Today we travel from Auckland fly to London in order to spend time with my sister who is terminally ill, then have a short European holiday in some places that are new to me.
We’re flying standby on staff tickets on this route which is an experience I term as “double jeopardy”. We will on be standby from Auckland to Los Angeles, departing at 2145 and arriving at 1440 same day.
There, we will have two hours to get ourselves out through immigration, collect our bags, go upstairs to check-in on a standby basis and hopefully go back airside to reboard the same aircraft continuing to London (subject to seats being available). This is all rather stressful as we could be left behind in Auckland or Los Angeles.
Fortunately for us tonight, we managed to get on in Auckland. We had a paid upgrade to Business Class on a standby basis, but this wasn’t available tonight. We flew in Economy Class and will have a refund for the paid upgrade at the end of the trip.