2013-01-15    Hello from Sydney Airport

Good morning from Sydney Airport where I'm waiting for a flight to Brisbane, and where I've just paid AUD$6.45 (HK$51.60) for a small cup of orange juice! With the Australian dollar so high, food prices are very expensive for a Hong Kong traveller, a bit "hard to swallow'.

Sydney Airport, like Melbourne Airport and other Australian airports has a check-in service using two touch-screen machines. At the first machine you type in your name, destination and baggage details, and the kind machine gives you a boarding pass, baggage label and baggage receipt. The boarding pass and baggage receipt are the same size and style of light paper.

You then put the label on your baggage and go to the second machine which scans your boarding pass and gets you to put your baggage on a conveyor belt next to the machine. As you say goodbye to your baggage, you need to remove your boarding pass from the machine....which I nearly forgot to do in Melbourne!

Having nearly forgotten my boarding pass in Melbourne, I was determined to be extra careful when using the second machine in Sydney.
But the second machine would not scan my boarding pass. I turned the pass around and upside down....and still it didn't work.  Then along came a kind Qantas lady to help stupid people like me. With a smile she just said: "The machine needs to scan your boarding pass, not your baggage receipt"!