Of Islands and Gulfs (golfs!)

[Scarlett]

Over the Xmas/NY period I’m off to visit Flinders Island, then the bigger main island of Tasmania. Then it’s time for international travel to the Gulf Region.

I figured a trip report might be useful as I’m travelling to and through some lesser visited locations.

The trip looks like this:


When I break it out into the actual flights and journeys, it is:

CBR-MEL (VA Y)
MEB-FLS (SH Y)
Hire car on Flinders
FLS-LST (SH Y)
One-way hire from north to south over a couple of days
Xmas with my parents
HBA-MEL-SYD (VA Y - overnight SYD)
SYD-MNL (PR J - overnight MNL)
MNL-RUH-MED (PR/SV J)
One way hire car through KAEC and Jeddah
JED-DOH-KWI (QR Y)
KWI-BAH (GF Y)
Car service over the causeway
DMM-RUH-MNL (SV/PR J)
Long daytime transit
MNL-SYD (PR J)
SYD-CBR (VA Y)

- 34,019 KMs planned air travel.
- Two new countries (KSA and Bahrain), taking me to 96 visited.
- 11 planned games of golf (three new countries (KSA, Kuwait and Bahrain) taking me to 91 countries golfed in out of 196). I’ll also have played every single golf club & course* in Tassie, which stands at about 78 at the moment as a couple have closed.

So, Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all and I’m going to get travelling.

*we can debate the merits of the Marra Wanna course on Cape Barren Island at a later date.

 

[Scarlett]

The main ticket for this trip was Australia to Saudi return, in J, sold by PR. It cost AUD3235, with about $500 of that being taxes and fees.

Base fare: AUD 2693.00
Taxes:
AUD 70.00AU
AUD 88.70WY
AUD 29.80LI
AUD 6.60E3
AUD 42.30IO
AUD 4.70IO
AUD 6.30T2
Carrier Imposed Fees:
AUD 170.00YQ
AUD 40.40YR
AUD 84.00YR
Total Amount: AUD 3235.80

The fare was valid to a couple of cities in KSA and allowed me to open jaw using two of them: into Medinah and out of Dammam. The exit point for the ticket was chosen due to the proximity to Bahrain.

For the week or so prior to the international ticket, I booked domestic flights to spend Xmas with my parents in Tassie, plus I have wanted to get to Flinders Island for about ten years. I had also wanted to go and play golf on the new Bougle Run short course at the Barnbougle golf club near Bridport. So it was just a case of finding the best order to visit islands.

Getting to FLS is limited to generally one flight every day or so from either Melbourne (Essendon Fields) MEB, or from LST, with Sharp Airlines. Due to the monopoly on the routes and the use of small commuter aircraft, fares are not cheap: $330 from MEB and $240 from LST. The flights are about an hour long. The other issue with them is you get 21KGs of baggage and that includes the carry on. Due to the international travel I had a suitcase, golf clubs and backpack, so had to pay excess baggage on both flights.

Internal to the Gulf region I looked at multiple options, including the LCCs Flynas and FlyDubai, as well as Kuwait Airways and the main ME3. Chose QR as my QF status covers my golf bag travelling for free and then Gulf Air as they carry some sport equipment for free.

VA filled in all the other gaps and, with other travels, should see me retain WP which I like for EconX seating and of course the extra luggage allowance.

 

[Flyfrequently]

Lots of planning there @Scarlett, am on board and your folks would have been chuffed to see you for Christmas - happy travels ️

 

[Scarlett]

Travel commenced, as it usually does, from CBR. Unfortunately at too early o’clock.

No one was in the VA priority lane, but the main queue was long! 30 mins saved and it was up to the VA lounge for a couple of lattes and some breakfast. It’s a nice lounge and rarely gets too crowded.



Most early VA flights are around 0630, but QF have some that depart around 0600. Today that included the first ex-Horizon Air Dash-8 I’ve seen, as it pushed back in front of the lounges.



