Hindsight is 20/20...

 We recently bought return tickets to Honolulu on sale with a new airline here, Air Australia.  An existing airline from 2008 had re-branded to Air Australia in November with a huge launch party in Hawaii, and even claiming to announce profits for their first term.  February 17th rolls around, and they have now gone into voluntary administration.  Fan-FREAKIN-tastic.  They have since left 4000 ppl stranded around the world, and have an estimated 100 000 tickets that were sold for the future.

People are rushing around like crazy in a mad dash to recover whatever funds they can.  We are in a dispute with our bank at the moment...and hope there will be some sort of recover from our credit card, but we are not sure if we will be able to go on our trip in May!!! :(  The replacement fares are more than double per ticket than we paid.  Yes the tickets were cheap, but this is out of control!  It was a deal we just couldn't pass up along with all the other gypsy hopefuls craving a little R & R.  Nothin like payin into some crooked dipsh*t's retirement fund all in the name of fun.

Anyway, hopefully there is something positive that will come out of everything as there is apparently class action being taken towards travel agents and the travel ombudsman as tickets were apparently sold while the company was circling the drain.  Pretty sad to read the many stories of people who have spent thousands, and even taken out travel insurance-all to watch their money disappear with their dream vacation.  

We are REALLY hoping that we can still afford the trip, and have I guess learned a hard and valuable lesson: not to take a chance on a smaller airline (despite the fact that most airlines operate in 'the red' these days).  Anyway, we'll keep everyone posted-otherwise we might have to conference skype everyone instead. :( Noooooooooo!