Trip Report - OneWorld Award

[MrHyde]

Hi all,

Tomorrow, we (me, Mrs and 14 mth old bubba) head off on our nearly round the world adventure to go introduce the bubba to both sets of grand-parents as well as take a small detour along the way. Most of the planning for the trip was done through these forums, so thank you to everyone. I wouldn't even have known that I could book a OneWorld Award flight for 280,000 and go everywhere we needed to.

The biggest problem I have had so far is the seat allocations. I had picked out all my seats at the very start and I monitored them throughout. They kept changing every couple of weeks and required me to call up and re-set them to my chosen seats. Even now, checkmytrip is not showing the proper seats, but saying "None specified". When I ring Qantas up, they can see the request in the system, but not confirmed.

Also, when the seats change, for some reason, we would be allocated seats away from each other and not together.. like on opposite sides of the plane. I can just see myself having to work through this at the airport.

The itinerary as it currently stands is as follows:

13/09: MEL - SYD QF
13/09: SYD - SIN QF A380
14/09: SIN - FRA QF
15/09: FRA - LON BA
16/09: LON - NBO BA
10/10: NBO - LON BA
11/10: LON - HEL AY
Ferry to Tallinn for 2 days
15/10: HEL - LON BA
15/10: LON - BAH BA
A few trips to DXB on Bahrain Air or some other airline
07/11: BAH - HKG CX
07/11: HKG - SYD QF
08/11: SYD - MEL QF

I'm going to try and put up further reports after every flight, depending on how much time I get in the lounge.

It is going to be interesting to see how the little one holds up. We flew WLG - MEL last week and he handled that short 4 hour trip very well. Now for the long haul ones.

Cheers.

 

[MrHyde]

Mel - syd - sin

Heres the first part of the report taking in MEL - SYD - SIN.

The MEL - SYD flight was on VG-OGG (City of Rockhampton). Check in was nice and smooth. Our allocated seats were 24A and 29D, which we changed to 26D and 26F. At the time of checkin, the middle 26E was empty and we were told there is a chance it will remain empty.

While we were in the lounge, there were announcements asking for passengers without luggage on QF436 or QF438 if they wanted to move to QF434 as they were delayed by an hour. The end result of this was that QF434 was full with no empty seats. The flight itself was uneventful. The lunch consisted of a spinach and fetta roll, which tasted quite nice.

In Sydney, we found out that they had sent our stroller all the way to Singapore. This is different from how Cathay handle baby strollers. Cathay give it to you after each segment, whereas Qantas had sent it all the way through.. even though we had left it at the boarding gate in Melbourne. So, we ended up having to carrying Jnr around Sydney airport. Thankfully, the we didn't have to wait too long for the bus. Quickly past immigration and into the Qantas F Lounge.

The F lounge menu was disappointing this time round. There was nothing on the main menu that catered for vegetarians, other than salad. Atleast last time, they had Bruschetta, which tasted good. The chefs did agree to make us some noodles without meat.

For QF31, we had selected seats 52H and 52J. During checking, we got this changed to 74A and 74C and the middle seat was blocked. The loading was fairly light as per the check in person. The plane itself was VH-OQC (Paul McGinness). This was my first trip on the A380, so I was very curious to experience what it was like.

The interior was fairly similar to other QF planes with similar leg space (which is very important for a 6'2" person like me). The Skycam was pretty good though, although I think Cathay has a cam on the nose, rather than on the tail. The nosecam is far more impressive.

The dinner menu was very average, probably because I am tired of the Qantas international menu having flown on over 30 international flights out of Sydney this year so far. The snack bar is also nothing to crow about... two items - choclate chip cookie and olive oil bread and then drinks. The Mrs did go up the stairs to check out the top deck. Jnr was pretty good as well. He slept most of the 8 hours occassionally waking up to let others in the cabin know that a baby was on board. However, we didn't have to do the up and done aisle walk trying to quieten him even once. Overall, I can see Jnr becoming a very good flyer... he even slept all the way through descent and landing. As for noise, I didn't find the A380 any quieter than other large aircraft. Finally, the AVOD selection was pretty good and I ended up seeing Terminator Salvation, The Hangover and Night at the Museum. Completely slept through the second meal service, so no idea what that was like.

