Day 1
Today marked the start of our journey from Singapore (SIN) to Christchurch (CHC), New Zealand.
After many months of planning, it was mighty nice, though bittersweet, to finally go ahead with our plans. It was an exciting day, no doubt but to put things in perspective, we were leaving for 63 days. This was a full 2 months and it was already 10 November. What this meant was that we'd miss the Christmas and New Year period in Singapore, a season that we never skip as we would usually make it a point to celebrate with our family.
My parents drove the four of us to the airport via the Marina Coastal Expressway in torrential rain. I was pretty quiet in the car. We had done some frantic packing. I was running through in my mind whether we had missed anything. We undoubtedly did. No matter how you plan, there's always something that you will miss out.
We booked our tickets through the Air New Zealand website. Flying to New Zealand is incredibly expensive and I'll detail the flight selection process in another post. As it was the first long haul flight for our kids, we decided not to be heroes. We took a direct flight to save us the pain of juggling our luggage and entertaining our kids for an extended duration. We actually had several flight choices.
The initial plan was Singapore - Auckland (SIN-AKL) and return by Christchurch - Singapore (CHC-SIN). After checking their website, we realised this was quite foolhardy as the first flight would require us to entertain our kids a full 10 hours starting from 9 am (argh!). The second flight would have been something similar.
To save us this massive headache, thankfully there was the SIN-CHC and AKL-SIN options which were overnight flights. The SIN-CHC flight was a codeshare with Singapore Airlines. What this means is you book through Air New Zealand but a partner (Singapore Airlines in this case) carries you instead. And it's a helluva partner to fly with.
So, the flight was Singapore Airlines Flight 297 (SQ297). It was to leave at 7.50pm. As it was a codeshare, we had already selected our seats manually by calling in. Somehow the system couldn't register our booking confirmation number. Should you select manually, use SeatGuru.com to know the layout beforehand to avoid wasting additional time on the phone figuring out where the seats are with the customer service rep.
After the drive in the wet weather, we reached Changi Airport Terminal 3. We checked in our luggage, a semi-automated process where we had to scan our passports ourselves and then check in our luggage at the counter. There's room for improvement but semi-automation sure beats full-automation as we would find out in our return leg.
We had our final meal at Mac's and said our goodbyes before entering the immigration counter. Somehow, it was already 7.20PM so we were rushing toward the gate before it closed. We checked in our pram at the gate, filled up our water bottles and yes, we were in the plane!
SQ297 was operated on one of their older fleet. It's a Boeing 777-200 and the age sure was starting to show. As it was a 3-3-3 layout, we took the pocket of 3 next to the window and an aisle seat in the middle column, which I was to take. I had some worries that my kids would not allow my wife to sleep. Thankfully, directly in front of their seats were 2 empty seats and next to the window too! I could not believe our luck. I decided to sit at the window seat in front. Once the flight was off the ground and dinner was served, my kids obviously wanted to be entertained. Those babies were not sleepy yet! I lured my son to take the window seat while I took the centre, next to another chap. With that, my daughter could stretch out a little in the row behind.
Not a bad start to our trip.
After many months of planning, it was mighty nice, though bittersweet, to finally go ahead with our plans. It was an exciting day, no doubt but to put things in perspective, we were leaving for 63 days. This was a full 2 months and it was already 10 November. What this meant was that we'd miss the Christmas and New Year period in Singapore, a season that we never skip as we would usually make it a point to celebrate with our family.
My parents drove the four of us to the airport via the Marina Coastal Expressway in torrential rain. I was pretty quiet in the car. We had done some frantic packing. I was running through in my mind whether we had missed anything. We undoubtedly did. No matter how you plan, there's always something that you will miss out.
We booked our tickets through the Air New Zealand website. Flying to New Zealand is incredibly expensive and I'll detail the flight selection process in another post. As it was the first long haul flight for our kids, we decided not to be heroes. We took a direct flight to save us the pain of juggling our luggage and entertaining our kids for an extended duration. We actually had several flight choices.
The initial plan was Singapore - Auckland (SIN-AKL) and return by Christchurch - Singapore (CHC-SIN). After checking their website, we realised this was quite foolhardy as the first flight would require us to entertain our kids a full 10 hours starting from 9 am (argh!). The second flight would have been something similar.
To save us this massive headache, thankfully there was the SIN-CHC and AKL-SIN options which were overnight flights. The SIN-CHC flight was a codeshare with Singapore Airlines. What this means is you book through Air New Zealand but a partner (Singapore Airlines in this case) carries you instead. And it's a helluva partner to fly with.
So, the flight was Singapore Airlines Flight 297 (SQ297). It was to leave at 7.50pm. As it was a codeshare, we had already selected our seats manually by calling in. Somehow the system couldn't register our booking confirmation number. Should you select manually, use SeatGuru.com to know the layout beforehand to avoid wasting additional time on the phone figuring out where the seats are with the customer service rep.
After the drive in the wet weather, we reached Changi Airport Terminal 3. We checked in our luggage, a semi-automated process where we had to scan our passports ourselves and then check in our luggage at the counter. There's room for improvement but semi-automation sure beats full-automation as we would find out in our return leg.
We had our final meal at Mac's and said our goodbyes before entering the immigration counter. Somehow, it was already 7.20PM so we were rushing toward the gate before it closed. We checked in our pram at the gate, filled up our water bottles and yes, we were in the plane!
SQ297 was operated on one of their older fleet. It's a Boeing 777-200 and the age sure was starting to show. As it was a 3-3-3 layout, we took the pocket of 3 next to the window and an aisle seat in the middle column, which I was to take. I had some worries that my kids would not allow my wife to sleep. Thankfully, directly in front of their seats were 2 empty seats and next to the window too! I could not believe our luck. I decided to sit at the window seat in front. Once the flight was off the ground and dinner was served, my kids obviously wanted to be entertained. Those babies were not sleepy yet! I lured my son to take the window seat while I took the centre, next to another chap. With that, my daughter could stretch out a little in the row behind.
Not a bad start to our trip.
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