It all started when my wife and I decided to take a five-star bus tour of Western Canada, followed by an Inside Passage cruise that ended with a drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks, Alaska. Our tour company contacted us six months prior to the tour to confirm their schedule for our return flights to Brisbane from Fairbanks. The day they contacted us, they wanted our decision. With a very busy day ahead of us that day, we jumped on the suggestion quickly.
However, the next day I sat down to calculate the time it would take to travel home. It turned out to be basically 34 hours going from one airport to another with layovers of various lengths. At our age, we felt we needed an overnight stopover on the road in Vancouver. We contacted through our travel agent with the tour company to arrange that. We were told that changing flights would cost $500 plus accommodation in Vancouver was very expensive. So we opted to leave the arrangements as they were.
So let me tell you about our flight. For starters, we had to take our airport shuttle from our accommodation at 2:30am Fairbanks time to be at the airport by 3:00am. cash register. We had to explain to him that we would not be stopping in Seattle but continuing to Australia via Vancouver. International passengers are not charged that fee.
Our next problem was breakfast. They gave us a box of breakfast food that we had to eat near check-in before going through customs to the airport lounge where we would board the first leg of our flight to Seattle.
Our four-plus hour flight to Seattle was uneventful. We landed in Seattle where we had a layover of more than two hours. We knew that our luggage would be transferred to our next flight. So all we had to do was find our next exit gate to catch our flight to Vancouver. Other passengers on our flight were in the same situation and joined us trying to find their way to that gate. It took us 30 minutes to achieve that goal.
The one hour flight to Vancouver was smooth. In Vancouver we made an eight hour layover. So we agreed to spend that time in a lounge at the airport where we were fed, showered, read, slept, or had a coffee or drink. As we walked through the terminal from the plane, we could see our airport lounge below us. However, due to construction work at the terminal, we were taken up a winding route before we could transfer to the main terminal. We couldn’t find the airport lounge. Fortunately, we asked a gentleman who was driving a golf cart where he was. He took us there telling us our airline staff should have gotten us off the plane and guided us to the lounge. The airport lounge was “our flavor.”
The flight home took fourteen hours. We both struggle with sleep and discomfort. Once we got home, unpacked and went to bed, we found that we needed two weeks to feel normal again. We enjoyed our trip to Alaska and Canada, but we will never forget our 34 hour air travel to get home.
Therefore, our advice to less experienced foreign travelers is to take the time to calculate the hours involved in long flights abroad before accepting what is suggested. Consider overnight layovers along the way. We found both Singapore and Dubai to be worth it. If we were to go to North America again, we would stop in Hawaii for a day before moving on.