At SIN, the luggage was waiting for us. For some reason, our business tags were missing from all our luggage except the stroller. A quick taxi to the Ibis Hotel on Bencoolen. The hotel itself is fairly basic with small rooms. I got a really good deal during the Accor room sale ($88 per night), so this will do as we only need to stay here one night. Singapore taxis are also very cheap.. the whole ride from airport to hotel cost $18, whereas it would have cost us $25 to take the airport shuttle.

 

[SnowYeti]

Awesome first part of the TR MrHyde! Glad that the taxis are cheap in SG. You're making me want to do my first RTW OW too !! Keep the reports coming!

 

[dragonman]

Nice work Mr Hyde - keep em coming.

 

[serfty]

I have dined with vegetarians in both MEL and SYD Flounges and they have always been happy to adjust one or more dishes to make them meat free.

 

[MrHyde]

Sin - fra

Next part of the report is being written from the BA Executive Lounge in Frankfurt.

We arrived at SIN airport at about 5 PM for the 11:20 flight as we were tired from a full day's wandering around and wanted to just relax. Went straight to the SAT Premier Check-In. They had trouble finding Juniors e-ticket in the system. Qantas has recently swapped over from paper tickets to e-tickets for infants and since we had changed our award booking in the last week, our tickets were re-issued as e-tickets. Jnr's ticket was not showing up in the QF system in Singapore. After a bit of time trying to find it, it was eventually found in the BA system. We also requested whether we could be allocated a window and aisle seat with an empty middle one. The check-in person told as the flight is heavily loaded and there aren't many empty seats. We ended up with 53J and 53H. We spent some time in T3 Butterfly Garden. It allowed Jnr a bit of play time as well as allowed me to indulge in some geocaching.

The QF/BA F lounge in Singapore is pretty nice... not as big as the other ones, but about the right size for the number of people present. The food was very good. They had a large selection of vegetarian snacks on offer, so we were happy. The free Wi-Fi also kept me very occupied. While browsing, I had a quick look at seatcounter and it had all 9's for all classes. So, I went to the staff in the lounge asking about the seat allocations. They mentioned that someone was in 53K, but will see what they can do. A while later, they said they had moved that person to another seat and were able to leave it empty for us.

As per flightstats, QF 5 from SIN to FRA has a on-time performance rating of 0.1 out of 5. However, all was looking good for us as the plane arrived 7 minutes early and boarding was on schedule. Be mindful that it is a fair walk from the lounge to the gate. By the time we got to the gate, we were the last people to board.

At the time when I was expecting the announcement, "Can all cabin crew be seated for take-off", I hear the following. "If there is a medical doctor on board, can they please make themselves known to the crew". After another 30 minutes, another announcement was made that a person has fallen ill and is being off-boarded. They are also looking for his luggage as well. Once that is complete, they will then have to wait for Flight Control for an available take off slot. In the end, we departed about an hour after scheduled time.

The flight itself was very smooth and easy. This was the flight we were dreading from the infant perspective.. nearly 14 hours in a cramped space. He was again very good... he slept most of the time. Why he doesn't do that at home, I don't know. The food was also pretty good and tasty. The Singapore catering is far better than the Sydney catering (atleast as far as AVML is concerned). Both meals were tasty and edible.

After flying on a 747-400 so soon after the A380, I have to change my opinion of the A380. It is quieter than a 747-400 and the AVOD is better. The seats are better only because they are newer and not falling apart like on the 747-400.

We caught up some of the lost time on the way and had an estimated time of arrival of 6:30 AM (30 min delay). However, on getting to Frankfurt, there was dense fog and we were put into an holding pattern for another 40 mins. So, we ended up arriving in Frankfurt 70 minutes late. The delay meant we have missed our connection to LON. It was scheduled to depart at 7:20 AM, which is when we arrived. We have been re-scheduled on the 11:20 AM flight now and hence, waiting in the BA lounge.

 

[NM]

Re: Sin - fra

... So, I went to the staff in the lounge asking about the seat allocations. They mentioned that someone was in 53K, but will see what they can do. A while later, they said they had moved that person to another seat and were able to leave it empty for us.

I wonder if Mr 53K enjoyed his op-up . A win-win situation for all involved. Its always worth asking at the lounge .

