Taking flight to South America

Monday 19th June

A painless journey to the airport and a parting with our trusty RAV4 later, we found ourselves in the LAN Chile check-in queue. We both like airports; they signify change and excitement and pastures new, but today my enthusiasm was dulled by the prospect of an eleven-hour flight - I can get pretty cranky on long flights as the lack of leg room in economy-class makes it almost impossible for me to sleep.

Waiting in line to check-in, we noticed an airline official talking discreetly to one or two people ahead of us. We paid little attention until he approached us. "Excuse me Sir, we may need to upgrade some passengers today. Could I take your names please?"
The idea of a free upgrade on a long-haul flight was far beyond the hopes of a pair of scruffy travellers like us, and a sudden rush of excitement was dispelled when we reached the check-in desk and were presented with the expected economy-class boarding passes. Our friendly official no-longer seemed interested in us.

After whiling away the afternoon browsing in the duty-free shops, we sat in the departure lounge. Suddenly, my name was called over the tannoy and I was summonsed to the boarding desk; we had been upgraded to Business Class! Nothing could quell my good mood after that, and the flight was a comfortable dream.

However, just when our body-clocks had become adjusted to New Zealand time this flight threw a previously unencountered spanner into the works. We took off from Auckland at 17:25 bin the evening on June 19th, and landed in Santiago, Chile, at 12:45 in the afternoon on June 19th!

The sheer excitement of arriving in a new country on a new continent merely postponed the effect that this time-zone tomfoolery would later have on us...