Posts Tagged ‘Airbus’

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Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 6

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

I’m leaving Dunedin today.

This is Air New Zealand style! This is arguably the friendliest national carrier you’ll ever fly. My propeller flight is one hour late thus they put me into a jet half an hour early. I’m just about to board the Boeing that takes me back to Christchurch. It may actually take a while, as this aircraft has just landed and passengers are still coming through to the terminal. The weather has been desperately strange during these less than 24 hours in town: 27 Celsius yesterday afternoon and 7 at night, sunny in patches today but very cold Antarctic wind. (…)

dunedin aport

On board now: This plane again is packed, many youngsters, exchange students from Otago University, I guess. And only three little kids all of them crying and all of them seated just behind me. I had taken window seats with my booking, but yesterday a farmer’s wife sat on mine and I surrendered the room with a view. (…) Again I had my Nokia switched off for takeoff. We are flying over the Pacific and all I can see is deep blue water.

over blue pacific

We are announced that the weather in Christchurch is pretty bad: wintry drizzle. This is supposed to be summer. At least in Dunedin I could walk for a couple of hours and I took these photos of houses, churches, the old railway station and the new Chinese Gardens, where I enjoyed a cup of oblong tea.

dnd hses

dnd wd start 6 wth

dnd cth a wd

dnd station

dnd station 2 train

ch gr 1

ch gr 3 wd

ch gr 4 stones

ch gr 2 wlk

ch gr 2 oolong

Now, as we approach Christchurch, we’ve caught up with the clouds. This flight is so short for the 737-300, that it actually climbs to 25,000 feet and it then starts descending straight away. This time all flight attendants are quite nice, but a blonde in particular is very easy to look at (sorry, no picture). I should have booked an aisle seat. The service is minimal: a choice of packed snacks and a glass of mineral water but that’s more than enough for about 35 minutes in the plane. Four our peace of mind, the captain told us not to worry this flight is running late, it’s just a replacement for the one that broke down (because it was replacing one that had broken down?). Then the captain goes on and on about what we can see outside (if you are on the western side you can). Then we land. No sign of drizzle. Just a quick note: today Air New Zealand commemorated 30 years since its only crash involving passengers. This was on Mount Erebus, in Antarctica.

Erebus

Soon I’ll have to carry on with the English girl’s story.

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Travel for Real: How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 4

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

(Later in that flight)

No wonder I couldn’t read the secret meaning of her bracelets. Something was terribly wrong! And it wasn’t then, no, then it was just beautiful, the comfort of the guilty feeling when you know for sure you can’t be guilty at all. The wrong part only comes now, as I write: I have just realized that it takes a wee bit of Dali and quite a strong dose of Picasso to make the hand and arm of the English girl in the KLM flight perfectly match the described position with her book, blue jeans, white fingers and the arm rest of my seat.  She was young, all right. Attractive over the limit, all right (in a 22-hour one-stop flight who wouldn’t be?). But contortionist, no way! Russian ballerina, no way! How was she, actually?

Now, as I remember, she was asleep. Or so she seemed.

inflight picture not mockos

She moved slightly as the plane shook from some lateral wind and the light dimmed and most kids cried but only a few mums shushed. Her left leg crossed over my right one, which was a severe violation of my private economy class space but I could see no air marshals or even better looking hostesses, so I chose not to induce any panic on board and I did not complain. The light got dimmer but not fast enough to prevent me from seeing her fragile, almost argyle, agile, ankle. A while.

She was wearing sandals: vandal’s teeth marks, shark’s in her flesh, fresh.  I didn’t like her much. So I didn’t touch. I looked at my watch. There was NO time. Just a chime.  We were stopping soon, in Bangkok, at noon.

——

NOTE: By mistake or just randomly chosen, the airliners featuring in this post and the previous one replace British Airways and its partners, with whom indeed I flew. This is thanks to a charge they applied to my MasterCard for trying to contact over their satellite (?) phone a number on the ground, as I was flying over. It was something like 30 US a minute for NOT getting through. I wrote to British Airways and that letter came back at some expense, too. But never mind, the girl was real. I just picture her in a plane belonging to a company I am more comfortable with.

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Travel for Real! How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 2

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

I don’t know what I’m writing about, yet I’m still doing it. So don’t take this information as the Gospel. However, some facts you will read in this series of travel and pre-travel mockoposts are not to be found in The Lonely Planet and the other guides. And they are certainly not meant to be commercial; at least not until someone decides my texts deserve a sponsorship or maybe legal action.

Here we go!

New Zealand has three main international airports. Two are in the North Island (Auckland, the largest and Wellington, a funny one, which resembles a carrier and where you don’t want to land with a cross wind). I live in the South Island and the only option here is Christchurch Airport. This is the main international gate for an island of about one million, not to mention the tourists and the migrants. The picture shows Christchurch International (and Domestic) Runways and the terminals as they were before the massive renovation and extension that’s happening as we speak.

chch aport

The main carriers operating ex Christchurch are the Oceania-based Air New Zealand and Qantas plus two large Asian companies: Air Singapore and Emirates. The four could be perhaps listed in this ascending order when it comes to size, level of service and popular perception of pricing.  I might be very wrong, but that’s my feeling and I had traveled with three of these airliners in the past ten years or so.

When you leave Christchurch going North, as most flights do, unless you are heading to Antarctica, you see the Waimakariri River and the Canterbury Plains.

waimak plane

After that, then the plane is too high for you to see anything else, really, except for the air hostess.

But how do you buy your ticket? Do you go through the agents, airlines or do you give it a go online?

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Travel for Real! How I’m Gonna Go to Europe and Maybe Back – Part 1

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

I sold my boat. I had it for three years and with my older son moving to another island for Uni, she was just going to rot in front of our house.

I leave in New Zealand. Pretty cool down here, wouldn’t move elsewhere for good. Yet my other family, my first, are back there in Europe, most of them all the way up in Romania. I don’t see much of them, haven’t seen my only sis for ages and she’s got a baby now, my first nephew. There are a couple of parents I might miss and a bunch of ex-mates. So the boat chose to split-reincarnate herself in a few plane tickets.

NZ to Romania takes at best three long haul flights and two days, there are 12 time zones in between, it’s a lovely Climate Warming summer here and a bloody Cold War winter over there.

I looked for tickets on the net but it seemed my boat had not been big enough to fly my all the way and back plus to allow me a glass of vodka in Bucharest and a Kiwi beer on my return, three weeks later.

I shall tell you the story of my trip to the old side of the World and back. It starts with an Emirates booking.

emirpln

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