 

[MrHyde]

Fra - lon

Our flight to London got delayed another hour and departed at 12:15 PM. This was due to either the congestion at Heathrow or the fog in Frankfurt, depending on who you talk to. Frankfurt Airport is a very boring place... just long corridors with nothing in them. This could just be Terminal 2 (Concourse D & E) and Terminal 1 may be better. We tried going to Concourse A as there is another geocache in that area, but that would have involved going through immigration, so we stayed put.

Didn't get a chance to check out the Cathay Pacific lounge as we stayed in the BA Lounge. In hindsight, we should have just gone straight to the CX lounge as the posts here suggest it is better. The BA lounge is small and not much variety of food was on offer... just some danishes and sandwiches with the usual selection of drinks.

The flight itself was nice and short. There were drinks on offer and a muesli bar. There was no on board entertainment, not even tourist information or flight ath on the overhead TVs in the aisle. I do like the seat pitch on BA flights. My long legs fit easily in their Y seats. The plane was a 767 in a 2-3-2 configuration. We got two seats on the side and Jnr was a nice traveller on this flight as well.

On arrival to Heathrow, the queues at immigration were very very long and a bit of crying by Junior got us through to the front and out double quick. We tried going to the Arrivals lounge and were told that as OWE, I was allowed accessed to the lounge, but no guests. That didn't help us, so off we went to the hotel by taxi.

 

[MrHyde]

Re: Sin - fra

I wonder if Mr 53K enjoyed his op-up . A win-win situation for all involved. Its always worth asking at the lounge .

Don't know if the person got an op-up or just moved to another seat. If he did, glad to be able to help. There were a lot of empty seats in Y. However, if he wanted a window seat, an op-up might have been the only way.

 

[notzac]

Re: Fra - lon

Didn't get a chance to check out the Cathay Pacific lounge as we stayed in the BA Lounge. In hindsight, we should have just gone straight to the CX lounge as the posts here suggest it is better. The BA lounge is small and not much variety of food was on offer... just some danishes and sandwiches with the usual selection of drinks.

You didn't miss much by not seeing the CX lounge at FRA - it's slightly larger than the space required to swing a cat. All the usual stuff - nibbles, drinks and a few shower stalls. Can't recall if there was wireless available, reasonably sure there were one or two PCs with Internet access.

 

[MrHyde]

Lon - nbo

I've finally managed to get to an internet cafe in Nairobi to be able to post a report on the next segment. The flight was nearly two weeks ago, so this will be a short report as my memory is not very good. Check-in was a breeze through the BA First Class check-in counters in Terminal 5. The lady at the entrance did not know whether OWE could use the BA F check-in or not and had to ask another person if she could let us in. However, that didn't take more than a minute and the check-in went smoothly. Again, the flight was lightly loaded, so we were able to get 3 seats with an empty middle. The check-in lady also suggested that we use the South Terrace First Class lounge as it was better than the North Terrace lounge. Going through security was a breeze as well. Once past security, we went straight to the lounge.

The lounge was nice and spacious. We headed straight to the dining area for breakfast and there was a very good selection of breakfast food available. The selection is what you would expect from a buffet breakfast at any 5* hotel. After a good hearty meal, we made our way to the Kids area, which is a small room off the dining area. There were some building blocks, a playstation and a couple of computers. The playstation didn't work and the computer was restricted to just some BA kids site. In any case, Jnr was happy playing with the blocks.

After a while, we made our way to the main lounge area and picked out a spot in the far corner to set up camp. There was enough spacefor Jnr to run around without disturbing too many other patrons and after a while he fell asleep. Free wireless internet is available which kept me occupied. The lounge does not have any annoucements for boarding, so it is important to keep an eye on the boarding screens for your flight status. Also, boarding can take place far earlier than it does in Australian airports. I was expecting the usual 30 mins before departure boarding and when I looked at the screens, saw that status of our flight was "Flight closing". We quickly gathered our things and made a mad rush to the departure gate.

On reaching the departure gate, we found out that we were taking a bus to the plane. That is why the boarding took place earlier. There was no one at the gate except for one staff and we were quickly put through to a waiting bus, where we waited for another 15 minutes as the rest of the stragglers also made their way to the gate. We were the last bus load to go to the plane.

