My simple flight home from Europe became a 74-hour ordeal

I’m on a Qatar Airways lunchtime flight from the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to Doha in Qatar, and my travel plan is a neat little 21-hour, three-flight run home from Sofia to Melbourne via Doha and Kuala Lumpur.

There are no seat-back screens and the bulkhead screens are blank. Without a flight map, I’m playing a guessing game as to where we are and what time we’ll get there.

Credit: Jamie Brown

I’ve got a lazy 60 minutes to get to my KL-bound flight, but warlords, travel gods and politicians are conspiring against me. Over the next 74 hours, I hit the trifecta of travel malfunctions – airspace closures due to the Middle Eastern conflict, an aircraft malfunction and the Australian school holidays.

The writing is on the wall, and it says, “you’re not going to make it, baby”.

Hurdle one. On touchdown, a crew member holds a sign for Kuala Lumpur passengers. Instead of a fast-track to the next gate, she delivers fresh boarding passes, a hotel voucher and three surprising pieces of information: I’m staying in Doha tonight, my luggage isn’t coming with me, and I’m going to Singapore. Just the first flight in and my plans are tumbling like a house of expired boarding passes. I’ll miss three international flights, have two hotel stays, eat countless airline meals and not go to Kuala Lumpur.

A cockpit screen error saw passengers removed from the plane, then a new cabin crew was needed due to the three-hour delay.Credit: iStock

Fast-forward the next 13 hours: there’s a gambol through passport control’s diplomatic lane with my new best friend, the Bulgarian consul. Then a queue for hotel room with other stranded passengers as the conflict between Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran closes airspace, forcing flights to detour through safer routes. Drink mango juice in Doha’s designer-rustic Souq Waqif. Take a five-hour, lie-flat sleep. Hit screeching 5am alarm for shuttle bus back to the airport.

It could be worse. Over a tired hotel buffet, a Belgian couple tell me they’ve spent 40 hours in Doha, waiting for an onward flight to Bangkok. Others say their in-flight map showed them flying directly over Palestine, and pilots chatter on socials of rocket fire ahead of them. Doha, like the rest of the world, waits on edge. And I wait, too.

Back at Hamad airport, on the bus to the aircraft. We drive. And drive. And drive. It’s less than 200 kilometres from the top to the bottom of Qatar, how much more tarmac is left? Twenty-five minutes later, oh hello, there’s the original gate we departed from.

Hurdle two. A screen in the cockpit has malfunctioned, we’re ejected back into the terminal. And we wait.

Two hours later, I’ve got a toothbrush and a fresh shirt and underwear, but no toiletries. Oh La Mer, I can ill-afford your sea-kelp broth, but the duty-free testers step up to rehydrate my cabin-pressurised skin. Moisturiser, a dab of eye cream, some concealer, blush, and I’m touched up for take-off.

The Orchard at Hamad International Airport.

Three hours in, the delay has cut into the cabin crew’s schedule, so they’re all sent home, and we wait for the new crew. The airline puts on breakfast in the nearest food court. Breakfast butter chicken? Bring it. Afterwards, I retreat to the Orchard, Doha airport’s artificial rainforest, to write emails to the symphony of a waterfall and bird calls.

Four hours in. Burger stands! Win a car! Buy a gold ring! Tri-lingual boarding announcement! I don’t register the sensory overload until I crawl into the cool, dark Quiet Room for some respite. If you’re going to get stranded in an airport – especially as an economy passenger – make it the world’s best.

Five hours on, I’m starting to talk like Tom Hanks. His character in the film The Terminal spends 18 years in an airport, but I reach deep to unleash a well of empathy.

A win! Finally on the Doha to Singapore leg, I score the poor-woman’s business class – a row of three seats - and sleep half the flight. Qatar has wrangled me a seat on the Qantas flight from Singapore to Melbourne tonight, but limping into Changi airport five hours late, that bird has long flown the coop.

Channelling The Amazing Race, I trot down the airbridge at 3am to be met by yet another Qatar crew member holding yet more fresh boarding passes, more hotel and taxi vouchers. Welcome to Singapore, you have 23 hours here.

Hurdle three. In the death grip of Australian school holidays, all flights back to Melbourne are sold and oversold. “I’ll take premium economy!” I boldly declare. There’s a headshake. “Business?” Sorry. “First?” It comes out as a whimper. Still no. “If I could, I would, but there are simply no seats to Melbourne,” says the sympathetic Qatar Airways woman.

At the 43-hour mark and her kindness, I give in to small tears. Against a backdrop of the eerily empty Changi airport, it’s time to ask the big questions: why can’t we allow Qatar to add more flights into Melbourne? (Turns out we have). Or at least ramp up capacity to avoid the hideous bottleneck of school holidays, when travellers are scalped by airlines, at the mercy of (meagre) supply versus (monstrous) demand?

I am lucky: I am not fleeing a war zone, nor travelling to visit a parent on their deathbed. My deadline is simply to be home to pack school lunches on Monday morning, and my airline has rebooked and paid for all new flights, hotels, meals and transfers.

Fast-forward to Singapore stopover: five hours’ lie-flat sleep at Carlton Hotel. Power walk through Raffles. Shop bracelets down Kampong Glam. Pop into Atlas bar. Raid the hotel’s seafood buffet. Quick photo op at Jewel and its rival rainforest, in the world’s second-best airport.

There’s not a spare seat on the Qantas flight home, and I endure the crew’s eye-rolls to secure a glass of sparkling to dull the sharp edges of the night flight.

Seventy-three hours after departure, it’s final touchdown. And 40 minutes waiting on the tarmac for stairs and buses to arrive. It’s an ignominious end to three days of in-flight meals, catnaps, tarmac tours and endless queues. It’s only dirt and old chewing gum that stops me from going papal and kissing the ground.

My next flight isn’t for another month.