The third and final leg of our outbound flights was from Tokyo Haneda to Sydney. At just over 8 hours, it’s not that long of a flight when it comes to long haul flights, but having been travelling for 24 hours already since we left Vancouver, we were already struggling to keep our eyes open at this point!
One of the more economical ways to fly between Canada and the UK is with WestJet’s service to and from London Gatwick. Peterson has previously reviewed the WestJet 767 route from Vancouver to London Gatwick, but this time I’ll be sharing my experience on it, flying from Gatwick to Toronto.
A couple of months ago, ANA had an error fare for a round trip business class ticket from Vancouver to Sydney for an insanely low price of $800 CAD. Peterson and I had been lucky enough to score a pair of these tickets, allowing us to fly ANA in business class for the very first time!
Our United flight from YVR to SFO was the first of five flights in our ANA error fare business class booking. For some reason, we always seem to book an itinerary with a super early flight out of YVR, and this one was no exception. We headed to the airport at 3am, where it was still pretty quiet.
As expected, our flight to Paris boarded from a remote gate at Abu Dhabi airport, as there are not enough gates to handle the amount of traffic they have. I was totally fine with this, because it meant I would get another amazing close-up view of the beautiful A340-600 aircraft we would be flying on.
We were especially excited for this flight, as we would be flying on an A340-600, which are slowly going out of service. I personally have never flown on one (not that I can remember anyways), and I’ve always thought they look super sleek with their four engines and long fuselage.
We had a long walk to our gate from The Pier lounge, since our plane was scheduled to leave from gate 18. The flight to Korea was originally scheduled on a long haul configuration a330, but was swapped last minute to a regional 777-300. What luck! =(
There was already a pretty big crowd when we got to the gate. Boarding began shortly after we arrived.
Although it was the end of my trip, I was looking forward to this flight back home to Vancouver. As we were travelling back from Hong Kong with my grandma, I was excited for her to be experiencing a premium cabin for the first time! I was able to upgrade her economy ticket to a business ticket two weeks before departure.
Our flight to Hong Kong departed from gate 126 from Terminal A. Getting from the main terminal to Terminal A requires taking the shuttle train. One thing to note is that once you’re in Terminal A, you can’t take the shuttle train back to the main terminal.
Our flight from Hong Kong to Seoul was in one of Cathay Pacific’s 777-300ERs that were fitted with the international seat configuration. This meant that the seats were in a reverse herringbone layout, which are much more private and comfortable than the 2-2-2 business class seating in the domestic 777s.
Cathay Pacific introduced their A350 service between Vancouver and Hong Kong on March 28th, 2017. This route is pretty special because it was the very first A350 route to Canada. There was a pretty big celebration on the day of the inaugural flight, and we even braved the torrential downpour to snap a photo. The route operates every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 9:30am.
After arriving in Tokyo, we headed straight for the Sakura lounge. There are two separate Sakura lounges in Terminal 2 of Narita International Airport: one in the main building, and one in the satellite building. Our flight to Singapore was leaving from the satellite terminal building, so we decided to go to that one since our layover wasn’t that long. It was a smaller lounge and also lacked the shower facilities.
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