Flying back down to earth with Aerolineas Argentinas

Regular followers will recall that the last flights we took were part of the mammoth journey we did between London and New Zealand. This was a special trip that was taken on the airbus a380, with Emirates and in business class. This is pretty much the best combo of aircraft, carrier and class you can get. However that was a short lived excursion for us into the world of luxury travel. We are now firmly back in with the masses travelling economy.



The next phase of our journey takes us to South and Central America. And to begin this we planned to fly from Auckland to Rio. The best deal on offer was with the Argentine flag carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas. It is an airline with a noted reputation for never being on time, having fairly shoddy planes and flight attendants who would make the US airlines attendants scared!



As our flight approached it seemed that all these rumours were true. The flight was late from Auckland, check-in took 2 hours – just like the bad old days before web check-ins, and the plane was dodgy! We rattled along for 12hours to Buenos Aires, but surprisingly felt pretty well rested and not totally fearful of the stern but quite nice (smiling at least) attendants. The 2 best things about this flight were 1, we left NZ on the 10th at 9:30pm, and arrived into South America on the 10th at 5pm! (Thanks to the international date line). 2, we have only paid $500 for each ticket. This was seriously cheap, and despite not being in business class on the flight I could feel 1% smug that I had bagged us a bargain deal!



Oh ps, if you ever plan on booking an Asian veg meal on this airline, make sure you take some of you own snacks with you. We were treated to 2 (oh yes 2!!) bread rolls for breakfast, and some slightly dodgy pasta for dinner. Basically AVML means vegan, so none of the choccies, or cheese etc.

A boyhood dream to come true

Ever since I went plane spotting with my brother as a young kid I have shared his fascination with planes. I never wanted to be Top Gun and fly fighter jets, like he did, but I was so taken by these amazing examples of human ingenuity.

I was always particularly amazed by the big jumbo jets that would take off effortlessly and look so beautiful. Even now whenever we pass an airport I drive Urvi mad by slowing to look at the planes, and remember those days with by brother.



Seeing the jumbo jets, I always wondered what it would be like to fly on the top deck, in the fancy classes, with the plush seats and the exclusive staircase. This dream has remained with me to this day, and ever since the newest most advanced jet come out – the airbus A380, I have promised myself that one day we will fly on that exclusive top deck.



Well thanks to Urvi that day is gonna come much sooner than I ever thought. We are taking the super jumbo from Singapore to Sydney and we are doing it in posho class. This is a real dream come true, so I guess I should thank my brother for seeding the dream and Urvi for making it come true.

The funny thing is that we were one moment away from booking a first class ‘suite’ which were booked out. If we had booked the suite class, we would have been on the lower deck of the plane!!!! Still I think that would have been fun too.





However this is going to be 7hours of me realising a childhood dream, and acting like child with all the James bond gadgets you could think of!!!!!