicable diseases that would require quarantine. The original flight we were scheduled to be on from SYD to MEL already had a tight connection time of just 90 minutes, and so as soon as we landed, we got a notification that we had been rebooked onto a slightly later flight to Melbourne… and got booted out of business class and into economy due to all the seats being sold out in business class. Of course, Chris was not happy with this, so he immediately got in touch with the agents working at the front desk of the Qantas lounge and tried to change it. But since business class was sold out, we just had seats moved further forward in economy class.

While it was annoying to have a third leg to Melbourne and also get downgraded to economy class when we originally booked business all the way, it wasn’t that terrible in the end. Chris had booked all three of our flights on points, so when he contacted Qantas on what could be done refund-wise given the flight downgrade, they had a calculator on how to refund us… which ended up being the equivalent of almost an entire business class ticket from LAX to MEL. That’s pretty darn good!