We arrive in Port Moresby and are prepared for the possibility of itinerary changes with Air Niugini. (I wrote about all the changes to our flights before we left home.) When I check my emails, we have one from the airline confirming and letting us check in online for our flight to Alotau. Looks like this flight is a go. The flight flew on time and as booked!
While on the liveaboard, a day before we are to depart, we ask the captain to confirm our 7:05 am flight from Rabaul to Port Moresby. He lets us know, later in the day, that the flight is confirmed. Okay, this is good.
We are moored in the harbour at KoKoPo, New Britain, near the Rabaul Airport. We need to be at the KoKoPo Resort reception at 5:00am and as we walk into the area we see another traveller waiting for the shuttle. Another good sign.
We check in and the agent tells us he cannot give us our boarding passes until the plane takes off from the previous stop. But other passengers are getting theirs. Is it because we didn’t check in online? I eventually get antsy and walk up to the desk to inquire and the agent hands me the boarding passes that are sitting on his desk. Yeah!
Sitting in the departure lounge, before boarding, the attendant comes and scoops our boarding passes. She doesn’t say a word, just asks for our passes. After everyone else has walked out to the tarmac, we get our passes back with reassigned seats. Aboard the plane we discover we have been upgraded to business class. Air Niugini went up a notch on the scale of domestic airlines. Other than the wider seats and more leg room we don’t get any extra service and receive the same four cookies for a snack that the rest of the plane is given.
Our best guess as to what happened is this. The 7:05am flight was overbooked, so we were arbitrarily bumped. Once they found out we had an international connection, they put us back on the flight, perhaps bumping some else. Due to this, and not checking in online, we were not assigned seats, so were given the only seats available which happened to be in Business Class.
After all we had heard and read about Air Niugini’s poor reputation they worked quite well for us. It was nice to know not all small airlines operate with the same attitude as our least favorite flyers, Lion Air. I would approach the next trip with a little less worry of our itinerary being disrupted due to airline ridiculousness.