Experience 051. Return from Tokyo. Destination Vancouver.

In this experience, Vinod shares his story of his flight back from Tokyo to Vancouver after the Summer Olympics. As mentioned in previous experiences, Vinod acquires a lot of stuff when returning from the Olympics. He had a lot more luggage than when he left for Tokyo. He arrived at Narita, having to make his way back across the terminal. The first half of the terminal was empty – but then there was a mass of athletes from the US and Canada – at holiday volumes. There was a lot of studying the queues, where to go and wondering if he was in the correct queue. An interesting thing happened on the luggage scale – did Vinod's bag lose weight? The duty free shops were ram-packed full of athletes, trying to buy something to take home – since they had been restricted to the athlete accommodations. All of these bodies had to empty somewhere and since the flights were all boarding in the same area – it got hectic and busy really fast. The crowds were too large to hear the announcements over the public address system. Finally, after Vinod's plane arrived, delay information was placed on a visual display. Meanwhile, Vinod had Japanese Yen coins to spend – where better than at one of many vending machines. And why not ice cream? Vinod returned to the hold area – flights were ready to start boarding, so Vinod got to the front of the queue. What's this United Boeing 737 doing at Narita? Vinod asked Geoff to do some digging into why that plane was there – and discovered a Micronesian legacy from Continental Airlines. Vinod was on one of Air Canada's original 787s, and the meal service got processed very quickly. Compared to his flight to Tokyo, mixed drinks were available on this flight. Looking from his premium economy seat through the curtain, Vinod could see that the business class experience was elevated from when he had flown to Tokyo. Vinod arrived at Vancouver and given his unique status as a non-athlete at the Olympics it caused some confusion about testing. This process has improved and is now quite efficient. Vinod shares a tip about what you need to do if you don't want your bag to auto-connect. Vinod appreciated the distancing in Canada and was thankful he didn't need to spit in a tube after waiting six hours. News Items: simpleflying.com article "Miami Becomes First US Airport To Test COVID-19 Detector Dogs." breakingtravelnews.com article "Amadeus trials auto bag drops at Heathrow airport" simpleflying.com article "GOL Made To Pay For Female Employees' Cosmetics." If you have a story about overseas travel during COVID-19, COVID testing on arrival, or other experiences that you would like to share, please email us at stories(at)seat1a.org or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you wish to support the show financially, we are on Patreon. Show notes are available online at http://podcast.seat1a.org/