Journey Planning

Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at flight options between the UK and Australia.  Jan has ruled out going west via the USA or Canada.  This leaves the “Kangaroo” route (via Singapore), the Middle East (Dubai/Doha) and Hong Kong.  Price is a critical factor but I’m quite selective about airlines to use.  My “don’t use” list includes Aeroflot, Garuda, MAS and all the cheap South-East Asian airlines. 

Whilst searching on the internet yesterday I found some very cheap Singapore Airlines tickets for less than £300.  This morning the tickets were £308.  This led to a long conversation where it was agreed the RTA (Return to Australia) date was the critical milestone.  I then developed a simple project plan on the laptop using Microsoft Project which enabled us to identify the other critical tasks and dates.  By the time this was completed the airfares had risen to £325.  I preferred to purchase the tickets directly from Singapore Airlines which raised the price by a further £4.  Eventually I managed to book an evening flight from Heathrow to Singapore with a 1.50 layover before continuing on to Australia.  Opting for a night flight has two advantages.  The first is it helps keep the body’s natural rhythms so we can probably get some sleep.  The second is we won’t require any London accommodation the night before departing.  Despite Heathrow having higher departure taxes than the likes of Birmingham or Manchester the Heathrow flights were cheaper.  More competition I assume?

The next step was to select our seats.  To do this I used the website Seatguru which shows the best seats on the aircraft.  Having identified our preferred seats I went to the airline seat allocation option only to discover 90% of the seats were already allocated.  This meant we couldn’t select the best seats; but didn’t get the very worst either.

Meanwhile Jan was researching and booking our pre-departure accommodation.  I then started looking at rental cars, before realising I had paid for a flight leaving on a Sunday evening (another reason why they were cheap).  All the car rental companies are closed on Sunday!  How would we return the car?  In the end we decided to reduce the car rental by a day and return it on Saturday.  Jan rearranged our last night in the UK, which we will spend in the Rugby Travelodge beside the railway station. I booked two £10 train tickets from Rugby to London for Sunday morning.  We still have an Oyster card with enough credit on it for two Tube tickets from London to Heathrow.  What I don’t know is whether two people can use the same Oyster Card by running it through the turnstile twice?

The last major outstanding task is to pack all the possessions that will be returning by sea.  We’ve bought sufficient cardboard tea chest (I hope) and allocated two days for the task.

Everything appears to be coming together.