VA252 CBR-MEL
B737-800 VH-YQR
On time

Before long the MEL flight was called and I settled into my preferred EconX window seat. Full aircraft. Interestingly we pushed back whilst the Saab to SYD was boarding beside us. In the past I’ve been held inside/undercover when there have been other aircraft movements near the path out to the Link Airways aircraft.



On taxi we passed the QFLink hangars and a newly arrived A220 was being checked over. This was VH-X4J after a delivery flight which lasted a couple of days.







In less than a hour the dry and yellowed grasses of the capital region were replaced by a much greener southern Victoria, even with some showers around.



Uneventful and pretty much standard VA B738 hop. I did head into the lounge at MEL on arrival and got some more coffee in my keep cup and then headed down to collect luggage for the transfer to Essendon.

 

[Major]

My first interstate flight was SYD-MEB about 1965

 

[jase05]

Definitely following along with this as have visited Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain a couple times and have more visits on the horizon so always up for new ideas or thoughts on places visited

 

[Scarlett]

It was now that I made a dumb decision:



I exited T3 at MEL and decided to just catch a taxi over to Essendon. Should’ve booked a ride share via app, but having not walked down in the T4 direction for a long time, decided to head that way to the taxi rank. In my mind I guess I wanted to see where the new hotels were and maybe the taxi queue would be shorter turning right…

The upside was that I arrived to be number one in the queue and got straight into a cab. The downside was $40 for something like a 12 minute trip.

Won’t be doing that again.

 

[RooFlyer]

@Scarlett when do you get to Saudi? Am arriving JED on 1 February and interested in any arrival etc quirks.

 

[Scarlett]

The Sharp Airlines counter at MEB had a sign noting they only open check-in one hour before the 1125 flight. I had caught the early VA CBR-MEL flight in case of any issues but that left about two hours of waiting.

Essendon is not a big airport when viewed from the small rpt terminal (about the size of a single standard gate lounge).



It had plenty of places to sit with power outlets so I occupied my time for a bit.

There was even a view of the tarmac.



I looked up FR24 to see which aircraft I might be on, assuming it would be the Metro parked in front. I could just make out it was -EWY. Would’ve preferred to be flying on the AMSA Challenger…

FR24 showed that this Metro was supposed to be doing a run to Warrnambool this morning.



Well, it had departed, but there’s no way it only took 14 minutes to get to WMB.

Looking at the flight itself revealed:


So they took off, but quickly decided to return back to MEB. Hmm. I wonder what the problem was? If it was a problem with the aircraft, have they fixed it?

The departures for MEB showed the same flight number (SH832) then departed again an hour later at 0820.



It did go as planned as they just took a different airframe.


I dislike flying in the Metro (“pencil of death”) at the best of times, having done it many times when Aeropelican used to fly them NTL-SYD and vv. This sequence of events did not help as we’d either be flying on the jet that rtb’d earlier that morning, or we’d be delayed waiting for the one that was coming back from WMB.

Check in opened as planned and I was 5Kg above my allowance. (don’t think the guy added my backpack to his calculations), so paid that and went back to waiting. We were called for boarding a little after the planned 1125 departure and headed out to the aircraft parked in front. Two relatively young pilots would be taking us down to FLS: I guess Sharp is as good a place as any to build up multi-engine hours.

SH815 MEB-FLS
Metroliner III VH-EWY



I still barely fit in the seat and my backpack took a certain amount of squeezing to get (partially) under the seat in front. Only one spare seat. Complimentary earplugs in the seat pocket.

We took off and headed south east, out over Wilsons Prom. Decent views but plenty of cloud about. The flight took just over an hour and ISTR we cruised at FL140.

Decent into FLS was a little bumpy and some white caps below indicated breeze at the surface.





Turned out to be quite the crosswind, but whomever was PF up front did a great job.

Welcome to FLS.