1. This year’s adventure begins with a marathon of planes! (33.75 flight hours) Thanks to 120,000 Alaska Airline Miles I obtained a $15,000 Business/First class ticket, Fairbanks to Cairns return, that cost me $266.
Now, I could have gone with Qantas instead and that would significantly reduced flight hours as i would have gone directly to Australia from LAX, and would have only used 110,000 AK Miles. The advantage to using Cathay is they hub out of Hong Kong, which allows for endless side trips if you do a layover there.
Exciting lounge photos….
Segment 1, First Class, Fairbanks to Seattle, 3.5 hours, the Fairbanks terminal at 1:30am:
Segment 2, First Class, Seattle to LAX, 2.5 hours, the AK lounge in Seattle:
Segment 3, Business Class, 14 hours, LAX to Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific lounge in HKG:
Biggest asshole in HKG. His kids committed some infraction and so, in the HKG lounge, they had to stand facing the wall:
Somewhere over the Pacific:
Segment 4, Business Class, 8.5 hours, HKG to Brisbane, BNE terminal:
Segment 5, Business Class, 3 hours, BNE to Cairns, CNS terminal:
Segment 6, Coach!, one of only two flights for this entire adventure I paid for using $ rather than miles, CNS to Darwin, 2.25 hours, my BnB room in Darwin, arrived at after a circular taxi drive from the airport that was supposed to cost $15 but ended up costing $33 after the driver got “lost” and then short-changed me—I’ll pen a sharply worded email to the Darwin city government regarding Taxi driver #36, problem solved!:
