Revenge
Member
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2016
- Posts
- 279
- Qantas
- Gold
- Virgin
- Platinum
Currently living In Los Angeles, did a visit home to the Gold Coast for a couple of weeks in February with my wife and 3-year-old kid.
LAX-SFO-BNE on UA:
Booked LAX-BNE direct in Polaris Velocity points (and Aeroplan points for my kid and wife). Unfortunately, LAX-BNE was cancelled (I think they stopped this route?) so it was changed to LAX-SFO-BNE which was a bit of a pain.
Got to try LAX Polaris lounge for the first time. Very nice but much smaller than the SFO one. I had some work calls to take, the private “phone booths” are really big and resemble a whole private office. I was able to host a video conference there quite comfortably.
Short First Class UA flight from LAX to SFO uneventful, except for some delays due to the runway closure at SFO.
It’s my second visit to the SFO Polaris lounge. My first visit was during COVID when it was quite empty and felt very luxurious. This time it was crazy busy, couldn’t find 3 seats next to each other to sit with my family. Kid ended up playing on the floor in a corner. It felt much les luxurious.
Polaris flight from SFO to BNE was good. When I first did the trans-Pacific Polaris flight during COVID I was unimpressed with the poor catering, but this was much improved now. I thought the food was just about as good as Qantas. They could do with better wines, though.
Driving from BNE Airport down to the Gold Coast was such a pleasure. Australian roads are so good compared to Californian roads!
BNE-PQQ-SYD-OOL on QF:
This part of the trip was a status run to retain QF Gold. I had the necessary status credits from rollover and flights on AA and AS, but I didn’t have any QF/JQ operated flights. I would get one on the way home back to the US, so I needed 3 more. So I decided to visit fiends in Sydney for a night. I looked into flying to Sydney via Melbourne to get the extra sector, but in the end I realized that there was an option to fly from BNE via Port Macquarie. It also came to just over $450 for the 3-flight return trip so it was a great opportunity to use up an Amex Qantas credit that needed to be used. BNE to SYD via PQQ on Dash-8’s sure is a slow way to do the otherwise one hour trip! PQQ was quaint and fun though!
SYD-OOL couldn’t be any more uneventful, other than to say it’s been more than a year since I’ve last been to OOL and I really like what they’ve done with it!
OOL-SYD-LAX on QF/AA:
I tried so hard to find business class reward seats for the flight home but just couldn't make it happen. I ended up with 3 Premium Economy reward seats on the AA flight from SYD to LAX, which was not a bad result. The only problem was that on the connecting flight from OOL-SYD, there were only 2 award seats available, so I had to split us into 2 reservations, one for my wife and kid from OOL-SYD-LAX, and another for me where I booked the revenue OOL-SYD flight separately to the award SYD-LAX flight.
Not having protected bookings always makes me nervous but with a 2:45 connection in Sydney and the OOL-SYD flight being the first one of the morning at 6am, it wasn’t likely to be delayed.
We checked all our bags under my wife and kid who had the connection, so that we wouldn’t have to pick up any bags in SYD. I wasn’t able to get a boarding pass for my AA flight in OOL.
When we got to SYD (thankfully almost on time) we went to the international connections desk and there was gigantic line, wrapping all the way around the corner and down the terminal. My wife and kid has boarding passes for the AA flight so they joined the line. I did not join the line because if were to be sent away when I finally get to the front, there may not be enough time to make my connection. So I left them and headed landside.
I went to the bus stop for the bus of sadness (T-bus). A bus came within minutes. But didn’t stop. Frustrated people were losing their minds. Apparently, they’d been waiting for 30 minutes and 3 buses had gone past without stopping. I decided this was not a good idea and headed for the train.
Got to international, checked in at the check in desk, and went through security. I beat my wife and kid by about 15 minutes. I thought it’s pretty disgraceful for the domestic-international service to be so slow that it’s actually faster to go landside and take public transport to get to the internation terminal.
AA flight from SYD-LAX was pretty good. I paid for the wifi which was pretty reliable, nice having the option to do some work on a flight that long. I was also able to share the log in with my wife so she was able to connect to wifi on her Nintendo Switch.
We had the bulkhead middle seats in premium economy. I had invested in a cheap rip off version on Amazon of the Flyway toddler bed for my 3 year old. I’d never used one before because I normally fly airlines that don’t allow them, but AA does. It was really good! We made a mini business class suite out of his first row premium economy seat for him and he was able to get some sleep.
