I walked into the airport and looked for the check-in counter for British Airways flight 17. I quite enjoyed the BA flight from Melbourne to London three weeks ago. The flight attendants were nice.

I spent ten minutes puzzling over the information screen. Where was BA 17? It wasn’t listed where it should have been, between the 9:15 PM to Dubai and 9:40 PM to Singapore. I wheeled my luggage over to the BA check-in queue, about 100 m away.

“Excuse me, could you help me find my flight?” I asked the attendant politely. “I’m on BA17.”

“BA17?” She furrowed her eyebrows and pulled out a list. “BA17…”

“I can show you my ticket,” I offered. I pulled out the same e-ticket I used to fly to London. She took the ticket and considered it. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and walked to the counter, where she conferred with two other attendants. It took her a minute or two.

“There is no BA17,” she reported back. I blinked. “As of March 31st, BA no longer flies to Melbourne.” I gaped.

“Oh… What do I do?”

“You can go to Sales and see if they can get you a ticket on another flight. You should probably be on the 9:40 to Singapore.”

And then what?” I thought wildly. Wait at Singapore until there was a spot on a flight to Melbourne?

It wasn’t as bad as that. The lady at Sales transferred me to a QANTAS flight, which departed at 10:05 PM and followed the same route as the mythical BA17 flight. It was later than I expected to be in the air so I spent the next hour trying to find a place that would accept the only currency I had (Australian dollars) in exchange for dinner.