Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member @Doctor Alan.

I suppose a lot of us dream about an all-expenses-paid holiday, possibly travelling Business Class and not having to scrimp on where we eat and so on. I know we did, and it was right out of the blue, following the death of my father, that we found ourselves in a position to do just that.

Of course, the ‘sensible’ or ‘responsible’ thing to do would have been to invest the full inheritance, which wasn’t a fortune anyway, and we had a couple of interviews with Financial Advisers. What put us off was the fact that quite high ‘administrative’ fees were payable on a yearly basis. My wife and I have always hoped to enjoy our lives together, so we decided to splurge the lot on a trip around the world, and to travel business class as much as possible.



My first less-than-ideal decision was to engage a company called ‘Alpha Flight Guru’ to plan all the main flights. I found that:
a) They were not any cheaper than if I’d used the ‘Star Alliance’ trip planner (The total cost of all the main flights was about $25000), and
b) They used what are called ‘Corporate Flying Miles’ to upgrade us from our tourist class seat to business class. On flights to which this technique was applied, we could not accumulate any ‘flying miles’ ourselves, as the seats were obtained ‘on redemption’. Those flying miles could have given us a whole new domestic holiday in the future!

On the other hand, they were able to save us a fair bit of money on at least one leg, where we’d been booked for a return flight for a lot less than a one-way ticket. It seemed a bit of a fiddle, and I had to check that we wouldn’t come unstuck later on.

Direction of Travel:
If you cross the International Date Line (which is a bit East of New Zealand), you either gain or lose a day. If you cross the International Date Line on a journey towards the East, then 24 hours are subtracted from your time. If you cross it when going West, then 24 hours are added to your time. This might not seem important, but I really liked the idea of saving a day, so we travelled from West to East in Australia. The other factor was that we’d decided to travel by train from Toronto to Vancouver on ‘The Canadian’, but apparently, the scenery was ‘quite boring’ until about half an hour before Vancouver. The clincher, though, was the time frame. We have relatives in Vancouver, and two of their children were getting married – one in Hawaii (Maui) and one in Vancouver, and it would be stupid not to include those weddings in our itinerary. Regarding train travel and scenery, the ‘Rocky Mountaineer’ would give us a very exciting mini-holiday with unsurpassed views of the Rockies.



Perth to Maui:
We chose to fly ‘business class’ because we hoped to be able to sleep on the plane, cutting down jetlag somewhat. We flew from Perth to Auckland on Air New Zealand, and they had what is called ‘herringbone’ business class seats – ideal, because you could ‘step over’ the person next to you to visit the restroom at any time. We were actually able to sleep a little, and the service was excellent. The flight took about 6.5 hours from Perth to Auckland, then we had to wait another 6 hours before we flew to Honolulu (about a 9.5-hour flight).

Unfortunately, the next seats were not nearly as good (different plane – still Air NZ) and were really only ‘Premium Economy’ class – side-by-side and only reclined. We’d decided to stay in Honolulu for the night and had booked the short 35-minute flight to Maui the following day – not business class, of course.

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