It happens all the time, but it doesn’t make it right.
Travel and accommodation ahead of today’s AFL grand final skyrocketed as companies took advantage of desperate out-of-state fans.
Return flights from Sydney were well over $1000 and hotel rooms in the city for two nights were going the same way.
There was a fair bit of public outrage when the cost of flights from Melbourne to Sydney escalated before the preliminary final in Sydney last week, but out-of-state fans said it was something they always faced and Melburnians being surprised at the gouging was a bit hypocritical.
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Can we agree it’s bad wherever you are flying from?
I can only imagine the scenes if any of these flights are delayed or cancelled. Add in the fact that it’s school holidays and a storm might be brewing.
It will be a test of the airlines’ capability and, no doubt, public relations firms will be on standby all weekend.
You can always be like a friend of mine who chartered a small plane to get back to Melbourne from Sydney in time to watch her beloved Tigers win the 2020 grand final.
Now that’s dedication.
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Queen’s last flight a record breaker
A flight tracking service crashed last week as people attempted to follow the Queen’s last flight from Scotland to London.
Global tracking service Flightradar24 crashed almost as the flight took off.
“In the moments before take-off, nearly six million people attempted to follow the flight, causing disruption to our platform,” the service said.
Not surprisingly, the flight was the site’s most tracked flight in the world once it recovered.
The service implemented traffic calming measures to cope with demand – it fielded 76.2 million requests related to the flight – but the site crashed anyway.
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“Even though our platform suffered under such heavy load, Queen Elizabeth II’s final flight … is by far the all-time most tracked flight on Flightradar24 and will likely remain at the top for a long while,” Flightradar24 communications director Ian Petchenik said.
“The Royal Air Force flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin from Edinburgh to RAF Northolt near London set an all-time flight tracking record on Flightradar24 with five million people following along. And 4.79 million people viewed the flight across Flightradar24 web and mobile app services and a further 296,000 followed the flight via YouTube live stream.”
Mr Petchenik said the second most tracked flight was US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan last month when 2.2 million people followed her flight.
Have you paid up over the odds for a sporting event? Was it worth it? Why not share your experience in the comments section below?
