Wellington - Auckland - Hong Kong - London

I'm posting this on Helen's behalf, she had some trouble getting to London, let her tell you about it...

What a start to the trip! Flying standby has it’s benefits, but not today.

Let’s start with baggage. When on standby, unless there are enough seats at the time of check-in for the remaining legs your bags only go to the next end point, meaning you have to collect bags and the run to your next check-in counter. This is rather time consuming, but standby gives you the flexibility to any flight when ever you need to.

Let the trip begin.  I rocked up to the airport in Wellington fully expecting to get on the 3:45pm to Auckland only to find out it is totally full, didn’t make the first flight out of Wellington but managed to get the last seat on  the second flight.  This didn’t leave much time to run to Auckland International to check-in for the Los Angeles flight.  Lucky for me it was a lovely evening in Auckland and the walk between domestic and international didn't take long.

I managed to register for the flight with only a few minutes to spare.  Now the waiting around check-in.  In the end the flight was delayed, and I waited to hear if I had a seat for an hour and half only to not get on the flight!! At this point it is 8:00pm, next flight to Los Angeles is 10.45pm. I would hear if I get on that flight at 10:00pm. 15....I didn’t get on. Now what? With some quick thinking and amazing help with the staff we changed my ticket to Hong Kong, flight leaves at 11:00pm.... and guess what I got a seat!  See yah in 7 weeks NZ.

Hurray, now...how do I get from Hong Kong to London? I spent 12 mins in Koru Club, searching for an affordable flight to London, found a Cathay Pacific flight, one seat for NZ$1,000. Done. I can now enjoy the flight to Hong Kong and know I can get to London,,,phew I’m on my way.

Then while I am about an hour out of Auckland it occurs to me what will it cost me for the extra suitcase I am travelling with?  Luckily Air New Zealand now has WiFi on their long haul flights so I spent 2 hours sorting out the fact I was carrying too much luggage weight for the Cathay Pacific flight!!! Not able to sleep at this point, I sat there figuring out how I was going to dump stuff in the bin at Hong Kong and get the luggage weight down to the allowed 30kg. Think I have it, lets get some sleep for a few hours, can't do anything till I land in 8 hours anyway.

The flight landed into Hong Kong at 5:45am.  My next flight leaves at 9:30am. This was plenty of time to clear immigration, customs, and grab my bags, in-fact this only took 25 minutes. I found my way to departures, and the Cathay Pacific check-in area.  Now most importantly where is a rubbish bin? I dumped just over 8kg of stuff out of the suitcase, sorry Mum you are missing out on a few extra goodies. I put the Whittaker's chocolate in my hand luggage, put my polar fleece inside my raincoat, stuffed as much as I could in my camera bag and back pack and head off weight my bags, found a spare check-in counter not being used and check the bags.  I think I am OK weight wise, lets check-in and find out, was was 30.8 and they didn't charge....Phew! Just as well they didn’t weigh my hand luggage 😝FYI - had I not dumped and repacked, I was looking at a $400USD excess luggage charge, and I'm not paying that.  Now let's find the gate, something to eat, and checking with Mike at home.  Almost there.  Sitting waiting to get on flight to London Heathrow, what a start to the trip, there are always stories to tell.