Hi all

Just thought I'd let you all know the experience I've just had on the BA flight 009 out of LHR to Sydney (dep 17th Feb, intended arrival 19 Feb):

About 4 hours into the leg from Bangkok to Sydney, a call was made through the cabin along the lines of "All crew to come to front of plane urgently" and the Cabin Crew suddenly got very alert and started rushing up and down the cabin looking very businesslike. 10 mins later the captain tells us there has been a slight problem and as a 'precaution' they are going to turn round and land at the nearest airport - which was Denpasar in Bali. Oh joy.

First thing I did was try to scrutinise the faces of the crew to see if they looked concerned. To their credit they didn't look worried, just serious. I took this as a good sign and relaxed (well a little bit).

Anyway we began our descent and I was in an exit row seat (loads of legroom!). At the bulkhead opposite one of the crew jump seats. As he sat down he asked me if I was ok, to which I replied - "yes but are you?" And he just laughed - which I took as another good sign. A few minutes later we were about to land when someone comes over the intercom saying "we need crew urgently at Exit 5". Not the most comforting of messages to hear when your plane is making a 'precautionary' landing. (I love the fact they didn't say emergency landing).

Anyway we touched down safely (if a little heavily as one of the lockers burst open) and had to brake hard as the runway was not designed for Jumbo's. We stopped at the end of the runway and saw fire engines speeding towards us but we'd been warned that would happen so I wasn't worried. Well not very - after all I was going to be first out onto the slide where I was sitting (28H).

Lucikly no emergency exits were needed. We sat on the plane for a while whilst engineers assessed the problem (still none the wiser what it was) but the captain decided the plane was unflyable so we all had to get off.

Then came the fun part. Sat in an airport in Bali at midnight with no Indonesian cash and nowhere that took credit cards. Luckily I had some water in my bag so I was fine. We waited around for about 3 hours with no idea what was going on, and then were finally told we were going to be taken to a hotel as the plane was going nowhere today. Another short delay occurred at customs where the Captain was trying to pay for all 400 visas on his credit card - and was being told no way much to his annoyance and ours. So we paid for our own (they did take cards thankfully) and finally we were put on buses and shipped to a hotel in Kuta.

After crashing out I awoke to find a note under my door telling us we would now be departing at 1am the next morning, to arrive in SYD on 20th Feb at 11am. We were entitled to all soft drinks, 3 phone calls of 3 mins each, and they put on Lunch and Dinner for use. Could be much much worse to be fair! The hotel was quite nice, and I've never been to Bali!

Anyway, I'm actually fairly impressed with how we were all treated apart from at the airport after we landed - there was no BA or Qantas ground crew available, and noone could tell us anything for hours. I would have expected one of the crew to come off the plane and let us know what the situation was, even if it was just to tell us to be patient. The complete lack of communication really caused a lot of bad feeling and tempers were running high. But, as I say, once we got to the hotel everything was well handled with regular information being provided.

On arrival here, I went out with friends, and by chance one of the group was the Customer Services Director at Qantas. He told me that there was SMOKE in the cockpit but no warning lights, so the pilot made the decision to land as soon as possible. Engineers could find nothing once we landed so he refused to fly it. It turns out they then had to cancel SIN-SYD and fly the 747 from that route over to Bali to take us on to SYD. That's some pretty impressive fast movement of planes to solve a big problem if you ask me!

I am of course going to lodge a complaint about the delay and our time at DPS with no information. Would someone be so kind as to tell me the best people I should do this via? Just write to Customer Services? Or is there a name I should contact directly?

Thanks in advance, and hope you enjoyed my tale

PS - A VERY BIG THANK YOU to uklanrae for getting me access to the Concorde Lounge at T4. It started my flight off perfectly. Oh and you did the right thing getting off in Bangkok