The plane was a Boeing 777 with registration G-YMMD. It was in a 3-3-3 configuration in the economy section. I did notice that there were seats in the 2-4-2 configuration in the cabin before us. We took our seats near the wings of the plane. The seats were not as comfortable as the previous BA flights I have taken. I would guess that this was an older configuration being utilised on this sector. There was no VOD system. The in-seat entertainment system was a 18 channel system with a 2 hr cycle of whatever is being shown. Based on the in-flight magazine, I doubt any BA plane has VOD in the economy section. The magazine only lists 13 channel and 18 channel systems and what is being shown and does not have any mention of a listing of movies and shows that can be viewed (like in the Qantas magazine).

The food on the flight was reasonable with no complaints. There were two meal services - one after take-off and one before landing. I think there was also a snack service in the middle, but I might have been asleep at the time. The staff was friendly and seemed to enjoy what they were doing (a welcome change from the average Qantas staff). The flight left and arrived on time. At NBO, we followed the signs to the immigration counters and joined the queue. Once there, a small group of us were directed to go to another area down a hallway. NBO has recently been renovated and expanded and there were additional counters down the hall. We managed to be the first in line there. The person at the counter was friendly and very efficient. He had given us our visa on the spot and we were out of there in under 5 minutes only to end up at waiting for luggage to arrive.

BA did not put any priority tags on our luggage, so we had to wait quite a while for our bags to arrive. Also, in NBO, the airport staff were removing bags from the carousel as they were about to go back out. This meant we had to first check all the bags lying on the floor to see if ours was among them as well as keep a close eye on what was still coming out. The bags took a long time to arrive. I think ours was in the last load to be offloaded as most people had already left and the staff was telling people that there were no more bags to come. Quickly through customs green channel. The Mrs told me to avoid eye contact with any customs staff and just walk straight out. If you make eye contact, they will stop us and make life difficult as we were visiting relatives in Nairobi. We were warned to not even say we were visiting family, but to just say that we were tourists. However, we got cold feet and specified our reason of visiting to be to visit family. We decided to say that we had no gifts if stopped by customs.

 

[MrHyde]

Nbo - ark - nbo

For our side trip to the Ngorongoro Crater, we decided to go by road from Nairobi to Arusha and meet our safari guide there for the trip to Ngorongoro. The main factor in going by road was the cost. By road, the bus fare was about A$16 pp one-way and by air, it was about A$350 pp one-way on Precision Airways to Mt Kilimanjaro. We were told that the road to Arusha is now pretty good and it is a comfortable 5 hour journey. We had already been to Masai Mara by road and that was a very good smooth road, so we thought we could handle it.

The reality was very far removed. The road was terrible. Almost the entire route from Nairobi to Namanga (Kenya Tanzania border) was unmade road or road under construction. This meant the entire journey took longer (~ 7 hours) and the entire journey was up and down, up and down with the complete bus shaking. Once into Tanzania, the roads improved.

The border crossing went smoothly, although the Tanzania side could do with a few more signs informing visitors of the procedure. On the Kenya side, we get our passports stamped with an exit stamp and then make our way across no mans land to the Tanzania side. The procedure to obtaining a visa involved queuing up on one counter, handing in the entry forms, visa fee and having photo and passport taken, then having to go and wait in another area. After about 20 mins, they will call out your name and hand you the passport back with a receipt for the visa fee.

From Arusha, Ngorongoro is another 3 hour drive. It was about 7 PM by the time we got to the Game Reserve entrance. Our guide had called ahead to inform them that we would be arriving late as the gates close at 6 PM and all cars are supposed to be inside their camps by 7:30 PM. We made it camp by 8 PM. Ngorongoro itself is spectacularly. From the ridge, you can see pretty much the whole crater and the different regions within - lush green forests on one side and rolling plains of the savannahs on the other plus a huge lake on another side. We saw lots of animals, but the highlight was a pride of lions resting on the road right next to our jeep.

