A strike in France: travellers stuck in Auckland (NZ)

We were quite looking forward going to Tahiti; after having finished cycling, we passed a few days in Auckland, which wasn’t our favorite city and the weather wasn’t all too good, which made we were quite looking forward to some sunshine in Tahiti. But, arriving at the airport we got a little surprise…

“Flight AT5240 to Pape’ete (Tahiti) cancelled”

What?!?!

First we thought (or hoped) it was just some bad joke, but no, the flight was cancelled and we were rescheduled for a flight on the 6th of June. Luckily Qantas was able to reschedule all our follow-up flights too, which made that finally we aren’t going to loose any days visiting Tahiti or the Easter Islands (our next destination), we will just only be there a little bit later than planned. :-)

But, probably the “jewel” of this story is the reason why this flight was cancelled:

The plane that was supposed to fly us from Auckland to Pape’ete was actually stuck in Bordeaux (France) where maintenance engineers decided to go on strike!

?!?!?!

No maintenance, no take-off. And as Tahiti Airlines only has 5 planes, well there you go! Stuck in New-Zealand for 4 more days…

Crazy how some guys on strike can affect others 20.000 km away… :-)

But New-Zealand isn’t the worst place to be stuck in, so from the airport we rented a car and decided to drive around the north island a bit, which we didn’t visit so far.

There’s a good side to everything… :-)

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Et pour les Français: on n’était même pas sur un vol Air France ou un trajet en train avec la SNCF… ;-)

This entry was written by Vera and posted on June 4, 2008 at 9:49 and filed under New Zealand, World Trip. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

4 Comments

  1. marie-annick
    Posted June 4, 2008 at 12:01 | Permalink

    je crois que vous aviez un peu oublié ce qu’était la réalité de notre quotidien et que le mot :grève ne faisait plus partie de votre vocabulaire!!! il faut bien que vous reveniez en douceur à la vie courante!!! :-)

  2. Giel Vaessen
    Posted June 4, 2008 at 20:46 | Permalink

    Dear Vera and jean-Christophe,
    The north Island is also worth to visit. Did you go to Cape Reinga, or by bus travelling gthe ninety miles beach? Or the Coromandel, bay of Islands, Rotarua?
    Have a nice trip to Tahiti. We are jealous!
    Regards
    Giel and Paul

  3. Sophie
    Posted June 5, 2008 at 18:12 | Permalink

    C’est fou çà! Même à l’autre bout du monde vous êtes touchés par nos petits désagréments de la vie en France!! Ici y’a des choses qui ne changent pas! et la première d’entre elles, c’est les grêves!!! y’en a de plus en plus je crois!! et elles ont de plus en plus d’impact à ce que je vois!!

  4. Nico,Marion et cie
    Posted June 5, 2008 at 19:17 | Permalink

    Hello les amis,
    Mes pieds ne se reposent pas dans les empreintes d’hier, je garde le lien avec notre périple et vous y contribuez… La vie reste belle, même si la liberté n’a plus une si grande latitude. Mais nous retournerons un jour sur ces vrais chemins de la vie, ceux du présent qui parlent fort ! Amusez-vous de cette liberté. A bientôt Bisous, les Racine-terrecarre.