It’s time to head home… 3 flights to take me back to Wellington, as supposed to 2 under normal circumstances, but it wouldn’t be right to go home the most direct way now, would it?

Again, I’d to go across the entire terminal to the CX aisles. Today, I went straight to the business check-in desks. There were enough agents and I’d to wait a couple of minutes before an agent became free. Not that I minded or not that there was a queue me or anything, it’s just early and customers already at the counters seemed to have complicated tickets, like me.

The agent checked me in, but she could only give me boarding passes for my first two flights. My final flight to WLG wasn’t open yet. I also asked for an upper deck seat for my second flight (on BA), but she couldn’t see any free seats, so she gave me my pre-assigned seat and asked me to check when I got to SIN. At least she could check my luggage all the way to WLG though…

Today’s gate was 67, so the Pier it was. Unlike most people, I preferred the Pier than the Wing. Since the Wing was open, it always seemed too noisy or the temperature never seemed right. Anyway, I decided to walk over to the Pier instead of taking the train. I’d done this walk before and it didn’t seem to take that long as this time. It took some 10-15 minutes before I even saw the 60’s gates…

Checked-in at the Pier and there were only a couple of others there. Breakfast was the same affair as yesterday at the Wing – pan-friend pork buns and warm soy milk. After some dim sums and fruit, I went over to check my email. Over this time, only a couple more people came in the lounge.

I almost forgot I’d to do some shopping and with the Pier being miles away from the shops, I took the train back to the main concourse. Hurriedly did my shopping and caught the train back and by the time I got back to the Pier, boarding calls already began. Fortunately, Gate 67 was right next to the Pier…

Boarded onto a 777, I wasn’t sure what sort of seats this plane had. It wasn’t exactly the same as the regional seats that I didn’t like from BKK, but it wasn’t any of the long-haul business seats either… While all my CX flights had Studio CX, only my 747 yesterday had AVOD. Load was just under 50%, with majority of the business passengers connecting from LA, and they just made the flight too… The flight also had a handful of youngish American consultant-type people. While most of them were OK, one of them thought he was the man. He would order the FAs to hang up the jacket for him, do this do that… Even if he didn’t know one was supposed to shut off all laptops, he would have heard the announcements; he would still have his laptop opened (not to mention his table out) while we were taxiing away… When the FA asked him to put it away, he would either ignore them or just respond with a ‘yeah yeah OK’…

This flight also had the outside camera, but this one was positioned behind the front landing gear. We’d quite a long taxi and it’s interesting to see how the pilots steer such a big aircraft and hardly had the front wheels off the centre line on the tarmac. One of the other consultants was obviously impressed with the camera, so he yelled half way up the cabin to one of his colleagues – ‘Look at the camera, how cool is that? It’s so cool!!!’ Hmmm, yes, it’s cool…

It went without saying that pre-departure drinks and newspaper were offered. The CSD also came around as soon as the FAs were allowed out of their seats to welcome us and offered menus. This flight wasn’t the first one I noticed, but the CSD didn’t introduce herself to every single passenger, only most of them. I didn’t know what the differences were; I didn’t have any status with CX, only QF. Perhaps I’d some status with OW and/or I bought the flight with a CX number rather than an AA code-share. (As a side-note, I should have bought some of these flights as AA code-shares as I would have got more miles under QFF.)

There was one Western breakfast or some Chinese dim sums. I took the dim sums. They were anything special, they were airplane food after all. I kind of deliberately filled up at the lounge as I wanted to avoid any more oily food from CX.

The flight was quite bumpy, and breakfast service actually stopped a couple of times. With a row to myself (at last), I took the other seat’s IFE because if I used my own, it seemed very crowded with the table out too… I fell asleep after failing to find anything exciting on TV. When I woke up, it was just about to get ready for landing. Of course, that all important American consultant took some 10 minutes to shut down his laptop. Perhaps he’d a laptop with a super-computer in it… This time 4 FAs just happened to come around together to ask him to shut down his laptop. The FAs handled the situation (and his whole flight) very well, I could imagine some other airlines’ FAs would have told him to put his laptop somewhere the sun had trouble reaching…

The outside camera was back on. We watched the landing gear came out and with a buff of white smoke, we landed roughly on schedule.

I was the second person to leave the plane, I’d trouble figuring out where to go as arrivals and departure seemed to on the same level and passengers didn’t get separately until quite late in the piece. I asked the information desk where the QF lounge and was directly to keep going and head upstairs… When I found the lounge, I was only the second person there…