Woke up at 4 this morning to a text from Qantas that our flight to Alice Springs had been cancelled. They had instead booked us on a flight to Darwin arriving at midnight and then over to Alice after a 5 hour stop over, the following day.

I rang Qantas and joined the queue to get to talk to an agent. Given everyone was up we decided to go to the airport anyway. En route we finally got through to the call center who were quite ineffective.

Qantas terminal at 5 am in Canberra is a depressing representation of the great Australian carrier. Lines of passengers waiting to check-in and no staff. There was literally no one available to help. I planted myself near the door to the staff room and the moment someone walked out, asked for assistance. To their credit, the person was helpful but was constrained by limited options out of Canberra. We discussed flying via Adelaide, Melbourne and even Darwin.

Finally we negotiated that if we drive to Sydney they would let us start the trip from there and fly straight to Alice. This resulted in a mad 3 hour dash from Canberra to Sydney. The whole time was spent watching Google maps for every traffic update.

We finally made it only 20 minutes to spare but we were able to check in our bags. We also had enough time for a coffee and some quick breakfast before boarding.