Your 2025 year of travel in review

That's my point though, I didn't!

AFF is probably the last place I expect to find people not familiar with airside transfers....🤣
Apologies, I must have misunderstood. Somewhere someone commented on the speed of going through immigration at LHR. I am not sure how to track back through comments.
 
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All this data inspires me to work out the average KM per flight taken by travellers. I must work it out.
 
Apologies, I must have misunderstood. Somewhere someone commented on the speed of going through immigration at LHR. I am not sure how to track back through comments.
that was the last trip not the previous trip
 
Number of flights: 19, it is sad these days
New countries: Nil
New airports: TFU, LXA, XNN, IZO
New airline: None
Shortest flight: ADL-MEL (initially I thought HND-IZO would win but it it is 2 miles longer than ADL-MEL)
Longest flight: NRT-MEL
Dislike: There were probably things in the year that annoyed me at the time but cannot remember so they could not have been significant. If one jumps to mind it was the time taken to get from the MU Lounge in TFU to the gate - 15-20 minute walk, the train, and another 25-30 minute walk. I did not realise how big TFU is.
Like: The the lounge in XNN, there is only one and I suspect the lunch meal service was provided out side of the published hours as I was the only non asian looking Western.

Just for something else - Longest train trip Lhasa-Xining around 22 hours and for those that looked at the TR apparently I was newly married Tibet TR at least my real wife saw the funny side of this.
 
didnt-expect-to-fly-this-much-this-year-v0-URAl1aG46dO_8pez6a7wc94c3Dj_A3-wk87X894kspQ.webp
  • Number of flights: 61 flights (5 J, 56 Y)
  • Countries visited: 15 visited, 2 transit = 17
  • New airports visited: HAN, DAD, BKK, HKT, AKL, MNL, NRT, HND, KUL, LHR, BER, IST, DUB
  • Airlines flown (bolded = new): Aer Lingus (EI), American Airlines (AA), Alaska Air (AS), Bangkok Airways (PG), British Airways (BA), Cathay Pacific (CX), Malaysia Airlines (MH), Qantas (QF), Singapore Airlines (SQ), Turkish Airlines (TK), United (UA), Vietnam Airlines (VN), WestJet (WS)
  • New aircraft types: A321XLR, B777
  • Best flight: QF74 - San Francisco to Sydney: comp upgraded to Business, literally knocked out after dinner and woke up refreshed. J so worth.
  • Worst flight: MH805 - Manila to Kuala Lumpur: first time on MH metal. Felt like I was flying on a JQ flight with no adjustable headrest. Neck was hurting.
 
Number of flights: 33 flights - 14 domestic (all QF, 8 in Y and 6 in J), 19 international (on EK, UL, JL, QF, AY and N7, 5 in Y and 14 in J)
Distance Traveled: no idea
New countries: Sri Lanka, Finland, Iceland, Greenland (if you count it as a country, and Denmark if you don't as I haven't been to Denmark proper yet either), Faroe Islands (ditto), Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. This takes me to 34 countries, plus Gibraltar, Greenland, Faroe Islands and Hong Kong (before it was part of China).
New airports: Colombo (CMB), Helsinki (HEL), Keflavik (KEF), Vilnius (VNO)
New airlines: Sri Lankan, Finnair, Nordic Regional (N7)
New aircraft: A350 (JL), ATR-72 (N7)
Shortest flight: CBR-SYD and vice versa - over and over again (236km)
Longest flight: PER-LHR (14,498 km)

Dislike: Anything to do do with SriLankan airlines - their booking process; charging me for seat selection (that was labelled "free" on the web site and should have been free as a OWE perk) and then point blank refusing to refund; dreadful rude, rushed and could not care less "service" in Y - want water, too bad; dirty, tired, stinky aircraft; and do NOT get me started about the lounge situation in CMB. Never again.

Like: EK first lounge in DXB; Iceland (what an amazing place to visit, just spectacular, will be going again sometime to see more), the Baltics generally

Best Flight(s): QF5/9 SYD-PER-LHR.
I was not sure how I would feel about such a long flight but it was fantastic all round. It was a delight to have the short hop from Sydney to Perth - time to eat a nice meal, have a couple of glasses of bubbles and just enjoy the ride. And the long leg from PER-LHR was amazing, with no intermediate ports of call and therefore no disruption for descents. Also no interruptions for meals. I slept the best and longest I have ever managed on a flight (7.5 hrs sleep in one stretch) and felt quite refreshed on arrival at LHR. I'm sure it would be much worse in Y, but in J this was amazing, and will be my new go to flight if I ever need to go to UK or western Europe again.

Milestones and Memorable Moments:
I got classic reward flights for us on various connecting legs around the Nordic/Baltic area - HEL-KEF, OSL-xHEL-VNO - very affordable and a good use of points.
Took my first cruise - jury is till out as to whether I loved it or hated it!
Iceland - such a beautiful place, just spectacular
Silja line Tallink ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki - a trip I took on recommedation of several people from AFF, and it was fabulous.
Paying $11.50 for a tiny cup of coffee in Torshavn, Faroe Islands. Needs must!
 
My year will be quite a giveaway of how new I am to semi frequent flying, as there are a lot of firsts here that are probably quite mundane to many people here. Also probably a dead giveaway of my age but thats also fine šŸ™ƒ

Number of flights: 19 (10 domestic), with 71,951km flown
New countries: China, Netherlands, Serbia, Hong Kong
New airports: HKG, SHA, SZX, BEG, AMS
New airlines: China eastern, CX, KLM
Shortest flight: AMS-LHR 369km
Longest flight: LHR-PER 14,506km

Best flight: Qantas classic upgrade from Y to J on QF1 as a bronze flier. They totally got me with this one, I am hooked for life and am now chasing WP. Incredible experience for my first ever long haul J.

Worst flight: SYD-PER that had a defect on the plane, resulting in a reroute over the mainland (pic attached), stretching the flight time way beyond the usual ~4-5h. Comically bad experience on top of it already being a b737. This was on QF653, September 17th.

Dislikes: Nothing new but the QF Perth terminal is so archaic when it comes to passport control. Hate having to wait to be manually processed. On that note, our IPC system also sucks and should have been digitised long ago.

Likes: CX pier lounge in HKG was lovely, and so was the QF LHR lounge. It's also lovely having some level of status now, as I can select extra legroom seats for free on CX. Best travel moment of the year was staying at the Shanghai edition.

Biggest like of all: the AFF forum! It's been invaluable being a member here.
 

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