The longest stopover

We planned our return flight through Brisbane.  There was a three hour transit time which gave us enough time if we had to collect our bags and check in again.  We were at Auckland Airport at 5am for our 6:30am flight.  The good news was that they could check us all the way through, so we didn't need the 3hr transit, the bad news was that our flight to Singapore would be delayed so we would be in transit for more than 5 hours in Brisbane!  Brisbane Airport is not really a transit airport, it's pretty small with not much to do.

We had a nice breakfast on the first flight to Brisbane.

The 5 hours in Brisbane Airport seemed to take forever.  We finally got called to board and as we were boarding the Captain came running up to report a technical fault and to cancel boarding.  I hoped they would let us stay on board but no, we had to disembark and wait in the terminal.  It took another 3 hours to fix the fault, by the time we boarded again we had been in Brisbane Airport for over 8 hours!  That's longer than the flight to Singapore!  It turned out to be a very long day.  Luckily the children are experienced travellers and wasted no time making themselves comfortable once we were on board. 

And slept well during the flight!