Local airlines in Indonesia can be rather lawless. We bought our tickets to fly from Alor to Kupang last Monday with Transnusa (http://www.transnusa.co.id). The flight was scheduled at 13:00. I was all excited about the end of my trip. My anticipation had kept me awake for most of the night. The packing was done the day before. The fridge had been cleared. All bottled water was finished. Even my indoor-sandals were already packed. I was literally lying in bed, waiting for the sky to brighten up. We, however, got a call from Transnusa at 9:00 the same day telling us the flight was ‘preponed’ and had already came and left Alor (it left at 7:30). We must wait one more day and there would not be any compensation whatsoever. That really got me barking. They insisted that they had tried to reach us earlier on, which we later found out was a call at 7:00 (half an hour before the plane departed) and they just let the phone ring once. I was trying to pick up the phone then but the distance between me and the phone was more than one ring away.
We never found out what was the cause of the ‘preponing’. We went to the Transnusa office to show our annoyance and demand an explanation. Our only response was that the plane was rescheduled. That definitely violates the Grecian maxim of relevance. Frantisek’s speculation was that, in a back-door friendly country like Indonesia, it must be the case that some government officials (and their loving wives, children, uncles, aunts, friends) needed an urgent flight to leave Alor and they just bribed the airline into ditching all the other passengers. In that case, there is also no point in complaining because you would end up complaining to the very government officials who ‘stole’ your flight. Now we have a perfect circle that excludes commoners like us.
Joanno
