That time I learned what economy really meant with Jetstar

Lemme set the scene for you. When it comes to flying to Australia from the US, there’s no such thing as a cheap fare. You’re coming out of pocket over a grand and that’s before luggage, seats, or even a hint of food on a 19 hour transatlantic flight. You can fly with a “reputable” carrier like United (I’ll die before I fly American again) or you can fly with a combo carrier like Hawaiian and Jetstar. If you fly often then you know how common it is for an airline to piggyback a flight on another carrier and label it as their own. I’ve played this game before with Qantas. I don’t know if the problem is that I’m just downright too cheap to pay for a decent flight or if in some ways I enjoy the pain of piecing together my own budget itinerary, spread across multiple credit cards and the hope that none will decline. Either way, I always seem to find myself in these sort of predicaments.

With some insight from my Aussie friends I decided to purchase my tickets separately, one roundtrip to Honolulu and then another to Sydney. If I played my cards right, I could come in around the $700-800 mark. With constant clocking from both continents, we waited til the individual prices for each flight were prime, snagging a $300 fare for the Honolulu to Sydney flight on Jetstar. Eventually the price on the Vegas to Honolulu flight dipped, and I picked that up for around $400 on Hawaiian. I ended up paying almost half what others were paying for the exact flight booked through Hawaiian Airlines directly via Jetstar. The only thing that caused me concern were the strict rules on luggage from one airline to the other, of which I had upgraded anyway. I bought myself a traveling scale, weighed everything to a tenth of the kg and hoped for a smooth connection.

Getting on my Hawaiian flight was a breeze. They took my ticket, barely weighed my luggage, and I was gone. In fact, I generally fly Hawaiian whenever I can for domestic flights because I’ve simply never had a problem with them. I landed in Honolulu two hours before my Jetstar flight. At 5am that should be plenty of time. I stopped at the Amex lounge only to find they were only serving ice, juice, and coffee (what a fucking nightmare) before giving up and heading toward the Jetstar counter. I collected my bags and made the long haul from one end of the airport to the other, a self transfer that I couldn’t avoid even if I had booked a single connecting flight. The place was a ghost town til I reared around a corner and saw an immense crowd out on the sidewalk. Upon further inspection it was my Jetstar flight so I jumped in line and began shuffling. We moved slowly and as the line shortened, I began to feel stressed. There were at least 12 check-in stations and at every station you could see people with their luggage scattered on the sidewalk, furiously throwing items from one bag to another. I knew in that instant this was going to be the worst experience of my life. I proceeded up to the ticket agent and sat my small purse on the counter. She took the ticket and instructed me to put my all my carry-on on the scale. I picked my rolley up and sat it there. She motioned toward my bag, my tiny tiny bag, so I sat it there too. Then my jacket and my canteen of water. I looked around with sweat beading on my face. I couldn’t believe it. Next I thought she was going to make ME stand on the scale. She explained to me that I was over the weight limit, although I had paid to upgrade to the heaviest carry-on. I had the option to move some items to my luggage, which I still can’t wrap my head around considering both items are eventually loaded onto the same plane. I couldn’t throw out camera equipment or a laptop so I began to toss jerky, candy, food of any kind, all the water from my canteen, sunscreen, my book. I threw away basically everything I needed for the next twelve hours. We weighed my check on bag, for shits and giggles I guess, before she informed me that I didn’t pay for upgraded luggage and it was going to cost me a hundred million dollars (or some shit like that). I pulled up the email with the receipt that proved that I did, in fact, buy luggage and she begrudgingly tossed the bag behind her and allowed me to proceed. Interestingly, I would encounter the same you-didn’t-upgrade scam at the Jetstar counter coming home as well.

I scurried through security as fast as I could before someone could catch me but not before peering over my shoulder at all the other hundreds of people throwing their personal items away like they were boarding the train to Auschwitz. Security was no more friendly and after being pat down and swabbed twice for explosives, I reluctantly threw some more stuff out before I was arrested for terrorism. Once through, I cried, real ugly kind of crying; the kind of crying you do when you think you’re going to miss a flight to a very expensive trip kind of crying. I was now standing in a hallway full of closed storefronts about to board this 12 hour flight after flying a redeye all night. There would be no food service or drinks because I hadn’t upgraded my ticket. I hadn’t eaten since the day before, relying completely on my super fancy lounge access. I filled up my canteen at the water fountain and dug around the bottom of my bag searching for rogue snacks that may have made it past check-in. No such luck. I searched for the gate only to find that the flight, the completely full flight, was being corraled into a small room like cattle. Dozens of people standing or sitting on the floor, shoved together in this claustrophobic space, a precursor to this unimaginable flight. I wondered if this is what it felt like before you’re executed. I spent the next hour wondering if I would get on the plane and they would force me to check my carry-on. You know, the one I dumped and repacked out front. The anxiety gnawed at my guts, making me sick. I knew I had to keep it together. Any sign of weakness and they might put my bags into the size check one last time.

Eventually I boarded, found my seat, and pulled the hood on my sweatshirt over my head. I was on, we were going, and I wouldn’t have to endure this shit again for another three weeks. All of the emotion and stress did me good. I slept most of the flight, only waking up when they passed by with $15 prepaid Hot Pockets that smelled like pizza sauce and shit. Thank you for flying Jetstar, the crackhead cousin of Qantas Airlines.