Our way back took the same route. I was very very tempted to cancel the bus ride and book a flight, but decided to bear the ride. Surprisingly, the return trip was slightly smoother. I'm pretty sure the route was the same. I don't think they completed the construction in the 2 days past. What I think happened was that our return trip was at night and the traffic was driving on the unfinished road, rather than the mud/gravel diversions we used on the way to Arusha. Since there was no construction work happening at night, I guess it was ok for the vehicles to use the "proper" road. This also showed in the travel time as it took us 5 hours to get back to Nairobi from Arusha instead of the 7 hours the other way. The buses themselves are very comfortable. They are mini-buses with about 20 seats. Each passenger is also given a bottle of water for the journey and there is one rest stop at a souvenir shop.

The crossing from Tanzania to Kenya was also much smoother. Get a quick exit stamp on the Tanzania side and a quick entry stamp on the Kenya side. We all had a single journey visa for Kenya and I was unsure whether we would have to pay another $25 each to enter back in to Kenya. We didn't. Our trip out of and then back to Kenya was not considered as a separate journey, but part of the same single "journey", so that was good to know.

 

[KateMayo]

Re: Nbo - ark - nbo

Tomorrow, we (me, Mrs and 14 mth old bubba) head off on our nearly round the world adventure....
...We were told that the road to Arusha is now pretty good and it is a comfortable 5 hour journey.

:shock::shock::shock:

Braver than I!!!!

Really enjoying the report - thanks for sharing.

 

[MrHyde]

Till this part of the trip, junior has been a brilliant traveller. He slept through most of the plane and bus rides. However, that soon changed in the next part of the trip.

 

[MrHyde]

Nbo - lon - hel - tll

Our Kenya part of the trip is now over and before the next family reunion in Bahrain, we're off to Helsinki and Tallinn for a bit of sight seeing and relaxation.

The NBO - LON leg is on a BA 777, which I expected to be the same as the one we arrived here on. However, it was different. It was an updated configuration with VOD entertainment system. I have to take back my previous statement on BA not having VOD. I double checked the inflight magazine and it had a section on VOD. I'm pretty sure that the previous month's inflight magazine did not have a VOD section in it. Either BA have just introduced VOD or they have different versions of their inflight magazine to match up with the type of plane being flown. If it is the latter, no wonder BA is making losses. The flight departed on time, but arrived about 20 mins late due to traffic at Heathrow. The takeoff was very rough. It felt that the runway was the same quality as the road to Tanzania. As the previous leg, the food on BA was pretty good. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Junior was his usual self and slept through the whole flight. Interestingly, the staff took off the luggage tag from the stroller and said that since it was being taken on board, a luggage tag wasn't needed. First time that has happened as I've always had to get a luggage tag even for the stroller even when we leave it at the plane door.

As has been posted here, the BA lounge is very hard to find. After clearing customs and security, head back towards to customs. Just before the customs area, turn left and you will come to the Simba Lounge. Next to it, take the stairs up one level and then take the lift to Level 5 and you will then be at the BA lounge. The lounge itself is very small and gets full very quickly. The food is just two items - samosas and meat pies. Atleast it is still more comfortable than the waiting lounges in the airport. Also, before we got to the lounge, we had made our way to the departure where the staff were telling people that they need to be there at 10 PM (1:20 hours before departure) for boarding. The lounge make the boarding annoucement at 11 PM. Once at the gate, we had to go through two security checks. The second one was less than 20m after the first one and in the enclosed area where a person could not have bought or received anything new. On asking for the reason why there were two checks so close to each other, we were told that the first one was done by the airport staff and the second one was done by BA staff. Past the second lounge, we waited for another 30 mins before boarding commenced.

On arrival, we made our way from T5 to T3 by following the transfer connections arrows. One in T3, we went to the FinnAir counter to check the stroller in and then made our way to the Cathay Lounge (which is shared by FinnAir). The Cathay Lounge is split into two areas - Business and First Class, but other than that, the facilities are the same. Free WiFi did not work. The person at the counter said that they had only just introduced the free WiFi system and had received many complaints about it. For me, I could connect, but it kept dropping out. It was unuseable as you had to reconnect nearly every minute. They provided a LAN cable instead and that worked brilliantly. Cathay lounges also make flight announcements. About 15 min from scheduled departure, there are still no information on the screens or announcements on when boarding would commence. On asking the staff, they made an announcement that the flight is slightly delayed and it would be another 10 minutes before boarding. After 5 mins, the boarding announcement was made and we made our way to the gate.

