Top of climb

The objectives were pretty straightforward. I was currently in New York. I needed to get to London. I wanted to go back home for a couple of weeks. All very simple, until you factored in that home for me was New Zealand.

When I relocated to New York one year earlier I went on a one way ticket. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be flying back to New Zealand within the year. And as the ticket was being paid for by someone else I had to deal with their designated travel agent. She was worse than useless. I’ve met more competent stuffed animals.

So when I decided I wanted to take the long way home I had a couple of options. I could cash in my remaining portion of the grant by purchasing another one way ticket – which would have involved another long string of emails with Ms. Absolutely Useless – and then book another one way AKL-LHR to get me to London. Alternatively, a round the world ticket for about the same price all up could get me to everywhere I needed to go, with the added bonus of some extra segments to places I didn’t really need to go, and the prospect of getting decent status.

I really didn’t need much convincing.

The first thing I had to decide was how to get home. The most direct route would have been to fly JFK-LAX-AKL. Qantas operate a two-class A330-200 on JFK-LAX-AKL. In fact it would have been the same A330-200 all the way through; even though the flight number changes the equipment stays the same.

I’m a FlyerTalker. On an AONE4. With more time than I knew what to do with. There was no way in all that was holy that I was going to take the most direct route.

Qantas fly a four-class A380 between LAX and SYD or MEL, as well as a four-class 744 between LAX and SYD. The First product on the 744 has been around for a while. In fact, I travelled on the exact same product eleven years ago, when QF still operated the 744 trans-Tasman and sold the First Class cabin as Business. So, given the choice between an ageing First seat on a 747-400 (as much as I love the nose of the 747) and a new First product with all the bells and whistles on the A380, the A380 won by, well, the length of an A380.

Deciding whether to fly through Sydney or Melbourne was a little harder. Sydney offered much better connections to Auckland, whereas I’d have a minimum 7 hour layover through Melbourne. On the other hand, the distance between LAX and MEL was slightly longer, and spending 7 hours in the QF Melbourne First lounge wasn’t exactly going to be a hardship. I’ve also been through Sydney a million times before, and even though I’d never been to the SYD First Lounge, the airport itself bores me. I chose Melbourne.

The next question was whether to take AA’s transcon F product for the JFK-LAX leg or QF J. Now, if Qantas had still been flying a four-class 744 on their JFK-LAX route I would have gone for Qantas. But about a year ago they switched to a two-class A330-200. There was pretty much no benefit taking Qantas J over a less risky connection on AA F. Not only is the Qantas flight out of JFK renowned for being late (so renowned that its callsign QF108 is known as “QF one-oh-late”), I’d also pick up more points and status credits, not to mention get to try out AA’s transcon product. I wasn’t expecting much, but the novelty factor – I’m from New Zealand remember – tickled me. Plus, in my whole year in New York, every time I went to JFK I ended up going through Terminal 7. I was sick to death of Terminal 7. If I never see it again it will be too soon.

When I first told the guy at CX I was dealing with that I wanted to book a AONE4 touching on AKL, HKG and LHR he probably thought it was going to be a relatively simple ticket. I think it took maybe two emails before he realised that he had a lunatic on his hands. The first indicator might have been when I politely rejected his suggestion to route via SYD with its better connections, because I actually liked the idea of a long layover in MEL. Or when I said I wanted to add two CX F turnaround trips within the space of 48 hours when I was stopping over in Hong Kong. Though I think what finally flipped him was when I asked him to reroute my LHR-JFK final segment to LHR-DFW-LGA, just to make maximum use of the 16 segments. Of course, by then, every email I was sending him was prefaced with the line “You probably think I’m crazy but...” It took over a week to get the ticket out because CX’s (admittedly old) system couldn’t figure out how to put all the taxes on the ticket.

I decided to credit to QFF for my status. It had a couple of advantages. Well actually, it only had one advantage: status. Assuming everything I’d read about it was true, QFF would give me oneworld emerald status three-quarters of the way through my AONE4, which would be good through to July 2013, and then soft-land me to sapphire and then ruby, meaning that I could lock in oneworld status through to July 2015. The only small problem was that I needed four segments on a QF flight number to trigger status, and as it stood my AONE4 currently only had 3 with no prospects for more. I decided that wasn’t an insurmountable problem. Plus, the other oneworld programmes (with the possible exception of AAdvantage) sucked. And by that I mean that they wouldn’t give me any status worth writing home about. Which, being someone easily entranced by pretty shiny cards, was all I cared about.

So, the ticket was out. My QFF number was in the system. All I had to do now was say goodbye to New York. And pack. As it turned out, both tasks were much, much harder than I thought they would be.

Next up: the first flight.