Escape From Alcatraz – The First Attempt!

The few days of rest after leaving our home behind were idyllic and just what we needed after the strain of the move but if stress were a three-course meal the move would have been the appetizer! Little did we know that the days to follow would eclipse everything we had experienced thus far.

The calm before the shit storm!

In the week leading up to the move Omicron had really been making its presence known across Auckland with the number of exposed cases reaching a high of nine hundred. Testing stations were at capacity with test results often delayed due to the sheer numbers (those of you living in countries where cases exceeded the 1,000’s will be laughing at those figures).

We were soon to join those numbers because while most people would be shopping for flowers and chocolates for their loved ones on Valentine’s Day, we would be having a body cavity violated with a Q-tip (the nasal cavity people…get your minds out of the gutter!) Yep, Monday the 14th of February was the day that we had to get a PCR test completed as a requirement of travel for our flight to Canada on the Wednesday.

According to the literature issued by Air New Zealand (the airline we had booked our flights with), numerous Google searches and a chat with a representative working for the Flight Centre the requirement to fly under the current Covid restrictions was for a negative PCR test to be provided 72 hours prior to the flight, nothing more and nothing less.

A PCR test at the time involved a large Q-tip shoved into your nasal cavity until it tickled your brain, the sample would be sent by the team administering the tests to a lab, and the results would be issued by text and email usually within 24-48 hours, the results would be required as proof that you were safe to travel.

Nowhere in any of the literature issued either by the government or the airlines did it state that the PCR tests had to be provided by a recommended supplier who issued you a certificate to travel, make a mental note of this because things are about to get f@*ked up!

We got up at the crack of a sparrow’s fart on the Monday and made our way to a local government testing station which we knew carried out PCR tests, we were number four in an ever-expanding queue, but within a short amount of time we were driving out of the testing station with a sore brain, watering eyes and a fit of sneezing but the tests were complete and on their way to the lab. It had been surprisingly easy, all we had to do was hope that the results would be back before our flight Wednesday evening.

By the following morning, the confirmation email for my test results were through and negative phew! We were still waiting for Martin’s results to appear, but we still had time. Our PCR tests were completed at the same time and would have gone to the same lab, to be processed at the same time, right? Wrong.

Panic will reach maximum level in three…two…one

By Wednesday, the day we were due to fly Martin’s PCR test results had still not made an appearance, thankfully our flight was not until 11.55pm that evening so that gave us plenty of time to panic, phone all the helplines and labs we could find and then panic some more.

After hours spent on the phone to try and track Martins test results down, we finally spoke to someone at the lab who knew what they were doing. Apparently, Martins test sample was separated from mine and sent to an entirely different lab location and was still awaiting evaluation, furthermore they could not guarantee the result would be available in time. I had no words! Not even expletives and that has to be a first for me.

In a last-ditch attempt at goodness knows what we drove to Auckland Airport to speak to someone, anyone from Air New Zealand to see what our options were if we even had any. We had gone past the point of panic and were now desperate. When we finally managed to find an Air NZ employee and explained our situation regarding the delayed PCR test results, she looked at us with confusion before telling us that the test provided by the government was not a PCR test, WTF!

We double checked our information, the information on the websites and emails and confirmed that the test that we had taken on Monday was a government funded PCR test and we told the employee this.

The employee again countered that it was not a PCR test! We were obviously missing something or behaving like morons again. We went backwards and forwards for what seemed like an eternity with the employee saying it was not a PCR test and us saying it was, all that was missing was the sand pit and a kindergarten.

At a complete loss we asked the employee to explain what she thought a PCR test was, and she described the exact test that we had taken on Monday, we told her this, but she was adamant it was the wrong test. By this point we were highly confused and borderline annoyed that we could not understand what she was telling us.

We tried to break this conversation down so that we could make sense of what she was saying because in that moment either we had our wires crossed or her information was wrong, either way it was not looking good for us!

The conversation went a bit like this – Was the nasal cavity swab a PCR test? Yes. Was the test we had taken on Monday where our nasal cavity was swabbed a PCR test? Yes. Then we have had the correct PCR test? No. What is the correct PCR test? The one that you must pay for and not the one that is government funded. The penny dropped! Why did she not just start with that snippet of information!

