My recent post about wanting to fly a red eye on a low cost airline had some people questioning my sanity. Somehow I get that question a lot.

It was the inaugural flight for a route, and one of their longest flights (if not the longest ignoring the longhaul division of the airline). I thought it would be fun and besides which it extends the expiry of my little stash of frequent flyer miles with them for another year.

How did it go? You can find out in the trip report which I’ve started on Flyer Talk.

I never thought the day would come that I’d fly a low cost carrier for several hours (followed by several more hours on a connecting flight on the same airline). To make matters worse one of the flights is a red eye (leaves late at night and arrives very early morning.

At least the load on the flights seems low (checked using an availability tool). Indeed their sale fares to launch the new route are still available in both directions.  Hopefully I can get an empty row on each flight to get some sleep on.

I’ll report back on how the flights went.

I now have a complete 16 flight itinerary that has every flight different to the ones I originally booked.  It was less than a month ago that I wondered when the last remaining unchanged flight would change. Today I see that flight has a new aircraft type (bye-bye upgrade) and also a new timing making it even more of a redeye than it already was (bye-bye sleep).  Unfortunately the change does not help me with my need for a hotel during short transit on the same itinerary.

It was good to be back in the air again this weekend. So many things went well, which made the weekend far more pleasurable than it could have been. I took a longhaul run – about 24 hours of flying, 9 hours of lounge time and just 2 hours landside at the destination.

My upgrades cleared, albeit at the last minute. For the outbound flight the upgrade cleared at the gate – I love the magic of getting the beep to indicate a seat change. For the return flight the double upgrade cleared at the lounge. Both flights were very full and so the upgrades were very much appreciated.

Queues were non-existent with incredibly lucky timing throughout the weekend. Check in for the first flight took a minute and I also got the boarding pass for the return flight.  The 3 visits to immigration on the trip took under a minute, 2 minutes and under a minute. The middle one of these three has in the past taken me an hour while travelling on the same flight.

Security queues were also very short, about a minute each time. For some reason the extra security check at the gate for flights to USA didn’t apply to me – I was directed to bypass it.

The lounge visits were longer than I’d intended but it was good meeting up with people in a peaceful environment, with good wine and food on hand.

While landside I had a short hotel stay to take advantage of several concurrent promotions. I’ll get well over 20k PC points for minimal cost and effort. The check in agent was nonplussed when I checked out so quickly. “Is there something wrong with the room?” Not at all.

With such a short trip, there are no jetlag issues and I got a reasonable amount of sleep on both flights.

There were lots of special touches by the crew. My favourite was that my drink selections on the outbound flight were relayed to the crew for my return flight. So I was asked if I wanted the same again!

The only problem with the weekend? I now realise I don’t have any upcoming trips in the next several weeks to look forward to.