Aussieland Day Eight: Non-Revving Cairns-Sydney-Honolulu-Los Angeles-Seattle

Our last day in Australia put us in a very interesting non-rev situation. The night before we left Cairns, we tried to check in for our flight from Sydney to LAX only to find out the entire flight had been cancelled. Not only were we not going to get on but 200+ people who had actual tickets for that flight were now being rebooked on every other possible option we had to get home.

We got up extra early to take the first flight to Sydney we possible could in hopes that we could catch an earlier flight that other passengers may not have been aware of. What we didn't account for was landing in Sydney's domestic terminal and trying to get to the international terminal. I've never been to an airport where you had to buy a ticket to take a bus from one terminal to the other. The bus didn't run very often, it stopped in a bunch of places along the way and we ended up missing the first flight.

Take me with you!

We sat in the airport for 12 hours trying to hop any flight that would get us back to the west coast but everything was well overbooked. We racked our brains and tried to find any flight on any airline that would move us in the right direction. Finally, that evening, we got tickets from Sydney to Honolulu. We were told that because of the flight being cancelled there were people displaced for days, so somehow this flight to Honolulu must have gotten overlooked!

We made it to Honolulu the next morning, went through customs and out of security, grabbed our next set of standby tickets and went right back through security. I got in a couple of deep breaths of sweet tropical air before getting right back on a plane bound for Los Angeles. From Los Angeles we were able to catch the next flight to Seattle and we were home that evening. Overall, it took 30 hours to get home. I was exhausted and in dire need of a shower but we made it! Breaking up the journey by traveling through Honolulu was really nice and I recommend it to anyone who's feeling a little leery about a 14 hour flight to Sydney from LAX!