A guy's doin' some flying in the name of charity!

[serfty]

Read more: Cystic fibrosis campaigner Matthias Fuchs | Frequent flyer

" ...flying to every continent (except Antarctica) without leaving a plane or an airport: 150 air hours in nine days to raise funds for charity"

Everyday Hero - Where Living is Giving

Was to be departing last Wednesday ...
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[Princess Fiona]

Thankyou for posting serfty, a very worthwhile cause.

 

[mr_osborne]

I love this part:

As a child, I used to land toy aeroplanes according to actual real timetables. It drove my parents nuts when my alarm went off to land the plane for its fuel stop in the middle of the night.

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[Robert K]

I love this part:

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That is so cute!

But the thing is, this guy obviously love planes, so is being on a 150hr plane ride really that much of a sacrifice/challenge? Maybe a challenge of 150 days without visiting an airport or air travel related website instead. That would be much more painful!!

Maybe I should start a fundraiser too!

 

[Awesom Andy]

He even has lounge access. It sounds like something even I'm capable of without any major challenges, even if I'm in Y. Perhaps if this was done solely on budget airlines, with no lounge access, with the only meals allowed being food purchased on board, and all overnight connections need to be spent on the floor at the airport, then may be that's worth something.

 

[oz_mark]

He's done this sort of thing before: http://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/open-discussion/7-day-flying-cf-kids-18988.html

 

[harvyk]

He even has lounge access. It sounds like something even I'm capable of without any major challenges, even if I'm in Y.

Probably, but he thought of it first...

It looks like he has made his target of $130,000 with an extra $840 over which is pretty cool...

 

[Noob]

As a child, I used to land toy aeroplanes according to actual real timetables. It drove my parents nuts when my alarm went off to land the plane for its fuel stop in the middle of the night.

Agreed so cute!

- What a great cause good on him!

 

[Matthias Fuchs]

That guy is me and I have just returned from the nine days of life in planes and airports. Thanks for the kind words. It has raised 132k which is just terrific. I absolutely love being on planes and I love airports and so the fundraising challenge was the big one and not the flying. As a QF Platinum flyer, I had access to the Lounges and that made an enormous difference . The only Lounge without a shower was in Buenos Aires. I had plenty of wonderful moments in the air and planty of learnings !

Thanks MF

 

[harvyk]

So I guess the big question is what class did you fly? Considering QF provided the seats where they nice enough to give you J \ F, or did you keep getting Y seats?
Also did you have any trouble with security \ immi (Thinking of places that don't allow people to transit airside...) at any airports as a result of not actually stopping anywhere?

 

[Matthias Fuchs]

Good question. The deal was that all flights were confirmed in economy but were upgradeable behind paying passengers, upgrades using points and staff travel. Once all those were exhausted I got an upgrade. I was quite lucky and got an upgrade on a couple of the long haul legs where the cabin was pretty empty ie HKG-LHR, EZE-SYD and JNB-SYD.

Believe it or not, I also rejected an upgrade to a middle seat once, becuase I find nothing more horrendous than a middle seat, no matter what class. I had a nice bulk head window allocated and so wasn't prepared to lose that for an " E" middle seat !

The biggest physical challenge was between 1am and 6am body clock time in Syd, when I was forced to hand around an airport without being able to sleep.

In terms of security, I passed through 27 security stations in the nine days. In LAX and LHR, I went through customs so I could walk around outside the front of the terminal for some air. In EZE and JNB, I simply transited and so didn't go through customs/immigration. It did raise some interesting questions on the documentation ie " where are you staying.......and answer- airport". However,also interestingly, I went through Australian immigration 4 times in the nine days and didn't even get a flinch or a question ,so not sure how much they focus on recent flying activity?

MF

 

[harvyk]

Sorry if it's already posted up somewhere, but what was your itinerary?

 

[Matthias Fuchs]

I haven't done this before, but have tried to post it as an attachment. Hopefully it works. If not, in summary:

SYD-LAX
LAX-MEL
MEL-BNE
BNE-CNS
CNS-GOV
GOV-DRW
DRW-SYD
SYD-EZE
EZE-SYD
SYD-HKG
HKG-LHR
LHR-BKK
BKK-SYD
SYD-JNB
JNB-SYD
SYD-PER
PER-SYD
SYD-PMQ
PMQ-SYD

Fastest time you can do this lot with Qantas is nine days.

MF

 

[Princess Fiona]

Platinum flyer or not that is one packed itinerary.
Well done in raising so much money for a very worthwhile cause.
Being AFF I'm sure there's a few of us who are a tad jealous of your exploits

 

[serfty]

I haven't done this before, but have tried to post it as an attachment. Hopefully it works. If not, in summary:

...
SYD-PMQ
PMQ-SYD

...

I sugeest that may be PQQ ...

Perito Moreno, SC, Argentina is not easily reachable from SYD in single segments.

19 segment path: 74214 mi

 

[tuapekastar]

I sugeest that may be PQQ ...

Perito Moreno, SC, Argentina is not easily reachable from SYD in single segments.

19 segment path: 74214 mi

Beat me to it serfty, though Mileage Monkey accredits 74246 miles. Either way that is (very) roughly 150 hours in the air. :shock:

 

[Matthias Fuchs]

Apologies for the incorrect airport code. Port Macquarie is not normally on my list of destinations, so I took a stab at that one ! It was a required destination to tick the dash 8 off the list, given that the challenge required all general type of QF equipment.

You can add a few thousand miles to your mileage calculation becuase the EZE-SYD flight which took an astonishing 15.3 hours took a detour to avoid some ash still coming out of Chile. In addition HKG-LHR did over an hour of laps around LHR.

Total flights now logged are 979, approximately one take off every 16 days of life.

MF

 

[harvyk]

Along the way did you have any connections which were in danger of being missed? What sort of contingency plans did you have if say you got delayed in LHR for example?

 

[Matthias Fuchs]

Yes, I just managed to get on the BNE- CNS flight given the late arrival of the flight from Mel. That was a close shave and would have jeopardised my ability to get upto CNS to catch the 717 to Darwin via Gove.

I was also originally booked on the QF 29 from MEL to LHR , but becuase of the late arrival of my flight into Syd from EZE, I was unable to get to MEL. Qantas then put me on a direct flight on the A330 from Syd to HKG where I then connected up with the QF 29 to LHR.

There were many in Qantas keeping a close eye on progress and and so as soon as there was a potential problem, they were onto it. Fortunately, other than these 2 examples, all wetn extremely smoothly.

 

[MrHyde]

Got to ask this question:

Did you get the points and SCs for these flights?