When this post goes live, I’ll soon be on my way to Europe again. Perhaps, I’ll travel with the very plane shown above: D-ANRT, Airbus A330-941, operated by Condor Flugdienst. In the image above, Condor’s big plane in blue stripes has just arrived from Frankfurt am Main at Vancouver International Airport.
I made the image above on 8 May 2024 with an iPhone15. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-usr.
Above/featured: Departures information in English, French, and Chinese: YVR Vancouver airport – 1 Jul 2014 (6D1).
Once upon a time when I lived and worked on distant continents, I flew on many international transcontinental overnight flights to the accumulation of over 1 million miles in the air. A worldwide pandemic has forced not only air travel to a crawl, but also a rethinking about what long-haul travel in the context of climate change might look like in the future. For the time being, I consider here what it once meant to “take flight” with various images of planes as some time spent as occasional planespotter and images within airports as previous frequent-flyer.
Above/featured: “Auténtica Cuba, auténtica fun”.
I’ve remained within metro Vancouver during the CoVid19 pandemic, but I’m curious about how the city’s airport appears in this unusual holiday season.
With no-travel recommendations and other travel restrictions, all international airports are operating at a small fraction of the usual traffic. At YVR Vancouver international airport, about 100-thousand passengers (pax) pass through the airport every day around Christmas. But numbers are way down; there are few daily international flights among the scatter of domestic departures throughout the B.C. province and other parts of Canada.
With these photographs, I present a view of both domestic and international terminals at the airport on Tuesday afternoon, 3 days before Christmas. Walking the empty and quiet concourse is surreal; I wonder if there are more airport staff than travellers at any given moment. (Completing my time at the airport, I stayed to the ground by hopping on rapid transit, shopped for some food, and returned to the family house: how extraordinarily mundane.)
“Welcome back to the United States, Mister Lee.”
These are some of the best eight words to hear first thing in the morning.
When I lived in Chile, I made the Chile-U.S. trip with some regularity. In the following example, I’m entering the United States after the 10-hour overnight/red-eye flight from Santiago de Chile. After passport control, baggage claim, and baggage transfer, I’m off onto the next stage of my travel.
The folks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection are doing their jobs the best they can. I know most officers aren’t (deliberately) grumpy; similarly, most travellers aren’t seeking trouble.
Instead of the ill-tempered tactic which is sure to fire off a crappy start to everyone’s day, I’ve gone with a different approach.
At Australian airports, passengers on domestic flights are allowed to pass through security from “landside” to “airside” without a boarding pass in hand. Having become accustomed to travel in North American and European airports, Australia’s policy is both refreshing and startling.
And it saved my butt.
It’s 31 August 2012, and I check out at 10am from my apartment in Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD). With my Qantas flight to Sydney at 9pm, I’m looking forward to getting some work done in the airline’s lounge at the airport. I’ve maintained Platinum status with American Airlines, which is equivalent to Sapphire on oneworld. My present frequent-flyer status qualifies me to use their Qantas Club lounge in the domestic terminal.
I’m not in any rush, and I arrive just after 11am at Melbourne airport’s Terminal 1, thanks to Skybus‘ shuttle pickup from the CBD to Southern Cross train-station and their coach service from the train-station to the airport.
I’m unable to check-in to my flight at one of the many computerized check-in booths. A couple of customer service agents provide some help, and they tell me that my flight (scheduled to leave in 10 hours time) is not yet open to check my luggage. I’m not really surprised by this.
I want to use the lounge which can only be accessed airside (post-security), and I can’t walk on through airside, because I’ve a number of items which must go into checked luggage. Am I going to lug around my 20-kg (44-lb) piece of luggage for the next 10 hours? That would be a big fat NO.
So now I have two issues:
I ask around about storage, and I walk over to the arrivals level of the international terminal (T2) next door, where my luggage is put away into storage for up to 8 hours at a cost of $12 AUD. I can live with that.
I return to the T1 domestic terminal, and head on up to the security-screening area on the departures level. Within minutes, I’m airside. It’s important to note here that I still have NOT checked into my flight, and I don’t have a boarding pass, but I’m sitting in the Qantas Club lounge, where I start typing up this present article.
430pm rolls around, and I reverse the process.
I step back out landside (pre-security), fetch my luggage from storage, check-in successfully for my 9pm flight, retrieve my boarding pass, and my luggage is off on its merry way to the plane. I go back through airside, and return to the Qantas Club lounge.
My bag was stored from about 1130am to 430pm, which put the storage “rate” at $12 AUD by 5 hours, or $2.40 AUD/hour.
Sweet. As.
The seat in the Qantas Club lounge I vacated about an hour ago (to check-in to my flight) remains empty, as if it’s “waiting” for me. But this time, I’m going to have ham, cheese, salad, and soup for a light dinner, courtesy of the lounge.
Time comes around to board, it’s a short walk to the gate, and it’s an easy 1-hour-25-minute flight to Sydney, where CityRail awaits for the return trip to the place where I’m staying.
This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.
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