Thursday 17 December 2015

Flights

Here are my thoughts on the various flights I took on my trip.

Virgin Australia Flights

I flew Virgin Australia both directions from Perth to Los Angeles - via Sydney on the way there and via Brisbane on the way home. I felt like the in-flight experiences were a little mixed.

The PER-SYD flight was a red-eye so we were just given supper, which was a grilled cheese sandwich (probably the best plane food I had all trip but I could have eaten three times as much). On the SYD-LAX flight we were given dinner, breakfast and a snack in between. On the LAX-BNE flight I only got dinner and breakfast - I suspect I may have slept through a snack but I wish they had woken me up; I was starving by the time breakfast came.

On the PER-SYD flight the cabin lights were dimmed the whole time so I tried to sleep but it was very cold despite having both a jumper and jacket on. On the long flights we were given blankets and pillows, which helped with the cold, although not a great deal with the discomfort of an economy long-haul seat. Luckily I managed to have no-one next to me on both long flights. On both long flights the cabin lights were dimmed for around 10 hours out of the approximately 14 hour flight, which I thought was a little bit too long.

On the SYD-LAX flight I watched Tomorrowland and Cinderella to get me in the mood for Disneyland. On the LAX-BNE flight I pretty much just slept, since I was so exhausted from the previous couple of weeks in Orlando.

The BNE-PER flight only offered bring-your-own-device inflight entertainment - if you hadn't brought a phone, tablet or laptop on board there was no inflight entertainment available. I had planned to watch Inside Out, which had been available on the LAX-BNE flight but for some reason the offerings with the BYOD entertainment were slightly different and that movie wasn't available so I just listened to my own music instead.

Virgin America

I flew Virgin America from LAX to BOS. My main regret on this flight was that I paid a lot for the flight and then a couple of weeks later there was a big sale and I could have saved over $100. This was also the only flight where I had to pay to check a bag, but it was easy to do this online when I checked in. Like most domestic flights in the US, you had to pay for pretty much anything you wanted onboard. But I was so tired after 5 days at Disneyland that I slept for almost the whole flight anyway.

Jet Blue

I flew Jet Blue from BOS to MCO. This was the shortest of my flights and the only one that I wasn't solo on. We paid for Even More Space seats and ended up having a spare seat next to us as well, so all in all it made for a very pleasant flight. I enjoyed the complimentary snack options (I was able to get both blue chips and cookies) and all of the Jet Blue staff were very friendly.

Delta

I actually booked most of my flights through Delta but the majority were operated by Virgin Australia. The only flight that was actually operated by Delta was the MCO to LAX flight. When I first booked the flight, for some reason the website let me select a seat in the exit row without paying extra, so that was an added bonus, especially since there ended up being no-one in the seat next to me. Like most of the flights, I was so tired that I slept most of the flight.

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