WELCOME TO HICKSVILLE

It’s good to be back. Flew in from New Zealand last night after my Dad’s funeral and thanks for your messages and emails. They were greatly appreciated. There’s a postscript to my urgent trip across the ditch and it has nothing to do with a nightmarish trip over which, door-to-door, ended up taking more than 25 hours including flight diversions from Auckland to Christchurch and then back to Auckland.

And nothing to do with Swine Flu precautions, which are understandably everywhere, and we were thermally scanned and cleared before re-entering Australia.

And nothing to do with Emirates whose staff and services were exemplary. It had everything to do with Melbourne Airport. Our so-called International Airport. It made me feel like we’d arrived at some hick airport in a Third World country.

We sat on the tarmac of this ‘world class’ airport for two hours because they didn’t have the facilities available to unload a world class plane. An Airbus 380. 

It is true the plane arrived about 15 minutes early and you have to accept some delays. But apparently a departing plane had technical problems at our gate. Presumably, they couldn’t find a tug to tow it out. And we sat, and we sat, as airline staff negotiated with airport authorities -- which our apologetic pilot called ‘a fiasco’.

An hour into the standoff we were told we’d be unloaded on to buses but they wouldn’t be available for another hour. Then the only suitable set of stairs were being used on a cargo plane somewhere else in the complex. Then only one bus could be found for several hundred people.

I know this will sound little league when an airline tragedy of immense proportions is being played out on the other side of the world.  But we boast about our facilities as we try to lure more air traffic to Melbourne. We woo international carriers to base here, originate more flights here, offer tourism deals here.

And yet we have an airport that has some of the highest landing fees in the world. Has parking fees that are highway robbery. And has been designed with such little vision that is has been permanently under construction for about thirty years.

What happened last night was bureaucracy meets Hicksville.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009