Stranded Kiwis angry at airline
boyfriend – who also happened to be my aunty’s neighbour’s son, Oscar (that’s New Zealand for you).
While some filled the downtime with books and tablets, the rest engaged in idle chat. Even Michael Galvin came over for a yarn.
Before I began this job, I’d thought that if I got to meet Chris Warner I could die happy. Sharing a giggle with Galvin was a career highlight. He laughed, we laughed, then the next take came and we were back in character and I was crying (apparently I had a knack for it). I sobbed, I wept, I shook my head, all in fake disbelief that a volcano had just wiped out the suburb of Ferndale.
Oscar, meanwhile, was distracted by the returning Claire Chitham (Waverley Harrison). ‘‘Maybe if I pass out on the floor, Waverley will give me mouth to mouth,’’ said Oscar.
The day must have yielded about five minutes of useable footage, but the size of the army it took to deliver that footage was amazing.
There were more people than I could count and I had not a clue what their job title was. People walked around with iPads, photographing hair and clothes, to ensure nothing was out of place in the next shot. Others seemed purely responsible for moving wires out of the shot. But their job mattered and I found it incredible to watch.
Perhaps the most exciting part was seeing the actors on set, doing what they were good at.
In between takes they joked and fooled around, Ben Mitchell did a few burpees. But as soon as the director yelled ‘‘Action!’’ they went right back to straight faces and nailing their lines.
The worst part was not the ash or the waiting or the early start, but the food. The catering was not quite sufficient to feed the 30-odd extras hanging around behind the set.
With only crackers and a handful of Farmbake biscuits to sustain me, by the end of a long day, I just wanted to go home. Piles of red and grey baby wipes lay scattered over chairs as people tried to remove as much fake blood and ash as possible.
It took an hour in the shower and a bathroom full of products to make my skin a colour other than grey. That left enough time for a Popcorn Chicken snackbox and to fall asleep on the couch. It had been a hard day’s work.
The hard work was worth it. When the anniversary episode trailer rolled, you could see me (well, my back) in the background behind Chris Warner. Nailed it. KIWI travellers stuck in Rarotonga have been shelling out hundreds of dollars for new flights back to New Zealand, saying Virgin failed to inform them of its new plan to get them home after a fault saw their plane turned around in the middle of the night.
A group of of about 18 slept outside Rarotonga’s airport on Friday night after flight VA90 turned back midway to Auckland due to a mechanical fault.
The airline was unable to find accommodation for all passengers back in Rarotonga after the flight returned at about 2am.
Passengers were critical of the airline’s communication, and several were understood to have bought new flights to get home – because they hadn’t been informed of Virgin’s plans to fly them out.
The airline yesterday hoped a plane, brought over from Auckland, would take off from Rarotonga 5.15pm NZ time.
However, although it had informed media, it appeared customers were in the dark. Fairfax’s Stuff website subscribed to the airline’s updates for passengers, but none were received.
Rebecca O’Neill paid $800 on Saturday afternoon for a new Virgin flight to Brisbane and a connecting flight to Christchurch, her husband Corbin, who was at home in Christchurch, said.
He said his wife had not been informed of Virgin’s plan for the Saturday night flight before booking the flight.
‘‘She’s not bloody happy with them at the moment,’’ Corbin O’Neill said.
‘‘She needs to get home in a hurry because we have our own tourism business, we’ve got a couple of big tours coming up later on this week, so she needs to be home quickly.’’
His wife was among the passengers who had spent the night outside the airport due to Virgin being unable to find enough accommodation for all fliers.
Another passenger, who did not want to be named, was also among the group of about 18 passengers who were taken to a Rarotonga hotel, only to find there were no rooms left.
‘‘We got sent to the Edgewater [Resort], and then the pilots and stewardesses came in and basically took our rooms.’’
TA Virgin spokeswoman said the airline tried to find accommodation for all on board, ‘‘but being the early hours of the morning, it was difficult, so we found rooms for some passengers, but unfortunately not all’’.
A lucky few managed to escape the ashing and just be innocent bystanders. I sincerely hope they enjoyed not having to wash their hair four times.’