At the gate, we were the last ones to board and the lady at the check-in said that they were about to close the gate. It took us barely 3 mins to get from the lounge to the gate and mentioned that we left as soon as the boarding announcement was made in the lounge and she said that can't be right as they had been boarding atleast 20 minutes earlier. She was not a very friendly person. The flight itself was on a A320 that looked fairly new. There was in-seat or out-seat entertainment on the flight. However, it was a short 3 hour flight and went by quite quickly. The landing in Helsinki was one of the smoothest landings I've experienced. We didn't even feel the landing. We were quickly out of customs and baggage claim. Our next destination was the Lindaline terminal to head to Tallinn. The best way to get to port was to use the Airport Taxi (Euro 25), but they didn't have any available. A normal taxi would cost around Euro 40. In the end, we took the bus to Central station and then a taxi from there. All up, that cost about Euro 20. The little one did not like the bus ride from the airport. I had pre-purchased tickets for the 7 PM ferry, but we got to the terminal at 4:55 PM. We were able to change our tickets to the 5 PM ferry and quickly got on board. The little one enjoyed the ferry, mostly spending all the time going up and down the stairs. We got to Tallinn on schedule. The thing to note is that the only place to change Euros to Kroner is at the Lindaline counter in the terminal. After getting enough cash to take a taxi, we made our way to the hotel, which turned out to be less than 5 mins away and could have been walkable in the worst case that we didn't have cash. Although I think the taxis would have accepted Euros as well as most shops knew the exchange rate and were accepting them. We didn't get a chance to try it out though.

PS: As an addendum, we managed to get 3 seats in all the above flights so that Junior had his own seat to sleep in.

 

[MrHyde]

Tll - hel - lhr - bah

Our trip to Estonia was not as relaxing as we had hoped. The first day, it rained pretty much all day and was very cold and windy. We attempted leaving the hotel about 3-4 times, but it was just too cold for junior and he would start crying after a minute or two outside. So, we stayed indoors all day and that drove him up the wall. The second day was slightly better with no wind or rain. It did snow slightly at times, but not heavily enough to worry us. Whenever it started getting a bit too cold, we went indoors. In Tallinn,

Our ferry back to Helsinki was scheduled at 1 PM. When we got to the terminal, we found out that it had been cancelled. We were warned about this on one of the Tallinn threads on this forum. The reason is that the LindaLine ferries are very small and probably can't handle a bit of rough seas. This is where Junior started playing up. He didn't want to be in his stroller any more, nor did he want us to carry him. He wanted to walk everywhere. In any case, they informed us that our ticket is valid on the other ferry lines and the next ferry was at 5:30 PM on the TallinK. Compared to the LindaLine, TallinK is a cruise ship. While boarding the ferry this caused us no ends of trouble. He didn't walk in the direction we wanted him to and with all the luggage, we got very very frustrated and stressed. Thankfully, we found a children's area on board with small slides, balls, blocks, etc and the Junior spent the whole time there. He wouldn't leave the area even for feeds. That gave us a good three hours of rest.

Helsinki was even colder than Tallinn, so we spent two days in the hotel which drove Junior crazy. This time round we didn't even get to go round for even half a day. This time we did get the Airport Taxi to pick us up from the Airport at 6 AM for a 7:50 AM flight to London. On reaching the business class BA check-in counter, we were told that something was wrong with our reservations as we had no tickets to Bahrain. Our tickets were to Hong Kong. A week before departing I had our schedule changed to include BAH and had gone to the Qantas offices in Melbourne to hand in the paper tickets and get them re-issued. At the time, they said that they had changed our tickets to e-tickets and it was all done. Now at Helsinki airport, we were being told that we had no tickets. I called the Qantas premium desk in Australia and got them to sort it all out. Apparently, the tickets had not been re-issued correctly and the person fixed it all up for us. She was brilliant and I wish I had gotten her name as I would like to send a message to Qantas complimenting her service. It took us about 30 minutes on the phone as she had to interact with a number of areas within Qantas, BA as well as Helsinki Airport, but at the end, our tickets showed up in the BA system at Helsinki and we got booked in. The next problem was that one of our bags was over 23 Kg. It weighed 28 Kgs and BA had just introduced a 23Kg limit on all baggage. Our total weight was just 35Kgs for the three of us. So, then we had to move 4Kgs out of the big case and move it to our hand luggage and the smaller one. Finally, we were all sorted and able to leave check-in and go to security and immigration. If you ever get your flights changed, check and doublecheck with the airline that the ticket has been re-issued. Also, get them to give you the e-ticket number in addition to your booking reference. We did not get a spare seat this time round and had to hold Junior in our arms for the whole flight. A quick walk through the aircraft after take-off showed it to be completely full. I could not spot a single empty seat in the economy section. In any case, Junior is a good flyer and he went promptly to sleep on take-off and woke up after landing.

