The long (and painful) ride home

My first experience with 30+ hour air travel days was in 1992 when I went to Borneo. We left Fresno, connected in Los Angeles, then Honolulu, Biak, Denpesar, Jakarta (plane change), and finally arrived in Pontianik in West Kalimantan over 30 hours later. That was a pretty tough day, as was the return (same routing in reverse).

When I got home from that trip, I slept something like 17 or 18 hours non-stop (i.e. without even waking up). This time, I started in Leipzig, Germany, worked to Kuwait, then Ramstein (a base in Germany), limoed to Frankfurt, commercialled to Philly, then Manchester (plus a drive home). Over 35 hours in all (including the drive home), not to mention the fact I’ve been home exactly one night (~21 hours) in the last 38 days. I didn’t even sleep 10 hours this time.

But I asked for it, literally. Our style of flying is to work a couple weeks and then be off for a couple weeks. I had vacation in early October so I needed to work the end of the month. I wanted to be off for Thanksgiving, so I wound up bidding back to back bidlines (end of October, beginning of November). Add to that an extra trip I picked up (now we can have Christmas) and I wound up out from October 14th through November 20th, save less than 24 hours at home at the end of October. Of course, I was off for a month before all that, so there’s two sides to that story.

Portions of this day were definitely better than the 30+ hour ride to Borneo and back. That trip was almost entirely on a Garuda DC-10 with not a whole lot of legroom (the first and last short legs were on smaller airplanes). The first two legs of this ride home were working on our own aircraft, which is far more comfortable.

But the middle leg (Frankfurt to Philly) was awful. There are no comment cards in USAirways inflight magazine so they get to read my not-so-rosy feedback right here on my blog, if they so desire. Their Airbus 330’s are designed for midgets. At first, I thought it was just my seat, but I took a stroll through economy and asked the flight attendants and it appears there are actually no good economy seats on that airplane at all. The problem is, on an 8 hour flight, it’s impossible for me to rest comfortably. As much as I hate to admit it, it may well have been less comfortable than Delta. Well, maybe not. Maybe they’re tied. Next time, I’m thinking I’ll just pay extra to ride United…

There was a bright spot to going this way (v.s. United through Chicago, or, gag, Delta through JFK). This was, of all the times I’ve arrived on international commercial flights in the U.S., the very best immigration and customs experience I’ve ever had. It was so good, it almost felt like I was back home again in America.

Jeers to USAirways for no legroom. Cheers to Philadelphia for great international arrivals.

V-