Off to New Zealand
Mrs. SFO and I are off today to New Zealand for Christmas with our SoCal travel buddies. And we're back on Qantas for our first time in three years, tonight flying DFW-SYD and the longest commercial flight in the world 8,577 miles.
• American First Class DEN-DFW
• The Centurion Lounge at DFW
• The Qantas Business and First Class Lounge at DFW
• The American Flagship Dining Room
• Qantas A380 First Class Suites DFW-SYD and the world's longest commercial flight
• Qantas First Class Lounge at SYD
• Qantas Business Class SYD-ZQN
• Azur Lodge - Queenstown
• Queenstown
• Private Helicopter Tour of Milford Sound
• Lord of the Rings Tour
• Air New Zealand Queenstown-Christchurch-Napier
• The Farm at Cape Kidnappers - Hawke's Bay
• Napier and Hawke's Bay
• Wine Country Touring
• Air New Zealand Napier-Auckland
• The Sofitel Auckland
• Auckland
• Air New Zealand Business Class Lounge
• Singapore A380 First Class Suites Auckland-Singapore
• The Fullerton Singapore
• New Years in Singapore
• Singapore Airlines The Private Room at Changi
• Singapore A380 First Class Suites SIN-NRT-LAX
• American First Class LAX-DEN.
And we're off..
For the first time in a long time, Mrs. SFO decided that she wanted to check a bag. Ugh. So we stop at the AA counter and presented the AAgent with our three separate and unlinked tickets. Fifteen minutes later, we think we have her bag checked all the way to ZQN. 
First stop is the DEN Admirals Club aka "The Crap Lounge" as Mrs. SFO affectionately calls it. A half an hour later at T-30 before the delayed departure time, we headed down to they gate, where naturally our plane hadn't even arrived. As usual, AA departure times on delayed flights are meaningless.
American 372
Denver DEN-Dallas DFW
MD-80
12:39p-3:40p (sked)
1:35p-4:20p (actual)
December 23, 2015
First Class
Departed 16/16
Seats 6EF
Weather issues in DFW had caused the late inbound so we wound up running about 40 minutes before. No worries since we had a 4.5 hour connection.
I love the old AA Mad Dogs which features the last of the comfortable domestic airplane seats, before airline suits decided to deemphasize comfort in the generation seats. Even Mrs. SFO spontaneously raved about the seat comfort… "Why can't they have seats this comfortable in new planes?" An excellent question indeed.
On board, the usual AA service. Even though we had boarded and sat for another 20 minutes for bags to be loaded, no pre departure beverage offerings of any kind. In the air, drinks and nuts (including almonds at last).
And then a choice of spinach artichoke dip or a cheese and fruit plate.
Yeah, I guess it's old when the reading lights start rolling around in the sockets.
We arrived at C31 and took the SkyTrain...
... to the D Terminal and The Amex Centurion Lounge for a late lunch. Pretty crowded but the food was good although Mrs. SFO didn't agree.
