Tuesday, October 18th, 2005
I’m flying back to New Zealand tomorrow for a high school and family reunion. Central Southland College in Winton, Southland is celebrating 40 years of education. The last reunion was the 25th anniversary in 1990. Back I was one of three CSC alumni who led the Sunday morning worship service. This time I don’t have to worry about such responsibility. In fact I only decided to go a week or so ago when my family offered to help out with airfares.
I’m looking forward to catching up with family, including my seven brothers and sisters. I’m not looking forward to the temperatures. Basic rule of thumb when working out the temperature from Queensland is take the minimum temperature here then subtracting up to five degrees to find the maximum temperature in Invercargill. Apparently tomorrow the maximum in Dunedin will be 11 and the minimum 4.
I’ll be flying with budget airline, Freedom Air. Which means take your own food or buy it onboard. The 3.5 hours flight leaves at 8.10 am and arrives in Dunedin at 2.35 pm. Coming back I leave Dunedin at 3.50 pm and arrive back in Brisbane at 4.50 pm. Funny what time zones can do.
Tags: airlines, Family, NZ
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Wednesday, July 13th, 2005
Flew to Mackay and back with Jetstar this last week. I was reminded why I’ve been avoiding flying budget on small planes. You can take on a brief case and a laptop but it can’t add up to more than 7 kg. Anything over 20 kg checked luggage you pay $5 a kg excess fees. With Qantas we’re allowed to carry on items up to 7 kg per piece except for on Dash 8s in which case it’s 4 kg total.
I made sure I was there a bit earlier than an hour before on the way back. Which meant I was able to get into the blue class of passenger. Orange passengers get on first and can choose the best seats. These are Jet Flex passengers, passengers travelling with young children and passengers who need special assistance . Blue passengers, the earliest to check in, are on next. Silver (me, Bruce and Ben last Friday) passengers tag along last and get the seats that are left, if they’re lucky. Which we were. Passengers who arrive later than 30 minutes before the flight just miss out completely.
The good thing about Jetstar is that they’ve opened up the number of flights into places like Mackay. They’ve connected Brisbane and the Gold Coast with the rest of Australia for very affordable prices. And they generally leave and arrive on time.
Tags: airlines, Australia, Jetstar, Qantas
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