Introduction/Planning
The original idea for this trip stemmed from a friend who I met on my last contiki. His suggestion to join him in the Rockies for Calgary Stampede meant doing another contiki tour. This one "Canada and the Rockies with Calgary Stampede"
Well that was settled, but then part of me thought, this trip would be around the same time that my long service comes up. Well hell you could hear the cogs grinding in my head as the thoughts rushed through it. I was going to do something I had never really thought I would actually do (which is actually a bit of a theme with my life around that time). I was going to go around the world. But where to visit was the big question.
Well of course I wanted to hit up Seattle and see the West Coast a bit more, so many places flooded into my head. Of those many many places I managed to narrow it down to a few. London to visit friends and experience the city. I was going to keep Continental Europe to two main destinations, Normandy & Berlin. Both for their War History (of which I am a major fan of course). In Asia it was going to be the big 3, Japan, Hong Kong & Singapore. North America would mean the Time in Canada and a road trip down the west coast and a few days in New York.
Now that this was underway, once the bookings opened up for Contiki we were able to get our seats in straight away, pretty much I knew we had to jump on that early as this tour sells out every year with only 2 departures (turns out it sold out a good 6 months in advance so jumping on early was smart). With that done, now it was just time to wait for the flights to open up fully so I could sit down and work out the final details of the routing. When that did roll around 2 websites helped immensly, Oneworld & Star Alliance.
Both websites have round the world (to be here for reffered to as RTW) planning tools. This process with a rough outline of dates now in mind, I could go into negotiations with work on just how much time i can take off (stupid business needs clause in the agreement... curse you). With my dates set out, it was time to get down to the nitty gritty. The fun part.
All in all the process took 3 weeks setting out the rough outlines for the flights then picking the actual routes, airlines and products.
When I had an option for both One World & Star Alliance the pricing was pretty much the same, so that didn't help. But then looking at the itineraries I had chosen, One World was lacking in the Aviation Geek fun department. It was predominantly Cathay for the first few sectors and the last few, with an A380 segment thrown in. The only highlight I could put against the itinerary was British Airways Club World London City route (JFK to London City on an A318).
Star Alliance on the other hand had Air New Zealand's new 777-300ER, a Backwards facing seat with United, Swiss new business, Singapore's new business cabin on a 777-300ER and ANA's new business. Although this itinerary didn't have many new aircraft it had a lot of new airports, new products and a good variety of airlines. So Star Alliance was the go. In the end after lots of to and fro with the system. Managed to get it all chosen. The final itinerary looks like this:
07Jul - Brisbane to Auckland - Air New Zealand - NZ136 - Boeing 777-200ER
07Jul - Auckland to Los Angeles - Air New Zealand - NZ2 - Beoing 777-300ER
07Jul - Los Angeles to Vancouver - Air Canada - AC557 - Embraer E190
03Aug - San Francisco to Chicago O'Hare - United - UA972 - Boeing 767-300 (International Configuration)
03Aug - Chicago O'Hare to New York City La Guardia - United - UA692 - Airbus A319
05Aug - New York City JFK to Zurich - Swiss - LX17 - Airbus A330-300
06Aug - Zurich to Paris Charles De Gualle - Swiss - LX634 - Airbus A320
13Aug - Paris Charles De Gualle to Berlin Tegel - Lufthansa - LH3241 - Boeing 737-500
16Aug - Berlin Tegel to London Heathrow - BMI - BD842 - Airbus A319
20Aug - London Heathrow to Tokyo Narita - All Nippon Airways (ANA) - NH202 - Boeing 777-300ER
01Sep - Tokyo Narita to Seoul Incheon - Asiana - OZ103 - Boeing 767-300
01Sep - Seoul Incheon to Hong Kong - Asiana - OZ723 - Boeing 747-400
06Sep - Hong Kong to Sinapore - Singapore Airlines - SQ861 - Airbus A380
10Sep - Singapore to Brisbane - Singapore Airlines - SQ245 - Airbus A330-300
It looks something like this in map form:
map.gif by
Kaell116, on Flickr
Now be mindful these are not the exact flights I started off with, there was some schedule changes in the 8 months since I originally booked them in (as you would expect, but that was mainly a few minutes here or there, or in the case of the Asiana flights, losing their new business in favour of a 3 class 747-400 on a 2 class route). This was to be the final itinerary. The bits in between have pretty much chopped changed and gone to and fro for months at a time.
In the end the final itineray has become
this. I wont go through all of the decisions on this but in the end there will be Trains, Planes, Automobiles a number of Buses (no boats though thankfully). This will be one of the most memorable trips of my life, but there was still one more decision to make.
Since Australia is the land of the One World monopoly, what was I going to do with all the points earned on this trip. Well I was going to just credit it to Air New Zealand, I would just barely qualify for Star Gold status and that would be the end of the story.
Then, after getting more and more involved in Flyertalk and Milepoint, I just had to find the best place to put those points, that would give me the most amount of benefits quickly and guarantee me a good use of points. Well in the end an amazing deal would just drop in my lap. Aegean Airlines. I mean how could I not turn down an offer from an airline new to Star Alliance that will give Star Gold status at 20000 miles. With the Class of Cabin bonuses on this trip, I should qualify for Star Gold somewhere between New York and Paris. AWESOME! So with that done it was now time to just wait.. and wait... and wait...
And this leads us to the beginning. Bags are packed, camera's charged, ipod synced, phone ready to go, laptop set up, tablet pre loaded with ebooks. I will set off on an adventure to reward myself for the achievements over the last 2 years. I dropped a lot of weight, managed to trek in some harsh climates and do something I had always wanted to achieve, made #1 sales consultant at work. It was time for 2 months off work, fun, frivolity and LOTS of aviation geekage.