James and Sara’s Excellent Antarctic Adventure

Day 1: Travelling….

Day 1 of the excellent Antarctic adventure was not so excellent…..

Arrived at airport on Tuesday morning Feb 14 to board a LATAM flight to Buenos Aires via Auckland. Took ages to check in and plane was delayed by about an hour, however it finally took off to Auckland. 

As we reached Auckland (after a 3 hour flight) the pilot announced that we couldn’t land and we were returning to Sydney. We later found out that extreme winds had prevented the landing (which had been attempted 3 times!) but that other flights managed to land 10 minutes after we turned around. Why couldn’t they divert to Christchurch?

Here’s what the flight path looked like……

Arrived back in Sydney around 6pm ….whisked through Customs to receive a rare (and not treasured) “Did not depart” stamp.

After collecting our luggage from the arrivals section, we then had to go to the departures section to find out our new travel arrangements.

After queuing for 2 hours, the LATAM rep finally told us to go home because we were booked on a specially scheduled 2 pm flight the next day, still via Auckland.

Sara was not happy about the prospect of flying to Auckland and being turned around again, as we HAD to be in Buenos Aires by Feb 16 so that we could catch a charter flight to the cruise boat leaving at 4 am on Feb 17.

While waiting in the queue she rang Angie to ask her to find alternative flights to Buenos Aires ( Angie outsourced the task to Andrew who is a whiz at doing this ). Andrew found various flights going through the US, all of them taking about 33+ hours.

Sara and James left the airport around 9 pm and returned to Sara’s place to work out next steps.

The LATAM agent who told us to return the next day did not instill us with confidence that the flight would actually go so once at home, Sara booked, as a fallback, the American Airline flights that Andrew had found:

Sydney-LA. 13 hours

LA – Miami: 5 hours

Miami- Buenos Aires: 9 hours

33 hours in total including time between flights. This got us into BA at 7.00 am on Feb 16. Not a really compelling alternative.

The question was: if you are only transiting through the US, do you need an ESTA visa waiver?
Sara immediately went online and applied for hers, but James wanted to check first so we asked several different American Airlines personnel, all of whom advised that in transit, you didn’t need an ESTA .

By this time, it was approaching midnight so James slept at Sara’s place.

Wed Feb 15th: James and Sara arrive at airport at 8am . They try to check into American Airlines but the airline cannot process James’ ticket because YOU DO NEED an ESTA ( and by this time, Sara’s ESTA application had been approved).

So they trotted off to the Flight Centre at Sydney airport to get an ESTA for James. The flight centre man couldn’t guarantee that the approved ESTA would come through in time for the close of boarding at American Airlines which was to occur in one hours time at 10.15 am.

At this point james and sara thought that LATAM was probably the better alternative so they went to the LATAM service desk. However the 2pm option was illusory – they weren’t rescheduled to fly again until Feb 17 -2 days later (which wouldn’t have worked as we would have missed the flight charter to cruise. )

So we pressured LATAM to do better. The alternative flight offered by LATAM was to fly to Dubai, then São Paulo and then Buenos Aires, arriving in BA at 11.30 pm on Feb 16 – 5 hours before the flight charter to cruise.! It was going to take more than 35 hours.

While Sara waited at the LATAM service desk ( which was at G) , James raced back to American Airlines ( at B) several times to see if his ESTA application had been approved.

Hmmm….so now we had three not very compelling options:

1. Stick with LATAM and fly 35 hours via Dubai and arrive 5 hours before leaving for cruise ( clearly very little room for error!) or
2. Do our own thing and fly 33 hours via Los Angeles and arrive with 20 hours grace BUT only if James’ ESTA came through in time or
3. Fly on Feb 17 and miss the cruise

At 10.10 am, 5 minutes before boarding closed at American Airlines, James’ ESTA was approved. So guess which option we took ! By that time, James had chalked up 5000 steps from running between G and B!

By the time Sara and James boarded the flight to LA , Sara had a splitting headache ( it was very stressful!,)

There were some upsides to all of this:

• The American Airlines was empty and both Sara and James had a whole row to themselves ( this would not have been the case for LATAM)
• Because Sara is a gold Qantas member, she got access for her and James to the American Airlines lounge at Sydney, LA and Miami.
  

At 7.12 am on Thursday Feb 16, they finally arrived in Buenos Aires. They had travelled for 33 hours and traversed both hemispheres to get to their destination Next question…would their luggage arrive too?

Hooray !!!