Currently, I'm sitting at the pointy end of a Jetstar flight, in the front row of business class, having just finished my juice, lunch, pepsi, cake, coffee, baileys and chocolates. I'm full. And we're less than 90 minutes into the flight. For the first time on a flight I'm happy and comfortable. But more on that later.

After finishing last night's blog entry at the F1 motel at about 10:30pm, I set the alarms for 3:45am, and went to bed. We had a taxi booked for 4:20am to get us to the airport terminal with enough time to check our bags, pass through screening and hopefully have enough time for a coffee and some breakfast.

So falling into bed just before 11pm, tired enough that I didn't take much notice of how uncomfortable the bed was, I still drifted off to sleep a little paranoid that we'd sleep through the (very early) alarms, and miss the flight. Consequently both Veronica and I woke up at midnight, 1:30am, 2am, 2:30am and finally when I woke up at 3am, I got out of bed, sick of my repetitive power naps.

F1 motels make you very very aware with a series of threatening signs that you WILL be fined $1000 for setting off the smoke detectors. In much smaller print, they also mention that their smoke detectors are tripped up by steam. Hmmmmm. With this in mind I got into the tiny shower to wake myself up, and probably successfully did the same for the rest of the 3rd floor due to the noisy water pipes and 3am silence.

Out the door at 4:20am to the taxi waiting for us, onto the airport with no hassles, through baggage, and onto the food court for coffee and breakfasts. So far so good.

The domestic flight from Sydney to Cairns was also uneventful. Nothing interesting to report there, except perhaps that we were 5 minutes early.



Getting off the plane and leaving the domestic terminal was relatively horrible. Very hot, stupidly humid, and starting to rain. I guess it is to be expected in the tropics. After the walk to the international terminal, 3 hours before our flight was scheduled to leave, we wished we hadn't.



Compared to the Cairns domestic airport, Cairns International airport, with the exception of the departure lounge, is a large tin shack. Domestic has all of the food and general shopping stores you could ask for. Cairns International, prior to passing through screening, has a single internet cafe with very little food and no internet. Seriously. The net was down.

Lucky an awesome employee of the cafe gave us the insider knowledge that Cathay Pacific had wifi, with signal strength accessible from only 1 table in the cafe (segregated from the others) and their wifi had changed to be unsecured in recent days. So with some quick table shuffling we were online, and able to Skype with Veronica's parents and our bubby girl Isabelle. We also tried my parents who were online at the time, but got no answer.

Returning downstairs to the baggage check lines which had since opened up, we were horrified to find the check-in now full of people, and the baggage drop line easily 100m long. Dammit. After standing for 10 minutes without moving, unable to even see the front of the queue, Veronica went for a walk, returning back a few minutes later to let us know that we didn't have to wait in line with the rest of the economy class scum, and instead we had our own business class check-in line. Sweet!

The business class upgrade was already starting to pay dividends.
Strolling past the hundreds of people waiting in line, we punched a hole through their line, and crossed over to the business class queue, which consisted of exactly zero people. Straight through to the front of the queue, with all eyes watching us, we were through and on our way in less than 5 minutes. Even the baggage check attendant was nicer in the business class line. She casually informed us that the flight may be "a little late". No big deal, or so we thought.

Walking away towards the departure area, Veronica told me I wasn't allowed to wave or give any rude gestures.


Through customs checking, and I've now confirmed my theory that women that work in Australian Customs are all utterly rude and downright unpleasant. Apologies to all female customs officials reading this, but you are. Lighten up a little. I realise customs officials have to be serious, but you can be serious without being rude. The male officials I've dealt with seem to understand this, but not the female officials. Even Veronica colourfully agreed with my theory based on the two women and one man working the customs desks.

Through screening in record time, and through the TRS queue to get the refund on Veronica's new iPhone, everything was going great. By that stage we had a little under 2 hours to wait, supposedly.

We were wrong.

The "slight delay" became a half hour delay, which became an hour delay, which then became a 90 minute delay, which then mean't that we had 2 small girls and one big girl thoroughly sick of sitting in a departure lounge for over 3 hours. Over five and a half hours in Cairns airport isn't fun. At all.



But all of that is forgiven now. We're in our business class seats, surrounded entirely with Japanese senior citizens who are now all asleep. Our (dedicated business class) attendants are all really great fun, but properly professional, and I'm not regretting the extra cash splurged on the business class tickets one bit. In fact I'm beginning to wonder how I'll manage in economy class on the way home.