A 35-hour-flight-nightmare has left an elderly Tassie woman ‘absolutely wrecked’ after what should’ve been a 90-minute flight turned into 2 days of travel.
70-year-old Latrobe woman Charmaine Smigielski was booked to fly direct from Launceston to Sydney with Virgin so she could transport her friend, who has secondary spinal cancer and can’t drive, to radiation therapy last week.
Smigielski told A Current Affair the direct flight was cancelled after being grounded at Launceston Airport for five hours due to ‘an engineering problem’, leading her to be rebooked on a trip across the country.
A sleepless night, several boarding passes and multiple cancellations later, the 35-hour-roundabout journey ended up sending Smigielski from Launceston to Melbourne and onto Coolangatta in Queensland, where she was forced to take a $340 taxi to Brisbane Airport before arriving in Sydney.
A Current Affair say Virgin Australia have agreed to refund all of Smigielski’s costs, including each one of her flights.
