Round The World and other travels

After nearly a week without flying (!) and rather longer since my last oneworld flight, it was nice to be settling down in Seat 1A in Qantas Business Class. On the 763, the 'A' seats in Business Class are single seats, which is an added bonus for the solo traveller. I made myself comfortable and sat sipping a pre-departure glass of champagne, half-reading the newspaper in front of me and half-watching everyone else boarding. I sometimes felt I was "watching them, watching me!"

To be absolutely pedantic about it, according to my watch we left one minute adrift from the schedule at 1436, but it was an easy taxi out to the runway and we were airborne by 1446, climbing steeply into the skies, in the typical 767 way. As it had been a northerly take-off and as I was on the 'A' side, I had a wonderful view of the Southern Alps as we climbed higher. Soon we were making a left turn and heading right over the mountains. I noted that the weather conditions looked very similar to those that I had experienced the previous day on my Arthur's Pass drive. To the east of the mountains, including the foothills, it was a beautiful day; but as you progressed westwards, the cloud cover soon took over.

The menu was very similar to that on QF25, which had brought me to New Zealand, but not exactly the same :-

I went for the salmon on this occasion, and very tasty it was too, washed down with a glass of New Zealand Chardonnay. I just couldn't get interested in in-flight entertainment on this journey (partly, I suspect, due to the minute size of the screen!) and chose to read instead.

Our approach to SYD was from the north-east, so I had some magnificent views of the city as we circled round to align ourselves properly. It was clear that there had been an afternoon shower. We touched down at 1638 local time and were on-stand at 1643, comfortably ahead of schedule. There was only a one-hour time difference from New Zealand ... apparently my flight was during the one week between Daylight Saving ending in New Zealand and in Australia!