Round The World and other travels

Flight Log 4: HD121 (Booked as NH4821)

Toyama (TOY) - Sapporo New Chitose (CTS)

ABOVE: Air Do Boeing 737-500 at Toyama

It was a very orderly boarding process, despite the fact that the flight was late, and nearly everyone had sensible-looking cabin baggage. The reason for the extra-long airbridge became clear as we walked down it: the airport had been built with substantial flood defences between the apron and the terminal building. An Air Do teddy bear positioned by door provided an unusual form of greeting as we stepped aboard the fairly ancient 737-500, one of the smallest of 737 variants. I took my seat in 2F and Bruce was a few rows behind me: this sort of thing tends to happen when booking separately, but it's really not an issue on such a short hop.

We had booked this flight using an All Nippon Airways flight number, aware that it was to be operated by Air Do (formerly Hokkaido International Airlines) and assuming that this was some form of subcontracting arrangement by ANA. It therefore came as a mild surprise to find that the flight was being operated under Air Do's own 'HD' code and that ANA was simply code-sharing. As it was only my second flight on a Japanese airline, I was still very much on the lookout for little Japanese touches to the service and the first of these came when cabin crew bowed to passengers before and after the safety demonstration.

We pushed back nearly half-an-hour behind schedule, taxied along the runway itself, performed a U-turn and took off towards the west just a few minutes before 3pm. We quickly crossed the coastline and made a right turn, which gave good views of Toyama and revealed it to be a far more substantial city than I had previously imagined. The expected flying time was given as 1hr 15mins.

A basic beverage service ensued: I had some apple juice in a paper cup with a rather silly cartoon face printed on it. Some thick cloud appeared around 45 minutes into the flight and the seat belt signs were switched on in anticipation of turbulence. However the weather at our destination was report as fine, with a temperature of 23C.

As promised, the cloud broke up as we neared New Chitose: I had a clear view of the airport and its semi-circular terminal building as we flew past to carry out a U-turn. The cabin crew were still strapped in following the turbulent patch and I wondered what would happen to the usual cabin checks before landing. The matter was soon settled as part of a PA announcement: "Cabin attendants are also required to be seated. Thank you for your understanding."

As we made our final approach, evidence of flooded fields reminded me of some dire weather reports from Hokkaido that we had recently seen on TV. Our arrival time confirmed that it had not been possible to recover any of the delay that the flight had started with.

Date: Fri 12 Sep 2014

Aircraft: Boeing 737-500

Scheduled dep: 1420

Actual departure: 1448

Scheduled arrival: 1550

Actual arrival: 1620

Cabin: Economy

Seat: 2F

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