Table Of Contents
I was definitely playing with fire, returning from Tahiti to Wellington via Auckland, arriving on January 4th at 11:20, and then leaving for Toronto on January 5th at 9:30. Especially all on separate bookings. Fortunately, everything worked out, and both I and my 55kg of luggage got back to Waterloo efficiently.
| Flights | WLG-AKL, AKL-YVR, YVR-YYZ |
| Bookings | 3 separate |
| Scheduled time | 31h37 |
| Scheduled time after flight change | 27h15 |
| In-flight time | 17h41 = 0h57 + 12h09 + 4h35 |
| Countries | Aotearoa New Zealand; Canada |
| Baggage | 3 checked: 23.4kg, 17.3kg, 13.3kg; 2 carry-on |
| Upgrades | 1 |
| Meals | 3 in-flight, 2 in lounges |
| Hiccups | 0 |
Prelude: back to Wellington
Flights to and from Papeete (Tahiti) on Air New Zealand are inconveniently timed for passengers, and we had a 3am departure from Papeete on January 3. After checking out of our bargain-basement airbnb (had a lie-down on the bed in the garage) near the airport (still a 2500XPF ride even if just 3.1km), I was pleasantly surprised to have lounge access at Papeete, where we had some snacks and enjoyed the air conditioning. MP left the lounge just a bit earlier to spend most of our last Pacific Francs (XPFs). We crossed the International Date Line, so that the 5 hour flight leaving at 3am arrived on January 4 at 7:40am. Landing in Auckland, I checked that there was no available earlier flight, and so we took our scheduled 10:10 flight arriving at 11:20 on January 4, with a quick shower in the Auckland lounge.
Packing
I had put a bunch of things that I definitely wanted to bring back to Canada in one place in our Wellington flat. It took a few hours, but I got everything into one suitcase, one 40L backpack, the monitor box, and two carry-ons (one tiny). I had gotten the suitcase a few weeks earlier for $20 at the op shop in Karori and brought it back on my bicycle; the two suitcases I had brought to Canada two months ago in October were (1) still in Canada or (2) in the dumpster.
To WLG and WLG-AKL
The WLG-AKL ticket was a return itinerary on a WLG-AKL-WLG trip, with the outbound back in March 2024, when I was flying to Edmonton and Vancouver. The original return was scheduled for 8:15AM but there was a schedule change and I changed to a 9:30AM flight.
Once in a while there is bad weather and flights don’t get in or out of WLG, but today was not such a day. Just a normal partly cloudy day with some wind (of course). I got MP to come with me in the Uber—wasn’t going to either take the cable car or transit to the airport with, most notably, a bulky monitor box.
I had to shift some paper between bags and then all of my bags made the 23kg Air New Zealand weight limit and she didn’t have to take anything back to our flat in Wellington. The bags were 23.4kg (suitcase), 17.3kg (backpack), and 13.3kg (monitor box). Air Canada will let me check 3 bags each up to 32kg, but not Air New Zealand. In fact for WLG-AKL I had to buy a seat + bag fare, plus a 2nd bag for $35. Still, that was $55 for baggage overall (now $65), not unreasonable. For my earlier trip to Ontario in October, I’d verified that if the Most Significant Carrier was Air Canada, then I would get the AC allowance, but here I had 3 separate itineraries.
Anyway, I checked my bags and went to the Air New Zealand lounge at WLG.
AKL
Mā te wā, Air New Zealand! This was my last flight in New Zealand for the next few months while I’m in Canada teaching. I had the Cookie Time cookie and the tea with milk. I did not see Taranaki. On my first Air NZ flight back in 2020, I had the corn chips (no longer available) and did see the maunga.
baggage claim at AKL domestic; bags retrieved (first test passed).
At AKL, I soon enough had my checked baggage (always fast in NZ), including monitor. I loaded on a cart and got ready for the 10 minute walk to the International terminal. I’m not a fool (at least not on this occasion): my arrival was at 10:38am and my departure was at 2pm. Plenty of time!
I saw some family lose bags off their cart going between the Auckland domestic and international terminals.
I got cocky with my cart, and so I did have had one spillage incident. There was insufficient static friction and a bag rolled off my cart. I was careful about the sidewalk ramps, but that’s not the only way to fail.
