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<\/p>\nWell I only just got back a couple of weeks ago from my last jaunt, and plans are underway again to be back up in the air. This time though I am not going to give away much till closer to the date but it involves 4 different airlines (across two weekends), 1 new aircraft type, 1 new class of travel, 2 new airlines and my first ever same day turn.<\/p>\n
Bah stuff it! I will tell you now!<\/p>\n
So after my bonus from the middle of the year was still burning a hole in my pocket I got to thinking what is a nice quick trip I can take that can easily fit into my available leave (ie none) and with the rest of my schedule. Problem being I barely get my roster a week in advance so I canned the idea. Then a few things happened.<\/p>\n
1. The roster for work got released up till middle of February…
\n2. I got it back in my head about the original plan
\n3. I started reading about some stuff about new aircraft being used on some services and aircraft being subbed in on others.<\/p>\n
My mind got ticking and ticking, could I do it, should I do it. I looked at timings and everything and the plans just looked like it wasn’t going to work, so I scrapped it.<\/p>\n
Come boxing day though, things had changed, one of the airlines released a sale, someone else gave me a workable tip and things started to fall into place.<\/p>\n
So here is the map of my upcoming journeys:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now it may look fairly stupid but bare with me here. One thing ever since Emirates released their fit out of their A380, I have wanted to do is fly in their first class cabin. Private Suites, Dom Perignon but the piece d’resistance is the onboard Emirates Spa. This may sound fancy and all but to put it simply. It’s a shower! Onboard the aircraft. So you can shower at 35,000ft. The shortest and cheapest A380 route is pretty much SYD-AKL and AKL-SYD and they let you use the shower during this time. Now SYD-AKL is costed at the Aussie Rates (ie extortion) but coming back the other way as I have previously talked about it BARGAIN!!! To make things even better, Emirates released a sale! dropped the price by nearly $250! Love it!<\/p>\n
So that was one segment booked in, then I just needed to position myself to Auckland. Even though the flight the night before leaves at 630pm (cutting it way to fine getting out of work on time etc) I decided to do a Same Day Turn in Auckland. So I was going to fly from Brisbane to Sydney… via Auckland. I would have 4 hours on the ground in Auckland. Plenty of time to relax and enjoy the Emirates Lounge. Then due to the curfew in Sydney I would be overnighting at the Sofitel Wentworth (hello A|Club platinum status) then back home in the morning the next day (To get back in time for Superbowl on the monday).<\/p>\n
Then on the next Sunday I would be doing my first ever intentional same Day return. I would be flying from Brisbane to Rockhampton and come straight back again (after 2 hours on the ground). I would be flying up on Virgin Australia’s new ATR Service operated by Skywest and returning on Qantas flying an Alliance Airlines Fokker 100 (operating for Qantaslink). Pretty good little trip to tick a few new things off my lists. So all up the travel looks like this.<\/p>\n
04Feb – Brisbane to Auckland – Virgin Australia – Economy – 737-800
\n04Feb – Auckland to Sydney – Emirates – First Class – A380
\nOvernight Sofitel Wentworth Sydney (probably do my first ever hotel Trip Report after seeing what the status gets me)
\n05Feb – Sydney to Brisbane – Virgin Australia – Economy – 737-800
\n12Feb – Brisbane to Rockhampton – Virgin Australia (Operated by Skywest) – Economy – ATR-72
\n12Feb – Rockhamton to Brisbane – Qantaslink (Operated by Alliance Airlines) – Economy – Fokker F100<\/p>\n
Excited!!!!!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well I only just got back a couple of weeks ago from my last jaunt, and plans are underway again to be back up in the air. This time though I am not going to give away much till closer to the date but it involves 4 different airlines (across two weekends), 1 new aircraft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-spotting","category-travelling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49RU0-eV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}