Apparently under Air New Zealand’s travel requirements (the ones written in invisible ink so no one can see them) only PCR tests provided by a recommended supplier were permitted, the recommended supplier would issue a certificate stating the results of the test (roughly the same thing the government provided which in essence was a negative test result), we would have to pay $250 per person for the privilege of that test certificate and there was even a testing station for the correct PCR tests located conveniently at the airport. Obviously, this was news to us.

We queried why there was no information on the Air New Zealand website stating that they did not permit government funded PCR tests. We queried why the website did not clarify which PCR test providers were acceptable along with a list of said PCR test providers, the employee was at a loss and had no answers. She stated that due to Covid the website had not been updated recently, that the information available to the public and staff alike was confusing and that they had even turned travellers away at the check in desk due to not having the correct PCR test results. It was a total cluster.

We had gone from desperate, to confused, to angry, to resigned within an hour! The realisation had hit us like a sledgehammer, we were not going to make our flight tonight. We had no complaint with the Air New Zealand staff member, she was doing her best in a difficult and confusing situation with extraordinarily little information, but we did blame the airline.

Silly me, expecting too much from people again!

There was simply not enough information available for travellers with regards to the Covid testing requirements, this was a costly experience for us in time, money, and energy but luckily, we had the spare money, time and energy albeit rapidly diminishing on all fronts. We felt for all those that had been through the same experience but with no support or resources to fall back on.

The employee advised us to contact the Air New Zealand bookings desk and rebook our flights, we would have to call them directly as the desk at the airport was closed. We decided to do this from the comfort of our friend’s house where we could scream and cry into a pillow and would not have to hide how devastated we were.

We can’t even explain how awesome our friends were during this time, they gave us much needed support, told us we weren’t the bumbling, clueless idiots we felt we were, and they did not bat an eyelid when they found out they had to put us up until our next flight, we will always be profoundly grateful for their friendship.

As much as we wanted to there was no time to scream and cry into our pillows because by the time we had got back from the airport it was after 5pm and our flights had to be refunded and credited back to us before the check in for our original flights due to take off at 11.55pm closed, if we did not we would lose our money.  

This was where we encountered our next problem with Air New Zealand, because the day had not been rough enough already. All the phonelines for bookings were permanently busy and we could not get through for love nor money! For hours we listened to the same automated message telling us that our call was important and that the current wait time was 55 minutes, the longer we waited the more the waiting time increased instead of decreased which made no sense whatsoever, but nothing today had made sense.

We were well into our third hour of waiting in the queue and were at the point of smashing the phone to a million pieces if we heard the same LAB song again (as good a band as they are) when we finally tapped out. We were cutting it too fine if we were going to get the credit done in time so had no other choice than to get online, cancel our flight and use the credit to rebook the next flight.

Air New Zealand had originally provided the flights from Auckland through to our destination in Ottawa but now that we were looking to rebook, we could only find Air New Zealand flights that were going to Vancouver which would mean that the flights from Vancouver onwards would have to be provided by another airline and it would be at an extra cost to us because our credit only covered Air New Zealand flights. Life was really sucking balls right now!

The best successes come after the greatest disappointments.

By the time we crawled into bed Wednesday night we had booked a flight leaving NZ at 11.55pm on Friday which would take us to Vancouver, Toronto and then Ottawa (we may have to fly to almost every Canadian city to do it but at least we were getting out of NZ, hopefully!). We had also booked an appointment to have the correct PCR test conducted on the Thursday prior to our flight with a guaranteed next day result response rate.

After a day from Hell when all we felt capable of doing was sitting in a corner, gently rocking ourselves whilst whispering please make it stop mummy, we took the blessings where we could. We were going to make it to Canada no matter how determined NZ was to keep us. Our nerves were frayed, and our wallets were a couple of thousand dollars lighter, but we had made it through a truly crappy day with only a couple of marbles less than when we started.

We only had two days to wait before we would finally be in the air, please God let us be in the air in two days!