I took quite a bit of time taking the scenic route in the terminal (with my 5 bags on a cart) to the Air Canada checkin desk, where there was a huge line.
Taking the significantly less huge priority line, I did have a small problem with the width between a bollard and a post being a bit too small to smoothly navigate with the wide monitor box on my cart. Had to back up and try again a few times and got help from a bystander. At the other priority checkin desk, there was a party of 4 having some passport issue. My new passport worked just fine for checking in. With NEXUS I don’t actually need a passport to enter Canada, though the airline doesn’t care about that.
I talked to a guy from Alberta taking his preteen son on a New Zealand trip while waiting to check-in. (“Nah, you don’t really want to tip in NZ,” though maybe it’s OK if it’s your private driver/tour guide.)
lunch at AKL Air NZ lounge.
All in all, though, I only got to the Air NZ Lounge at noon: transferring at AKL was pretty slow, really. This time there was tasty beef being grilled at the lounge, as opposed to the also-tasty scallops on Christmas Day.
AKL-YVR
Soon enough it was time to board the flight to Vancouver. Coincidentally I had flown YVR-AKL on Jan 3 2024, so here I was flying the reverse leg a year and two days later. This also was a return segment from the trip I took to New Zealand in March; there were some nested trips in between, notably the October Toronto/California/Winnipeg trip.
This time, the flight was full in all classes. I had put in for an upgrade but that didn’t work, despite being #3 on the waitlist. I think they upgraded 0 to business.
I was therefore surprised to see, upon boarding, that the seat next to me (14J) was inoperative. I found out, from the flight attendant, that the seatbelt was broken. So that was really good: I could put my crap on the empty seat. Inoperative seats can successfully hold belongings.
(I spend a lot of time optimizing flying, and I was wondering what one could do if bumped off that AKL-YVR flight. I think the best bet is to request involuntary reroute via the Air New Zealand flight and request original credit due to involuntary reroute. One should be able to get the same or better class of service. And in that case my original YVR-YYZ flight would have worked as well, though more on YVR-YYZ changes below.)
Despite having all the space I could want and a reclining seat, though, I rarely get any sleep on a flight that leaves at 2pm and arrives at 2am. It really doesn’t work with my sleep schedule, alas. The YVR-AKL direction has better timing for sleep, leaving near midnight Pacific time.
In transit, I did manage to do another pass through our TOPLAS journal submission. At least I could do that if I couldn’t sleep. I also noticed that the moving map on Air Canada flights now can display information on nearby points of interest, presumably drawn from Wikipedia. It was interesting to see the places that I’ve been to in the South Pacific (Rarotonga, Noumea, Tahiti), as well as places in New Zealand obviously described by locals (who knows about Four Square?). Also they imported a bunch of place names from craters on Mercury and the Moon.
The food was good. The wine in Premium Economy is much better than in Economy but less good than in Business. The breakfast is the economy breakfast, but that’s not the fancy meal for this, or any, flight. On the transatlantic flights, Air Canada breakfast used to be really lame, like a banana bread, but on the transpacific flights it is an omelette.
The flight arrived at 0530 and I got my luggage at 0545. My bags were the first ones on the carousel. Somehow, for YVR, they considered the monitor to be not oversize luggage, and it rolled right out onto the normal carousel. Good thing the monitor was well packed in the original box. I was back at the check-in counter at 0555 with my luggage. Scheduled arrival time was 0610.
got my stuff again.
Checking in for YVR-YYZ
I was booked on a separate one-way ticket for the 1600 flight, which arrives at 2322. Not ideal given that the first day of classes was the next day, but it did minimize the chances of misconnecting. I made sure to buy a Flex fare, which allows confirmed same-day changes for a modest fee (formerly $75, now $100). The Comfort fare with free standby wouldn’t be useful: it’s always been unclear to me whether one can stand by with checked luggage. And I most definitely had checked luggage on this flight!
On the AKL-YVR flight I tried to use the in-flight internet to check availability on YVR-YYZ flights, but the internet was spotty and I got basically no information.
Anyway, the morning flights were: 0630, 0700, 0910, 1015, and 1125. The check-in deadline is 45 minutes before, so 0630 wouldn’t have worked given that I was at the counter at 0555.
At the premium check-in desk, I got the competent check-in agent Nicholas. Unlike some previous premium check-in experience at YVR, I didn’t have to argue about my resident visa being sufficient to enter NZ.
