Our 2023 USA Visit / Part 7 / Homeward Bound

After six weeks away it was time to head home.

Flight transfers and a couple of hour’s layover each in Denver and San Francisco.

Change of terminal in Denver from one of the furthest B gates to one of the furthest A gates but, hey, we were walk fit by this stage.

Both flights to SFO from Sioux Falls were packed.

I had checked the United App and was surprised to see our flight from SFO to Sydney was virtually empty.

Must be a glitch I thought. That flight is normally pretty full.

What I didn’t realise was there was a flight three hours earlier.

Indeed our flight on a 777-300ER had only around 100 passengers and most of them were ‘upfront’

Our economy section had 10 passengers.

As a result we could stretch out on the four middle seats and sleep a lot of the way during the 14 hour Pacific Ocean crossing.

In between times I watched four movies and read a little.

It was the most comfortable economy flight ever.

How United would economically maintain this scheduling is anyone’s guess.

Maybe it’s freight based.

We arrived in Sydney 45 minutes early.

The pic above is us actually landing. It’s a screen shot from the Sydney Airport Live website.

Immigration is all automated for citizens and ETA holders now and is quick. 

Baggage took a while but it all arrived safely.

We have AirTags in our bags to keep track but United’s tracking system on their App is pretty good as well.

I declared some pistachio nuts I had brought in and all our bags had to go through X-ray at quarantine.

Why? I don’t know but we had plenty of time.

Then we caught three trains back to Nowra where our lovely neighbour was waiting on the platform with coffee and muffins.

It was a bit of a hairy drive south with torrential rain a lot of the way.

Unfortunately that petered out the nearer we got to home.

We are still in drought conditions here. Very little rain while we were away.

Jet lag took over for 4 to 5 days but nothing we couldn’t handle. Going to bed at 7pm and waking up at 2-3 am is the name of the game.

So that was our 2023 trip.

Tentative plans are to do it all again in 2025.