May 19-20, 2016
Flight: Austin, TX (AUS) to San Francisco, CA (SFO); United Econ
Flight: San Francisco, CA (SFO) to Honolulu, HI (HNL); United Econ
Flight: Honolulu, HI (HNL) to Apia, Samoa (APW); Fiji Airways Econ

It had been a crazy week, the power steering had gone out in my car over the previous weekend and the dealership wasn't able to look at the car right away, nor did they have a loaner car. All of the car rental places nearby were also sold out so I had to book a crazy expensive rental car at the airport, planning on just dropping the car when I flew out on Thursday. $400 for a Prius for 3 days is just insane. I couldn't find any codes that worked for midweek discounts unfortunately. Given the car was also due for service and a few other things, I'm probably going to have to mortgage a kidney to pay for the repairs.

My flight didn't depart until this afternoon so I was at least able to get a morning's worth of work done. I was able to checkin for my United flight with no problems but when I tried to checkin for my Apia flight it said I was on standby! Not good and that freaked me out a bit. The trip wasn't getting off to a good start. When I left work, the toll road exit to the airport was closed and had to do a long detour to get back on the southbound lanes. Luckily it was smooth sailing from there. Dropped the car only to find huge lines at TSA, even for pre-Check. Supposedly they're in go slow mode to protest funding cuts.

Grabbed a Mangia pizza for lunch and off to the United lounge for a bit before heading down to the gate for the San Francisco flight. The flight was uneventful 3 hrs, crossing over Lake Mead and Las Vegas. There was still considerable snow crossing the mountains. It had been awhile since I'd flown on United into SFO and the terminal looked much better than I remember. The lounge was pretty nice but packed. I was able to find a seat in the far corner but the wifi signal there was pretty weak. I looked ina few shops for sunscreen after I realized I'd only brought a near-empty bottle. I hoped I'd be able to find some in HNL at least. The flight to Honolulu was uneventful as well and I slept most of it.

Takeoff from SFO

UA Snackbox

On arrival in HNL it was quite a walk over to Lobby 4 for Fiji Airways checkin. It was still nearly 4 hrs before the flight but already there was a long line of passengers with what appeared to be 15 suitcases and boxes each. I wasn't looking forward to the wait until I noticed the business class line was also for 'web checkin' customers. They did have my name on the list but I nearly had a heart attack when they said the flight Apia to Nadi was full and so they weren't letting on standby passengers and that I could go on Tuesday instead... I said that wasn't acceptable, I had connecting flights and this was an award ticket. They said Oh, we thought you were non-rev! So turns out I did have a seat after all, but I did lose my original front-row selected seat and back in row 28. Well at least I had a seat for the flight! Whew. And I got to skip the crazy line.

So things were starting to look better. No line going back through TSA as the Apia flight is the last evening flight. No lounge access though, the Priority Pass lounge in HNL has very limited hours and I didn't feel like hoofing it all the way back to United Club, which was closing soon anyway. I found a Starbucks to get my fix in for the next 12 days.

The gate area wasn't too busy but due to there not being a sterile arrival they kicked us out for a few minutes when the inbound flight arrived. The flight boarded on time but then we stat on the tarmac for 30 minute delay. At last we tookoff about 2AM.

Got my FJ seat!


Fiji Airways Y HNL-APW