Sunday, January 5th turns out to be a super busy travel day (end of holidays for many, including me). I learned that, even though they were still selling full-fare Latitude tickets for the 0630 and 0700 departures, all of the flights I listed were in fact oversold—so they were overbooking. They got away with it, though, because I saw that some people cleared from the standby list.
Nicolas had a chat with revenue management on my behalf (he went and disappeared somewhere for like 10 minutes). They knew that there were misconnects at 1125 and they made a seat for me on that flight. In fact the seat they found for me was 12A, which is a good seat (even if you can’t put bags by your feet, not so bad on a mid-length flight). I was happy to pay my $105, including GST. Apparently the Air Canada computer code for same-day changes is still FLAT, referencing flat-tire policies, even if it’s actually that you arrived 10 hours early for your flight. In any case, the 1125 flight was otherwise full in economy and had 3 free in business. I also asked to be put on the eUpgrade list. Might as well, since my points were expiring and I had not used any flying to Vancouver.
The people at the check-in desk next to me were misconnecting from Sydney and trying to get to Montreal and they were having much more trouble getting onto a flight; somehow their party of 2 had gotten split and one was confirmed on Sunday but the other on Monday.
The 1015 flight showed as full in all classes and I hadn’t even asked to get onto that one. It turns out that they eventually took 3 off the standby list for that flight. (How does one find this out? Looking at the Air Canada app.)
Richmond
OK, so it was 6:30 AM and I had re-checked my checked baggage, and I had 5 hours until flight departure. Time to walk to Richmond! I’d had previous experiences taking the SkyTrain to Vancouver on Sunday mornings and not finding much open. I was sort of hoping for banh mi but that was not to be. I took some pictures of birds, but it was still too early to get good pictures.
SkyTrain yard.
I have a Starbucks gift card, but the thing about Starbucks is that whenever I have a choice between Starbucks and not-Starbucks, I’ll pick not-Starbucks every time. In this case I walked to Kam Do bakery in Richmond (5km from YVR), found my Canadian cash, decided I wanted to go to the bathroom first, was directed to Parker Place, and saw that everyone (not teenagers, but middle-aged and old Asian people) was at the food court at Parker Place at 8:40AM on Sunday. Huh.
This time I planned to not get any food at the YVR lounge (not falling for the bad hash browns again), hence the pastries at the bakery.
I did not walk back to the airport. I did get in on the wrong side of the SkyTrain and had to re-pass the fare gates. I also managed to miss my stop while texting on the SkyTrain. Still, I got back to the airport in plenty of time. And it looks like they only charged me $3.20 for Vancouver transit. I guess the $5 YVR AddFare is only charged leaving the airport, and that the cheapest × fastest way of leaving the airport is to take the SkyTrain to Templeton and walk to Bridgeport (2km). Not really worth it economically, but not a bad walk. The whole walk from YVR is good actually, but the SkyTrain shortens it a bit.
YVR-YYZ
I was #2 on the upgrade list and at 6am there were 3 empty seats in business. Unfortunately, when I boarded the 737MAX8 serving AC108, they had sold all these seats, and I took my good economy seat.
landing in Toronto; baggage collection at YYZ.
Sometimes people say that it’s “you board, you lose” in terms of upgrades. You certainly disappear from the upgrade list in the app.
But then I got a text message confirming my upgrade after I’d boarded. YBYL is not true. I showed the message to the flight attendant and was able to take seat 4F. Then the gate agent sent over the new boarding pass with “4F” hand-written onto it. I don’t think this is the first time that I’ve experienced this, either. Not going to complain!
The seat next to me (not a broken seat on this flight) had a Dal neuroscience and psychology student who self-proclaimed being bad at math. She was planning to move back to BC for family reasons at the end of the school year.
Anyway, this flight was good as well, and I’m quite grateful that I managed to get on the earlier flight, and also for the upgrade. This flight gets one into YYZ at 1900. (Obvious statements: This is later than 1400 but earlier than 2300).
My bags arrived in 20 minutes and I took my pre-booked taxi to Waterloo, arriving at 8:40PM, and ready to teach the next day.
Fully unpacking takes a few weeks every time but things are now (3 weeks later) getting towards how I like them to be arranged.