Air Niugini

Today I am off to Papua New Guinea again for a few days. As long as they are short trips (shorter than a week) I do not mind really. But I cannot say that I was thrilled by the idea of flying with Air Niugini. But in the end it was an uneventfull and even an interesting flight.

Flight Tracking

When not for me it is for someone I am expecting, but I am quite familiar with any flight tracking system. They all are different though. My favourite actually is the one from the Melbourne airport that tracks all the flights in real time on a map. As a result you know exactly where the planes are. But this morning I had to track flight SQ231 landing in Sydney at 1105 and Kingsford Smith Airport is unfortunately not offering this service. Anyway, being Singapore Airlines and being Australia the plane landed exactly on time (OK, I admit, it is not always the case but sometimes… which remind me by the way that on a flight between Cairns and Darwin I arrived 50 minutes early a couple of weeks ago! That had to be my personal record for a commercial short haul).
http://www.melbourneairport.com.au/flight_radar/

Singapore - Perth

Today is not Friday but here is another airplane picture. I am on my way from Singapore to Perth (just briefly) and it is for work this time. So as usual, when it is work related, there is no much to talk about. Just the time to spend a short night not too far from the airport and I am off to Darwin in the morning. I promise to try and post something else than a plane picture tomorrow!

The Friday picture

If you have checked my past Friday blog entries you might have seen quite a generous number of airplanes. Today, I am not screening a plane I actually took to spend a weekend elsewhere but an aircraft I saw preparing to land at Changi. Indeed, I boarded the A380 some long time back on a flight from Sydney to Singapore (actually on its fourth day of operation) and I was rather disappointed by the experience as there was nothing special (except more seats than you usually have on a smaller plane). To be honest, if you give me the choice, I'd rather take a more 'intimate' plane. That said, I am always impressed by this flying beast when seen from outside.

Blogging on Fridays

Monday is my blog day for the Record of the Week. But you might have noticed that Fridays are turning into airplane days! Sorry about this but it is the day I tend to go somewhere else. Even though I am somehow always somewhere else. I just had the time to come back from Indonesia this afternoon, branch to the office, out for dinner, back to the appartment to unpack and repack, have a quick sleep and I'm off to Hong Kong with JetStar coming back on Sunday through Macau. Have a nice week-end!

Air India Express

Just the time to branch back to Singapore, organise a couple of things in the office, unpack and repack my bag and I am off to Chennai (Madras) in Tamil Nadu with another budget airline. How do they honestly keep their prices so low? There is not a single day without reading reports of the bad state of the airline industry but passengers continue to be able to enjoy amazing fares. Not that I am complaining as it is not so often the general public can take advantage of this kind of situation. I don't think I will be posting any trip report as some other blogs do it so well but I will surely be posting a couple of pictures of Chennai even though I will not have much time to visit the place. Talk to you tomorrow from yet another place. I am taking off now!

Sarawak, here we come!

Even though Singapore is a good hub and is quite 'central' in South East Asia, the number of places to travel to for a short week-end is quite limited after all. Once you've gone to the surrounding cities (Bangkok, KL, Jakarta, etc...) you really need more time if you want to visit some interesting sites. I would like to go to Sapa in Vietnam, to some near places in China or further away to Bhutan but two days surely are not enough. Anyway, tonight we decided to leave to Kuching which is in the Malaysian part (Sarawak and Sabah) of Borneo. We could stay for a week or two but unfortunately we have to be back at work on Monday... Let's try to make the most of this short getaway thanks to SilkAir.

Changi - T3

Here's a view of the new T3 terminal at Changi from the Krisflyer lounge. It is a very spacious space filled by both natural and artificial lights. You can notice the presence of real trees. As it is not yet running at its full capacity the whole place seems rather empty which is a good change compared to T1 or T2.