It was midnight on a wintery June night in, New Zealand, when I arrived at my hotel. I had flown from Australia which is not a long trip but it sill involves several hours of travel. It was late and I was tired. There was one guest in front of me. The guy said to him: “you are lucky I have one room left“. Hearing that, I was so glad I had my printed confirmed booking. I stepped up to the counter and introduced myself to the pleasant reception guy. He tapped on his computer, frowned, tapped…
Yearly Archives
Yearly Archives for 2011.
Qantas downgrades me
I got downgraded last week in the Qantas Frequent Flyer Scheme from their top tier: Platinum to their next tier: Gold. This was because I have downgraded my travel with Qantas over the last year by 50 per cent. When I have a valid choice when flying I have been choosing Virgin in Australia. Across the ditch it has been Air New Zealand who offer a better product than the NZ domestic Jetstar service. In the USA this has meant reducing my travel with American and increasing it with Delta and United. What am I losing by…
Tiger Australia still downed
Tiger Airways Australia remains grounded having thought they might start flying again soon. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority and Tiger have a Federal Court hearing on August 11 Must be costing them a fortune? Related Posts Flying Tiger Dale Watson sings about Tiger Air Tale of Woe
Riding the Rails- Adelaide to Sydney, Australia
Adelaide and Sydney are about 1400 kilometres apart. Twice a week the famous Indian Pacific train travels across the country from Adelaide Keswick rail terminal to Sydney via Broken Hill. The train departs Adelaide mid morning (10:00am) each Tuesday and Friday, reaches Broken Hill that same evening, then travels through the night across the Blue Mountains and arrives at Sydney Central station at 10:15am Sydney time, almost exactly 24 hours after leaving Adelaide. As part of my No Fly July, I took the train and blogged live from the Lounge car! The train, 28 carriages long on my journey, consists…
Baffling Brasilia-Trying to Cross Brasilia by foot
This is the last of my posts on Brasilia, Brazil. My first was an overview of mindbogglingly fascinating planned city and would be worth reading before or in conjunction with today’s post. The others are listed in yesterday’s post. Many people I spoke to stated that Brasilia was built for the car not the pedestrian. This is not strictly true. The designer’s intention was that people and cars would be separated giving people safe spaces to walk in and cars few restrictions eg few pedestrian crossings. The idea is that between the city’s sectors, people would drive…
Who ya gonna blame?
I was bemused by the following Tweet: 30 minutes late into #Canberra with @virginaustralia. Hope the service is more efficient on the return flight this afternoon #epicfail Epic fail? It turns out that the Twitterer had been late for a very important meeting. I wish I could be more sympathetic but an aeroplane flight is a very complex juggling act: weather airport traffic mechanics of the plane crew Any of those things can go wrong. I leave a minimum margin of four hours. For example, I do everything I can not to fly into a city for a morning meeting…
Brand New Virgin Australia 737-800
“Bondi Beach” at Sydney Airport On May 9th, 2011 I turned up at my gate at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith to find the plane that was being for the 1hr 36min DJ 818 servic to Melbourne was one of Virgin Australia’s brand new 737s: VH-YFCcalled: “Bondi Beach”. The plane had landed in Australia four days before, the day that Virgin Blue became Virgin Australia. I was seated up front in Seat 1A which is one of Virgin Australia’s brand new business class seats (Virgin Blue started as a one class airline). There are eight such seats on the plane -two…
July No Fly
I am attempting to not fly for a month!This has meant several long distance train trips: Melbourne- Adelaide (twice) Adelaide-Melbourne and coming up Adelaide-Sydney! This has been my office:
767-the excitement!!
Ok, I am excited. My 767th flight of my life is booked on Air New Zealand from Perth to Auckland August 30th on a Boeing 767 of course! Never flown that sector before.This from what I can tell will be my 108th 767 flight. So far this year I have flown my: 737th flight on a Southwest 737747th flight on a Qantas 747757th flight on a United 757 I wonder who will get to be my 777th flight’s carrier? V Australia is my preference but that is not looking possible. Watch this space! And as for…
Tiger Australia still grounded
Tiger Australia is still grounded….looks like until August. Crikey says why
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