Lightening Online

Flying didn’t turn out to be nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

In fact, I was quite surprised by how smooth the ride was.

If you didn’t look out the window, you’d hardly know you were thousands of feet up in the air.

Unless you hit a bit of turbulence.

We had pretty good weather for all our flights with only the occasional bit of turbulence.

I didn’t even have too much trouble with my ears, until the last leg of the trip that is.  Not sure why but it was not good.  The pain was almost unbearable.  But they came good pretty quickly once we landed and it was really only on the descent I had trouble.

So, what have I learnt from my experience?

1.  You need HEAPS of water!!!

I got so dehydrated, even though I carried bottled water with me.  I had heard that flying can be quite dehydrating but didn’t expect to have such a problem on the length of flights we were on.  I even declined a wine on the final flight (the only flight we were offered alcohol on) in favour of juice as I was worried about the alcohol increasing the dehydration factor.

2.  You need to take out a second mortgage to eat at the airport!

We left home early on Monday and figured we’d have some breakfast at the Adelaide airport in between our flights.  A bottle of water was $4!!!!  The food we ate was pretty ordinary too.  Not to mention very ordinary (ie “grumpy”) service.  :(  Perhaps we chose the wrong place to dine at?

Funnily enough, on the way home from Melbourne, the chocolate cafe at the Adelaide airport seemed “cheap” in comparison to the ones we’d visited in Melbourne.  Problem was, they didn’t taste anywhere near as good either.  Sometimes you do get what you pay for (or maybe I was just all chocolated out by the time we ate there).

3.  Allow plenty of time between flights.

We did.  But I had NO IDEA it would take us 20 minutes to actually get OFF our plane once landed.  We spent more time on loading and unloading than we did in the air!  Of course, if you’re waiting for luggage, there’s really no hurry.  Even with having to wait to disembark and make our way downstairs, Farmboy and I still had time to each visit the restrooms before our luggage turned up.  According to the lady standing next to me, it took a lot longer than “normal”.

4. Booking with the one airline was an EXCELLENT decision!

When we started out looking at flights, I was simply going to book whatever worked out cheapest.  After doing some searching, I worked out that our best option was to fly with Qantas on both legs of the trip.  There was one other flight $3 cheaper but it would cost us $12 for luggage, effectively making Qantas cheaper.

Anyway, we ended up booking it all as a single trip each way via the Qantas website which meant our luggage was automatically transferred between our flights and we didn’t have to worry about.

Not that I didn’t actually “worry” about it getting there.  But as it turns out, Qantas actually has some clue about what they are doing and our luggage made it all the way in both directions. 

5.  Flight safety information sessions get boring after a while!

The first one freaked me out!!!  You get that when you’re already scared of flying (and in my mind, with good reason!) and then they start telling you what to do in the “unlikely event of an emergency”.

The second one fascinated me.  I kept comparing it to the first one.  Even though we were flying with the “same” airline, it wasn’t exactly the same (the first airline was actually a subsidiary or something).

By the 3rd one I was all “meh, we haven’t crashed on the last 2 flights so why start now?”

And the 4th I was cracking up at the parent behind me telling their child the plane wasn’t going to crash “this time”.  Farmboy was all like “is that kid going to wonder every time they fly if maybe ‘this’ is the time the plane IS going to crash?”  LOL.  It’s kind of a tricky one to explain to kids isn’t it?

All in all, it went really well.  I gripped hold of Farmboy’s leg on the first take off but after that I was fine.

I’d love to take the kids sometime.  Of course, paying for 5 people instead of 2 might take a bit more saving up for.  But I think it would be so worth it if we could do it even just once with the kids.

It’s going to be interesting to see how I go going back to road travel not that I know how quick and easy flying can be!