2022 Spring Europe Tour Fast Tour Furious
Welcome
Yesterday we boarded a flight to London after two weeks rest in New Zealand. We had a practice and we are feeling good and ready for the next four weeks of shows and travel around the UK and Western Europe.
It was an inspiring message that we saw on the way to Auckland International Airport and it set the mood for the day, filling us with hope and confidence.
Tristan was acting head of luggage for this tour and he worked hard behind the scenes in the days leading up to our departure. Qantas charges $80 per kg for any extra weight over the allotted 30kg per person so if we wanted to bring our instruments we had to keep the personal baggage to a minimum.
New Zealand Customs Officer Mike Tiffany was well impressed by the efficiency of the pack and told us so as he signed off our equipment carnet, giving us a pass with flying colours.
After passing through security we stopped at Best Ugly Bagels for breakfast where I ordered a Boss Hog - bacon, BBQ sauce, cheddar cheese, and fried eggs atop a sesame bagel.
The first leg of our journey was aboard an Airbus A330 and took us across the Tasman Sea to Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport where we had a four hour layover.
While we waited we enjoyed a Heineken extra cold, served at 0⁰C in a frozen glass, a technology that causes a $19AUD per pint price tag.
The aircraft that would carry us the rest of the way to London was a state of the art Boeing 787-9 series, with it’s 50% composite construction helping to make it the world’s most fuel efficient airliner of it’s size. 63 metres long with a 60 metre wingspan the 777-9 is powered by two GEnx-1B74/75/P2 engines providing a combined 331.4 kN of thrust, almost a 1/5th the thrust of one of the Space Shuttle’s three main engines.
I tried to make full use of the airplane facilities and explored the inflight movies, inflight exercise instruction, and inflight colouring-in.
Relaxing at Darwin Airport sunbathing lounge.
After four hours we landed in Darwin to refuel and take on several additional passengers. While this was happening everyone disembarked so the aircraft could be cleaned and the pilots replaced. Finally we lifted off from Darwin just before 9pm local time, 13 hrs after we had originally departed Auckland. Our flight headed slightly North of West, across the Timor Sea and up towards Indonesia as we tried our hardest to fall asleep in our seats.
The four hour flight from Sydney to Darwin.