Date : 5th June - 6th Jul 2009
Flying Hours: 3 hours 20 mins
(GMT +0800)
I used my 3 off days to swap for 3 days Beijing flight to operate, I haven't been rostered for Beijing flight so far. I would like to go to the Great Wall of China and visit the Forbidden City. After my swap has been approved, 2 days later company changed my 3 days Beijing to overnight pattern, DAMN IT! The 2nd full day was supposed to be my free day exploring Beijing and now I have to duty travel back to Hong Kong early in the morning, departing at 7:45am. I was thinking nevermine, at least I still manage to have a dinner at Beijing and probably shop around at the night market before leaving the next day morning.
Bad things had just never happened once, my flight to Beijing was supposed to depart at 5pm, arriving at 8 something. The weather that day was really bad, it rained heavily with thunderstorms, the captain received message from Beijing and the weather overthere was bad either. Captain made announcement that flight will be delayed until further notice.
The frontliners, we as a Cabin Crew will be the one who face all the passengers on board making all the explanations and calming them down.
"How long it's going to be delayed?"
"Do we get compensated?"
"CX has to pay us voucher"
"I want a printed statement from CX"
"This is ridiculous" ...... bla bla bla
So we have to answer all those questions, some of the passengers were being unreasonable as well. This is my job, I had to be very patient to everyone.
4 hours plus has passed and we've finally received good news from the captain announcing that we are able to take off from HKIA to Beijing. During that 4 hours in the aircraft, we served drinks & meals to the passengers, the meals which we are supposed to serve after take off initially. Finally CX312 pushed back and took off at 930pm, it was a 3 hours and 20 mins flight and when we arrived at Beijing airport, it has already 1am. Everyone was extremely exhausted.
When we reached the Renaissance Beijing Hotel at 1:45am and got our room key and outport allowance, they reduced our allowance as we arrived late. From RMB 381 reduced until RMB 143, this is totally insane and all of us were not happy with this. But our ISM was kind enough to help us to write a letter to the company and fight for us.
I immediately went up to my room, took a quick shower and jump onto the super cozy bed and sleep, knowing the wake up call will be 4:50am, we didn't have even 3 hours on the bed. I haven't even started to dream and my room telephone has rung, I struggled so hard to get up from the bed, get changed and prepared to leave the hotel, and to leave Beijing back to Hong Kong.
This is my first time to Beijing and I just had the chance to sleep for not even 3 hours on the bed and I left Beijing ..... what an experience to remember!!!
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