LAX-SFO-BNE on UA:
Booked LAX-BNE direct in Polaris Velocity points (and Aeroplan points for my kid and wife). Unfortunately, LAX-BNE was cancelled (I think they stopped this route?) so it was changed to LAX-SFO-BNE which was a bit of a pain.
Got to try LAX Polaris lounge for the first time. Very nice but much smaller than the SFO one. I had some work calls to take, the private “phone booths” are really big and resemble a whole private office. I was able to host a video conference there quite comfortably.
Short First Class UA flight from LAX to SFO uneventful, except for some delays due to the runway closure at SFO.
It’s my second visit to the SFO Polaris lounge. My first visit was during COVID when it was quite empty and felt very luxurious. This time it was crazy busy, couldn’t find 3 seats next to each other to sit with my family. Kid ended up playing on the floor in a corner. It felt much les luxurious.
Polaris flight from SFO to BNE was good. When I first did the trans-Pacific Polaris flight during COVID I was unimpressed with the poor catering, but this was much improved now. I thought the food was just about as good as Qantas. They could do with better wines, though.
Driving from BNE Airport down to the Gold Coast was such a pleasure. Australian roads are so good compared to Californian roads!
BNE-PQQ-SYD-OOL on QF:
This part of the trip was a status run to retain QF Gold. I had the necessary status credits from rollover and flights on AA and AS, but I didn’t have any QF/JQ operated flights. I would get one on the way home back to the US, so I needed 3 more. So I decided to visit fiends in Sydney for a night. I looked into flying to Sydney via Melbourne to get the extra sector, but in the end I realized that there was an option to fly from BNE via Port Macquarie. It also came to just over $450 for the 3-flight return trip so it was a great opportunity to use up an Amex Qantas credit that needed to be used. BNE to SYD via PQQ on Dash-8’s sure is a slow way to do the otherwise one hour trip! PQQ was quaint and fun though!
SYD-OOL couldn’t be any more uneventful, other than to say it’s been more than a year since I’ve last been to OOL and I really like what they’ve done with it!
OOL-SYD-LAX on QF/AA:
I tried so hard to find business class reward seats for the flight home but just couldn't make it happen. I ended up with 3 Premium Economy reward seats on the AA flight from SYD to LAX, which was not a bad result. The only problem was that on the connecting flight from OOL-SYD, there were only 2 award seats available, so I had to split us into 2 reservations, one for my wife and kid from OOL-SYD-LAX, and another for me where I booked the revenue OOL-SYD flight separately to the award SYD-LAX flight.
Not having protected bookings always makes me nervous but with a 2:45 connection in Sydney and the OOL-SYD flight being the first one of the morning at 6am, it wasn’t likely to be delayed.
We checked all our bags under my wife and kid who had the connection, so that we wouldn’t have to pick up any bags in SYD. I wasn’t able to get a boarding pass for my AA flight in OOL.
When we got to SYD (thankfully almost on time) we went to the international connections desk and there was gigantic line, wrapping all the way around the corner and down the terminal. My wife and kid has boarding passes for the AA flight so they joined the line. I did not join the line because if were to be sent away when I finally get to the front, there may not be enough time to make my connection. So I left them and headed landside.
I went to the bus stop for the bus of sadness (T-bus). A bus came within minutes. But didn’t stop. Frustrated people were losing their minds. Apparently, they’d been waiting for 30 minutes and 3 buses had gone past without stopping. I decided this was not a good idea and headed for the train.
Got to international, checked in at the check in desk, and went through security. I beat my wife and kid by about 15 minutes. I thought it’s pretty disgraceful for the domestic-international service to be so slow that it’s actually faster to go landside and take public transport to get to the internation terminal.
AA flight from SYD-LAX was pretty good. I paid for the wifi which was pretty reliable, nice having the option to do some work on a flight that long. I was also able to share the log in with my wife so she was able to connect to wifi on her Nintendo Switch.
We had the bulkhead middle seats in premium economy. I had invested in a cheap rip off version on Amazon of the Flyway toddler bed for my 3 year old. I’d never used one before because I normally fly airlines that don’t allow them, but AA does. It was really good! We made a mini business class suite out of his first row premium economy seat for him and he was able to get some sleep.