I don't remember anything about the lounge at Helsinki, so will have to leave that to later when my memory returns.

The Boeing 757 flight actually arrived 20 minutes before schedule, which was great as it gave us a bit more time to stretch our legs. A quick trip on the T3 to T5 terminal bus and through security and we made our way to Gate B and the lounge there. Much smaller than the South Terraces lounge in the main terminal. It also had a smaller selection of breakfast food available and I didn't get a chance to check the WiFi as our flight to Bahrain started boarding almost as soon as I finished breakfast. Luckily for us, we got 4 seats to ourselves on the Boeing 747. This flight was almost empty with loads of people getting 4 seats instead of 1. The flight departed on schedule, but landed 30 minutes late as we waited for a landing slot. This flight also had the latest VOD system and the food items were the same as the LHR - NBO sector. My dad tells me that it is one of the worst times to arrive as flights from Europe and East Asia arrive at pretty much the same time in Bahrain. Our luggage also took ages to come out. I've had bad experiences with lost luggage in the Middle East, so I was getting worried on whether our bags will come out or not. It took nearly an hour before our bags arrived. After leaving the airport, we got stuck in the car park for another 45 minutes. Junior again slept through the whole flight. Still, this sector felt very very long and we were very tired and glad to get home.

 

[MrHyde]

Bah - dxb

Our company has a booth at GITEX 2009, so I needed to get from Bahrain to Dubai for the week. My partner was going to have the GITEX stuff sorted before I got to Bahrain and he only did the hotel bookings. So, I needed to quickly book airline tickets.

Previously, I have flown Bahrain Air on this sector as a convenient airline, but after the last experience, where they misplaced all our GITEX marketing material and then refused to pay compensation after the requisite 21 days and somehow found all the material after 3 months with no way of sending it on to Australia, I wanted to avoid them if possible. I ended up booking a flight on Jazeera Airways. They are a Kuwaiti based budget airline and fly BAH - DXB direct. They were more expensive than Bahrain Air, but charged a lot less in taxes, so came our cheaper than them as well.

The check-in process was very smooth. Also, this year we decided not to bring any material from Australia and have it all printed in Dubai. We have found a reliable printer here who is a lot cheaper than Aus and better quality as well. There was also a free internet kiosk near the boarding gate, so I could keep myself occupied for the hour till boarding.

The plane was a brand new A320. It had aisle screens which I think was using the same software as the BA flight from NBO to LHR. The flight was almost empty and everyone had 3 seats to themselves. I slept the whole time from take-off to landing, so no idea on the service or how much the food cost.

My return flight will be on Bahrain Air though as I could not find a cheap and convenient flight on the other budget airlines in the region. In addition, a conference I was hoping to attend in first week of November in Dubai has been cancelled.. which means my holidays are now over and I need to be back in Melbourne next week. My Award ticket is for 7 Nov and I can't change that as there are no flights from HKG to SYD. I have got only my flight from BAH to HKG changed, but have had to purchase a separate ticket from HKG back to MEL. So, this overall trip report is going to be slightly longer than expected due to these changes.

 

[MrHyde]

Dxb - bah

I could not get a Jazeera Airways flights back to Bahrain on the Friday morning, so had to go through Bahrain Air. Atleast, I had no luggage. The plane was a brand new A320 and it was flying onwards to KRT from BAH.

In contrast to the Jazeera Airways flight, this one was full with most passengers going to KRT. The flight had no entertainment system, not even in the aisle. That didn't matter for a short 1 hr flight. In any case, I was still hungover from the previous night and wanted all the sleep I could get.

If you ever in Dubai, I can highly recommend the Baristi Bar on a Thursday night.