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Island Hopping in the Pacific
Apr. 16th, 2022 11:34 amHawaii April Travelog #18
Kona - Tue, 12 Apr, 2022, 1:30pm
Today we've flown from Honolulu to Kona, on the "Big Island" of Hawaii. The trek started sometime after 6am when we rose from bed. We were too wrecked for a morning beach walk (previous blog) so we took it easy in the room and packed leisurely.
Packing good news/bad news: It was easier packing our suitcases today than when we started this trip because two bags of our stuff were stolen. 😧🤬😔
Getting to the airport was uneventful. We had a rental car so we didn't have to wait for Lyft/Uber/whatever. We got gas on the way, reminding me once again that gas is freakishly less expensive in Hawaii than California right now. I paid $5.19/gal at a Shell station. Back home, that's the Costco price, and Shell is likely $5.89.
Delays were few at the airport. Bag check took several minutes only because the one family in front of us had, like, five bags per person. Seriously, they a luggage cart per person.
The security line was nil, though Hawk and I both got flagged by TSA for extra security. I actually got double flagged: once because I was randomly selected to have my phone swabbed, and once because the half dozen protein bars I had in my carry-on bag look the same in the X-ray scanner as C4 plastic explosive. They have similar density. Maybe I should reconsider eating them.
Once on the concourse things were quiet. And we had ample time before our flight.
Even though it was only sometime around 10 I bought a pizza from the airport food court's CPK station. I was hungry. I could have eaten a protein bar but... see above. No, not the picture above, though that's the view I enjoyed while eating my doesn't-even-look-like-an-explosive pizza. HNL is definitely a visually relaxing place to kill time.
Our flight was about 20 minutes late. We didn't really care.
Our flight was also very lightly loaded. There were only about 60 passengers. Of course, that didn't stop the gate agent from telling us it was full. That's because, in gate agent-speak, the 3 adjectives to describe how full a flight is are "Full", "Very Full", and "Totally Full". It's similar to how most fast food restaurants today have 3 sizes of sodas, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. Order a "small" and most staff stare at you as if you've just switched to speaking a dead language.
We 60 passengers were few enough that the crew needed to do Weight & Balance with us. The flight attendants shift passengers around to put roughly equal size groups at the front, middle, and rear of the aircraft. The picture above shows the empty gaps between clusters of passengers.
It's been so long since I've been on a flight this lightly loaded that I don't remember when's the last time I went through the Weight & Balance process. Maybe 15 years ago? I'm certainly familiar with it, just not from first hand experience. Probably I would've experienced it a lot recently if I were traveling during the first 12 months of the pandemic, when air travel was way, way down. One colleague of mine flew 1-2 trips a month all the way through and said flights were often 25% full. As it was I stayed grounded for 15 months, only flying again after I was fully vaxxed.
Edited to add: The weight & balance stuff was a lot of fuss relative to such a short flight. I mean, it's necessary, but shifting people around took about half as long as the flight itself. At just 163 miles HNL-KOA the flight was like take off, climb a bit, start descending, land.Kona - Tue, 12 Apr, 2022, 1:30pm
Today we've flown from Honolulu to Kona, on the "Big Island" of Hawaii. The trek started sometime after 6am when we rose from bed. We were too wrecked for a morning beach walk (previous blog) so we took it easy in the room and packed leisurely.
Packing good news/bad news: It was easier packing our suitcases today than when we started this trip because two bags of our stuff were stolen. 😧🤬😔
Getting to the airport was uneventful. We had a rental car so we didn't have to wait for Lyft/Uber/whatever. We got gas on the way, reminding me once again that gas is freakishly less expensive in Hawaii than California right now. I paid $5.19/gal at a Shell station. Back home, that's the Costco price, and Shell is likely $5.89.
Delays were few at the airport. Bag check took several minutes only because the one family in front of us had, like, five bags per person. Seriously, they a luggage cart per person.
The security line was nil, though Hawk and I both got flagged by TSA for extra security. I actually got double flagged: once because I was randomly selected to have my phone swabbed, and once because the half dozen protein bars I had in my carry-on bag look the same in the X-ray scanner as C4 plastic explosive. They have similar density. Maybe I should reconsider eating them.
Once on the concourse things were quiet. And we had ample time before our flight.
Even though it was only sometime around 10 I bought a pizza from the airport food court's CPK station. I was hungry. I could have eaten a protein bar but... see above. No, not the picture above, though that's the view I enjoyed while eating my doesn't-even-look-like-an-explosive pizza. HNL is definitely a visually relaxing place to kill time.
Our flight was about 20 minutes late. We didn't really care.
Our flight was also very lightly loaded. There were only about 60 passengers. Of course, that didn't stop the gate agent from telling us it was full. That's because, in gate agent-speak, the 3 adjectives to describe how full a flight is are "Full", "Very Full", and "Totally Full". It's similar to how most fast food restaurants today have 3 sizes of sodas, Medium, Large, and Extra Large. Order a "small" and most staff stare at you as if you've just switched to speaking a dead language.
We 60 passengers were few enough that the crew needed to do Weight & Balance with us. The flight attendants shift passengers around to put roughly equal size groups at the front, middle, and rear of the aircraft. The picture above shows the empty gaps between clusters of passengers.
It's been so long since I've been on a flight this lightly loaded that I don't remember when's the last time I went through the Weight & Balance process. Maybe 15 years ago? I'm certainly familiar with it, just not from first hand experience. Probably I would've experienced it a lot recently if I were traveling during the first 12 months of the pandemic, when air travel was way, way down. One colleague of mine flew 1-2 trips a month all the way through and said flights were often 25% full. As it was I stayed grounded for 15 months, only flying again after I was fully vaxxed.
