Fri, 16/1/15
We arrived at the airport in Bali at 3:30pm to catch the 6:10pm flight to Darwin. At 5:45pm there were mumblings from the passengers that the flight had been cancelled. At 6.15pm an announcement was made that the flight had been cancelled and that all passengers were to make their way back to the check-in counter. This meant:
We had to line up (again) to go back through customs area; Find luggage that had been 'dumped' in the check-in area; we were told to line up at the check-in area but no one from Jetstar told us why we were lining up. I approached security at the airport and asked what were we waiting for and the security personnel advised that we would be put on another plane perhaps to Melbourne, Adelaide or Sydney where we could join a connecting flight to Darwin. This meant flying overnight for a minimum of 5 hours and the soonest flight they were booking people on was to Adelaide at 10.20pm. I also suggested that water could be given to the passengers and in typical form the airport staff smiled and said in very broken English no, no, could not supply water - of course not, that would have been GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE.
In the queue was at least 1 pregnant lady and several families with babies and small children but Jetstar did not at any time attempt to check these people in first, so they were forced to wait in the queue for over 3 hours - SHAME, SHAME, SHAME ON JETSTAR. Another problem was for people travelling alone - they could not leave the queue to get water, food or go to the toilet. I offered to do this for some of the people around me but you could see that they were very uncomfortable at the thought of drinking and then having to go to the toilet and/or of leaving their bags with a stranger - understandable as it was BALI.
So once you made it to the check-in counter you were booked on the flight to Adelaide at 10:30pm (5 hour flight) with a wait time at Adelaide of 2 hours before boarding a plane to Darwin (another 3.5 hours). So if you were really lucky you would be in Darwin at 10am (Bali time) or 11.30 (Darwin time) - this meant that by the time the passengers arrived at Darwin they would have been travelling for 20 hours or more.
My partner and I opted to go to Brisbane - Jetstar staff tried to change our minds but we were adamant to go to Brisbane as we have a house there and we wanted to go and have a sleep and then organise to fly to Darwin from there. This proved to be easier than we had expected. Jetstar organised travel for us to our house and then booked us on a Qantas flight to Darwin on Sunday 18/1/15. We were very lucky but regardless, this will be the last time to travel with Jetstar.