Journey – SYD-BNE
Flight no. – QF500
Class – Business
Seat – 2A

After a crazy couple of days in the office without a laptop, it arrives at about 2PM on the Friday just before I am heading home after a lunch with my colleague who is returning to the US – a very frustrating turn of events him being in Oz when I was overseas

The evening before the flight is again hectic as we prepare our house to be taken over by my in-laws as they look after the dogs whilst we are away. We can’t leave much until the morning as the car is arriving at god awful o’clock. At about 10:30PM a very tired simongr heads to bed only to wake at 1AM and 2AM in advance of the 3AM alarm given our 4:15AM departure for the airport. It is all systems go and our little hand luggage only trip to DRW begins.

If you hadn’t realised I am not using the royal “we” on this trip as mrssimongr is the driving force behind the trip to DRW as one of her friends has moved there recently and also just had a little baby. I booked her an AAward flight and added my flights to my DONE4. The problem was that I booked her a straight SYD-DRW-SYD return and I was on SYD-BNE-DRW-SYD. We were on the same flights DRW-SYD (with a quick stop in ADL) but my flight was about 4 hours earlier to BNE and I arrived in DRW about 90 mins before her. She decided she wanted to come with me to the airport so she wouldn’t have to deal with that alone. I realised on the way to the airport that I probably could have arranged for her to be on the flight with me as the points on AA would have been the same as there is no stopover. This is where my inexperience with being a FFer really shows. I had done OLCI so we walked straight through security and up into the lounge.

Mrssimongr snacked on some toast and muesli whilst I sorted out the iPod touch and checked the overnight rugby results. Just before boarding I saw some good friends of mine who were also flying up to BNE that day – I was about to offer to use points to upgrade them but they were already in J I make my friend quite jealous with a flourish of the iPod (he is another Mac aficionado) but I made a little nervous when his wife borrows it and it looks like I might not get it back! This is a good distraction for mrssimongr so that she doesn’t have to think about me boarding without her and she is not as upset when I walk off to board (she is nervous flyer who gets terrible ear pain whilst flying so doesn’t really enjoy it).

On boarding I think I might have a free seat next to me as it empty up until the last minute when a family of five arrive and take every last seat in J. What a performance though getting them boarded – debating which seats and where hand luggage goes – it takes them about 10 minutes to get seated!

We push back on schedule and we are quickly in the air with the seat belt sign off so I boot up the laptop and get on with some work. I decide to skip breakfast knowing I have another breakfast flight coming up later. I am quite surprised when the Captain turns on the seat belt sign – where on earth did that flight go? I am just not used to these short flights now!

We seem to have a very slow landing followed by a hand brake turn into the gate. Thankfully there is no security screening so I am in the QP within 2 mins of landing It is a sad thing to be in a QP when there is no booze being served – I am again just too used to travelling internationally now.

There is a last minute chance of meeting an AFFer at the QP but that is scuppered so I get on with a bit more work and wait for boarding which happens relatively soon and thankfully the gate is pretty close to the QP