From LA, my next leg was a hefty flight on a Qantas 747 across the Pacific to Auckland. While this sounds like it could be the worst thing imaginable, it was surprisingly not bad. I managed to get to the airport nice and early, so I was one of the first to check in. This gave me the very hefty advantage of being able to ask for one of the emergency exit seats. For those of you not aware, I'm quite a tall guy at six feet and three inches (or about 190cm for those of a metric inclination). If you've ever travelled economy on any airline anywhere, you'll probably be aware of how the seats offer a degree of legroom to proportionally increase agony levels with every inch gained in height above five foot nothing.
Thankfully, I got the emergency seats, and the associated additional legroom. However, when I got on the plane, I was faced with a bit of a weird situation. The guy in the seat next to mine looked like a bizarre genetic experiment splicing John Travolta and Gary Glitter into one weird, weird looking human being. Of course, I had the added benefit of being stuck right next to the air hostesses station, so at least the view was quite nice in one direction.
The flight was pretty long, about 14 hours in total. It wasn't a particularly fun experience, and even my favourite thing was spoilt. My favourite thing about flying anywhere is watching the moving map on the TV screens. When your plane's over the middle of the pacific ocean, the map shows a bunch of blue stuff with a wee grey plane in the middle for about ten hours. Oh well, can't win them all...
Photo Credit: Steve Downe
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