MarkFlynn

I had a friend arriving from MEL on NZ194 for CHC. When I phoned reservations (the only number on the back of my card) to find out about the arrival of the plane, the NZ agent read out the description, which said "flight canceled due to US aircraft"

As NZ and QF are the only airlines who fly this route, it threw me (as I was thinking it referred to country etc), and I found out that US stand for "useless". At least someone at NZ has a sense of humour.

But more onto the point was that the pax was rerouting to AKL then booked to fly a morning flight to CHC. The problem was that as I was supposed to meet at the airport the pax did not have my home address or phone number (!). I did give it to her, but she thought she would not need it!

And NZ could not be certain what flight she would be on in the morning as she may decide to catch the first or take advantage of the hotel and catch a more leisurely flight. And there was no way I was going to wait around CHC airport all sunday morning.

So they managed to get an urgent message to her at MEL which we worked out she received only 10 mins after my call. Without the message it would have added more stress to her flight (first itnl flight!) and I would have spent sunday morning lurking around the airport.

All this was done without me having to mention FF status or using a gold line or whatever, it was just someone being helpful.

Always good to know that somewhere in an airline there are people who can be spontaneously helpful.

Mark

AlphaSigOU

I think what they meant was 'unserviceable,' sometimes abbreviated as US or U/S. But never underestimate the N-Zed wry humor! It coulda been useless for all we know.

------------------
AlphaSigOU
Causa latet vis est notissima - the cause is hidden, the results are well-known.