A slow start

House-sitters Robyne and Ralf gave me a lift to Merimbula airport, for my connecting flight to Sydney with Regional Express, where we found that the flight was delayed by one and a half hours because of technical problems with the incoming aircraft, so they said goodbye and I killed time by reading my kindle and eating some lunch at the little airport cafe.

The delay turned out to be 2 hours and I eventually arrived at Sydney, where, after retrieving my bag and catching a bus to the international terminal, I was just in time to board my United Airlines flight to San Francisco.

I've never flown with United before and I am not impressed. I paid about $380 extra for seats throughout the trip with extra legroom. What that means is that I get the legroom that other airlines regard as the norm. The plane is an almost new Boeing 747 but with the specification that Qantas, BA, JAL, Emirates and others were using 20 years ago - with narrow basic design seats with no individual entertainment screens and no leg or foot rests. The meals are very small. Pasta with a tomato sauce, lettuce with 6 strings of carrot for colour, a cube of cheap chocolate cake, and that was it. Despite it being a 12 and a half hour flight, there are no amenity packs with toothbrush, eye mask etc. that the other airlines provide for flights of half the duration.

Tired, hungry, uncomfortable, bored, and another 9 hours of this leg to go!

Much later

Two flights later (San Francisco to Houston and then Houston to Cancun), after a total of about 30 hours of travelling, I am at my hotel in Cancun, Mexico.  It’s about 10.30 pm local time and still the same day that I left home. I should be tired having in effect missed a night’s sleep but I am wide awake.

The second two flights with United weren’t much different to the first one, so I won’t say any more about them other than that I’ll be seeking a refund of most of the money I paid out for extra legroom. Two out of the three planes simply weren’t configured for what they call “economy plus” though they had been happy to take my money.

I can’t comment on the hotel yet as I arrived in the dark, but my room is quite nice. There is free Wi-Fi.