Happy Boxing Day

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we trust that you have had a pleasant trip with us, and that we will be seeing you again on an Air New Zealand flight soon.”

The leading member of the cabin crew, a well-dressed fifty-something with short grey hair, was busy shoving a set of red reindeer antlers and a huge “Merry Christmas” banner into the overhead luggage compartment above the seats of Row 1 of the Air New Zealand Airbus A320 flight NZ842, as the craft was slowly trundling along the taxi route to the brightly-lit terminal of Wellington International Airport. We sat expectantly side-by-side on seats D and E of row 6 quite near the front. We had just spent the whole of Christmas Day 2013 on flight SA7700 (operated by Qantas) and with Air New Zealand since supper time.

He glanced down at his wristwatch, and continued, “It is now precisely midnight, so allow me, Ladies and Gentlemen, to be the very first to wish you all a very happy Boxing Day 2013. Thank you and goodbye.”

The plane ground to a seamless halt as the jet engines powered down.Wednesday 25th of December at 12:00 midnight in Wellington. We had left terra firma in Cape Town on Tuesday 24th at 12:00 noon, a long flight to the freedom of a new life.

As the crew opened the hatch six rows in front of us, I unbuckled, leaving the past 66 years of my life on seat 06E, and strode down the aisle to meet the rest of my life with determination and resolution. I shall not ask what New Zealand can do for me, but hopefully rather attempt to see what I can do for New Zealand, albeit perhaps an insignificant contribution.  As long as it is a positive one…

Not down under– Our itinerary

Despite what the British may think, our destination cannot be termed “down under” from our point of view (mostly because we are down under, to start off with!). To describe our upcoming journey, I would prefer to use the term “up and around the corner” – up to Gauteng and then a-r-o-u-n-d the corner to Sydney.

Unless one is walking, talking in kilometres or miles is not all that informative – I prefer to talk in hours and minutes – we all know how that works. In the greater scheme of air travel, ours is not a particularly long trip, but for us yokels, it seems like forever.

I take the opportunity of logging this journey now, as I won’t be able to use a smartphone and write as we go. Leg 1 (flight 332) is a mere 2 hours from Cape Town to O.R. Tambo, where we get to sit around a tad short of 4 hours. As we take off, courtesy a flying kangaroo Qantas 747-400 (under Star alliance with SAA) and head east into the darkness.

We settle back in our comfortable (economical) seats after supper of chicken or beef, watch a bit of a movie, or watch the little plane icon on the blue screen doing speeds much higher than my car, but moving exceeding slowly across the little screen. Maybe get a bit of shut-eye – after all, we are flying towards the sunrise, so to speak.

Leg 2 (flight 7700) is a couple of minutes shy of 12 hours, which means that Kingsford-Smith Sydney arrives at some minutes before 6:00am – the time difference added in translates to a quarter to three in the afternoon instead. There goes most of Christmas Day, swallowed up by time difference. Last time we visited New Zealand, I did a bit of a read-up on Kingsford-Smith, here’s the Wiki reference, he was quite a guy!

After a 4 hour afternoon wait – the boring shift – we embark on leg 3 (flight 842) to the Land of The Long White Cloud, “around the corner” – a journey a  smidgen more than 3 hours and another 3-hour time difference. Yikes! As we touch down at Wellington airport, the official Christmas Day ended five minutes earlier. Some folks are still awake, we hope.

Look at your wristwatch if you haven’t changed the time yet – folks in Cape Town have yet to even sit down to a Christmas lunch!

Middle Earth