Trip report: BNE-YLW, and the fidgety passenger

You know you’re not on your usual airline when they start talking in French.

BNE-YVR

I’m in the belly of an Air Canada aeroplane. I used to do this trip every quarter, but I did it in the pointy end (because someone else was paying). I’m paying, so I’m in an economy seat in a full flight, sharing my row with an elderly Indian couple.

I’m on C-FVNB, an eight year-old 787-9, and this is the eighth time for this particular flight. The inflight screen says we’re on AC9999 and flying from WWW to ZZZ. Those airports don’t exist (though YYY does - it’s Mont-Joli in Quebec). I’m really on AC36, the handy direct flight between Brisbane and Vancouver. I last flew this in economy in June, 2023. (Well, I also did October 2024, but I don’t appear to have blogged that one).

Eurgh, Air Canada. The safety video, which is twice as long as normal because everything needs to be translated into French, la vidéo de sécurité, qui est deux fois plus longue que d’habitude car tout doit être traduit en français, is followed by an ad for Pepsi, est suivi d’une publicité pour Pepsi, an ad for something else that I’ve forgotten about, une pub pour autre chose que j’ai oubliée, an ad for a real estate company, une publicité pour une agence immobilière, and an ad for a car, et une publicité pour des accessoires érotiques nécessitant une quantité importante de piles (non, pas vraiment, mais je me suis déjà rendu à Montréal et cela ne m’étonnerait guère de votre part).

Food (chicken noodles, Australian catered) were all fine by me. They sell an IPA of some type. I try to sleep for a bit but it’s quite hard, given the time of day. I give in and buy the wifi. It’s fast and good, and I spend most my time idly scrolling.

Landing in Vancouver, we’re early, so it’s even longer to kick my heels. It was quite easy to transit, which was good news - though a lot of waiting in the domestic terminal. I’m impressed at the Canadian love for Tim Hortons, which had a long queue; Starbucks had a tiny queue, and you can’t help but think it was the Canadian anti-US feeling at work there.

YVR-YLW

A full plane making this short one hour hop to Kelowna, and a tiny propeller plane, too. Surprisingly, you get a choice of water or apple juice, and an oat cookie. The views from the window are beautiful - every mountain we go over gives a view even more breathtaking than the last. The snow-capped mountains, winding rivers and glistening lakes take me to this little airport, where my bags appear quickly and I’m on my way.

YLW-YVR

Kelowna airport has had some money spent on it, to make it a little larger - with fancy new x-ray machines and a good amount of space airside.

The reverse of this trip is not as busy - I have a spare seat next to me, and because catering had been expecting a full flight, we get given both some pretzels and a chocolate biscuit, along with a choice of a juice box or water. The plane was delayed by an hour, which cut the amount of waiting in Vancouver so I didn’t mind too much.

YVR-BNE

Vancouver transit was quick and easy enough. No lounge for me, so I find myself having what was possibly the best fast food burger I’ve ever had, thank you A&W. (And they serve lemonade as a drink. This is quite excellent - not carbonated and hits the spot.)

I get on the plane, a ten year-old 787-9, for my tenth flight in this direction. When I chose my seat, I found an empty set of three - which is tantalising, but also I know full well that it will fill up. But… it doesn’t. And, as we sit there at the start of a fourteen hour flight, I am excited that I might get an EconoBed - a set of three seats on which I can almost lie down on. “Boarding is complete”, comes the announcement on the speakers. Brilliant!

And, as if by clockwork, a woman leaps up from her seat and comes to sit on the aisle seat next to me. I look at her, balefully. She wordlessly points to her foot in a skiboot thing, signifying that she is Injured, and that I should not question her decision to take this seat.

She spends the flight taking her belongings out of bags, placing them carefully on the floor, leaning down to move them about a bit, taking off her ski boot, placing her ankle on the seat beside us on two pillows, putting her ski boot back on again, taking it off again, asking for a bag of ice, rearranging her things on the floor, rearranging her pillows, unpacking something, packing it again, unpacking it, rearranging her ice bag, moving things from the floor to the seat beside us, and moving things back again.

Luckily, due to a combination of it being 11.20pm when we take off, and a can of IPA, and a melatonin tablet that I’d remembered to pack this time, I leave the World’s Fidgetiest Injured Woman to her own devices, and, after a decent enough meal, fall asleep - sleeping right through the entire flight, and wake up feeling really quite refreshed 1 hr 30 minutes before we land, just in time for an unsatisfactory breakfast with some form of eggs and a mystery sausage.

BNE

Good: we land in Brisbane 30 minutes early, at 0637. Bad: We time our landing to coincide with a UA flight from San Francisco at 0630, a JQ flight from Tokyo at 0630, a KE flight from Seoul at 0625, and a SQ flight from Singapore at 0637. My flight could have had 298 people on it; assuming the other flights were similar, that was possibly 1,500 people descending on immigration at the same time, which is almost impossible to plan for (and wasn’t scheduled). As a consequence, there is a long, long wait, as we slowly shuffle along a long, snaking queue, into an airport which isn’t really capable of dealing with quite as many passengers as this.

Astonishingly, after such a long wait to get through passport control, our bags still haven’t arrived on the belt, so we wait behind the Jetstar visitors from Tokyo, who are also using our luggage belt.

And, at 0734, I get waved through by customs, and into a very busy Brisbane airport, in order to find my journey home.