skyring | (no subject)

Monday's my day off. As I work from home, I find that I have less time on weekends and public holidays than on weekdays, as I generally get co-opted into housework and shopping stuff. Hiding away in my computer room isn't as much of an option. Nor should it be - I'm a father and husband, after all.

Feeling particularly seedy after the tongue episode on Sunday night, so I spent Monday morning in bed with a book and a cat, rising in early afternoon to get some work done, like filling orders and posting books. And checking on the support line.

I'm flying up to Brisbane for the Convention in a couple of weeks, and I checked my Frequent Flyer page this morning, just to browse around. Noticed that two of my recent flights haven't been credited yet - two big chunky flights from London to Fort Worth and Fort Worth to San Francisco. The miles would be nice, but it's the status points I'm really after, because combined with the flights to Brisbane, they should get me a silver card. This has some small benefits, the biggest being that I build up FF points at a higher rate, but I also get faster check-in and an extra piece of luggage, which will be handy on domestic flights and to and from New Zealand.

Ok. Enough daydreaming! Best sign off now. I've got work to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Have a nice day!

It is looking likely that I'll have enough airmiles to get to Aus for free next September, should I decide to go for it. This is a Good Thing. Though the long, long flight seriously does not appeal.

Three movies, two meals, a few hours of reading and eight hours of sleep and the flight goes by.

Ah yes. Sleep. That stuff.

We'll see...

Yeah, it's not so bad. There's not a lot to see but the sea and clouds, and most of the flight is in darkness anyway. But they have recent movies on the seat-back screens, sleep is not impossible, and a couple of hours is taken up with meals.

United flies nonstop to Sydney across the Pacific from San Francisco each night, or Qantas puts on two from Los Angeles, depending on preference.

I've just transferred a bunch of reward points from my credit card to Qantas, so with my existing points I'm eligible for an upgrade to business class on my next longhaul sector. Probably the Sydney-London leg so as to get the most benefit.

United has a non-stop from LA to Sydney too. That's what I'm taking this time. My return flight is to San Francisco.

Yeah, the two United flights leave within ten minutes of each other!

And the two Qantas flights from LA have about an hour between them. The curfew at Sydney ends at 0600, so they can't leave any earlier than ten-thirty at night, otherwise they'd arrive and have nowhere to land.

There's a Qantas flight about lunchtime, which arrives in the Australian evening, but that's heavily load-restricted and doesn't fly at all in the northern summer. It's a bloody long flight and trying to get off the ground in the heat of the day with a full fuel load is getting pretty close to the edge of the envelope.

They use specially configured jumbos, with a larger business class and fewer economy seats than normal.

The Sydney-London run is longer, but there's always a stop for refuelling, no matter who flies the service. Qantas once did it non-stop as a publicity stunt, but they only carried 23 passengers (all they had seats for), the cargo hold had extra fuel tanks, the plane was towed to the end of the runway at Heathrow and had air traffic priority every inch of the way out.

I'm looking forward to the Airbus 380, which should be able to do the run in one hop and have more room to boot.