Travel diaries: Airport adventures and customs calamities

Stuck on the tiny island of Okinawa, my wife and I don’t have occasion to hop on many airplanes. We did get away for Christmas, however, traveling to New Zealand, and I can see why the airline industry/airport operations can be a frustration to travelers.

We had the chance to travel on both a full-service airline (China Airlines) and a cut-rate airline (Pacific Blue), and there were definite differences.

On the 10-hour flight from Taiwan to Sydney, Australia, we were served dinner, breakfast and a substantial snack. The two guys who sat in front of us, who were the last ones to board the plane, might not have known we were going to be fed or were just hungry, but they broke out the food as soon as they were settled. Unfortunately the combination of their body funk made their meal smell like a cornbeef, sauerkraut and ass sandwich. Luckily the air system helped dissipate their aromas fairly quickly.

We flew Pacific Blue from Sydney to Auckland, New Zealand and reversed the process on the way home. Luckily we had enough time between flights to quell any hunger pangs. For those cheaper tickets you don’t get any amenities free, even on a three and a half hour flight. In-flight entertainment isn’t a must, but Pacific Blue does rent digital media players ($20) for those who want to watch movies ($20). The only problem is that they don’t distribute the players right away. Thus, for some who choose to watch long movies like “The Dark Knight”, there is the chance they won’t get to see the end of the movies like the guys in front of us. It didn’t make for happy campers. Granted, the airline has a disclaimer on their rental flyer that says that some movies may be too long to view in their entirety, but it’s like reading the bottom line on an eye chart.

Most airlines also issue bag tags that correspond to what they have attached to your luggage. Pacific Blue doesn’t do that, but in a move I think is actually better, especially in these days of conservation, the bag tag number is printed on the boarding pass. The only problem with that is not all immigrations officials seem to know what different airlines do. We ran into that problem heading into Australia from New Zealand. Our surly immigrations official wanted to see our bag tags, but was having problems understanding that our bag numbers were printed on our boarding pass. He decided to let us through anyway, like he was doing us a big favor since we didn’t have all the documentation he required.

Some countries are