Los Angeles Airport

We expected to lose a day on our way to Fiji by crossing the International Date Line......not two. But as we arrived 4 hours prior to our flight to check in with Air Pacific we were informed by an annoyingly cheerful rep that our flight had been brought forward by 4 hours and had just left. He couldn’t give us a reason why we had not been contacted, why the flight had changed or why the departure time on their website had not changed (we checked online at noon) and, as we had just checked out of our hotel and returned our hire car, we had no choice but to be put up in a hotel by them for 24 hours. Given a choice of two we chose the Four Point Sheraton over the Hilton (a good choice as it turned out) and were told that Air Pathetic (as we had now renamed them) would pay for everything except phone calls. And make them pay we would! The $80 for dinner went mostly on booze (apart from the kid’s meals!), $60 went on breakfast in bed, by lunch we were getting full but managed to eat another $60 worth and the $80 we spent on dinner just before leaving for the airport was just plain greed but what the hell!

Anyway, it didn’t turn out all bad. I’d learned from the internet as I was finding out how to vent my spleen that the jumbo jet we were flying on had economy seats upstairs in the ‘bubble’, 4 of which I managed to blag, and while ‘downstairs’ was packed, about 10 people upstairs shared seating for about 100, meaning we all got to lie down for the 11 hour flight and with eyemasks, earplugs and various pills got a good night’s sleep.

The other missing day....