Flight to Christchurch

I am traveling to Antarctica as part of Cohort 4, or the 4th group of people to travel down through New Zealand this year through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP).

There are about 140 people in Cohort 4. About 2/3 of us are military (they'll swap out with pilots that have been down on the ice for the past few months), and the other 1/3 are contractors or grantees. I am a grantee, meaning that I'm going down on a PI's project to do science work.

I'm doing work for the POLENET project -- and I'll have a whole other post about the project and what work we'll be doing soon!

Our flight to Christchurch was a charter flight by OmniAir, and luckily, the plane wasn't full. I got 2 seats to myself (which meant I could at least stretch my legs a little and didn't have to step over anyone to go to the bathroom). For a 24 hour flight, my setup wasn't so bad.

Two whole seats to myself! Plus two pillows and blankets (which I thoroughly appreciated; the plane was FREEZING).

I read 3 books (mystery novels by Ruth Ware) on the first 11 hour stretch to Honolulu, where the plane stopped for 2 hours to refuel and to "remove a stray rock"..... not really sure what that implies. But I did appreciate the chance to stand in the aisle and chat with other folks on the plane.

We chased the sunset for a few hours during the flight. My phone tells me this was taken somewhere over Illinois.

 

After fueling up and changing the flight crew, we continued on to Christchurch. I managed to sleep about 5 hours on this second leg, but unfortunately missed one of the meals 😞. Although, the smell of the airplane food was starting to make me feel extremely nauseous by the time we landed, so maybe that was for the best.

My first view of Christchurch!

After spending over 26 hours on this darn plane, we arrived in Christchurch around 9:30am (NZ time)..... and then spent another 1.5 hours unloading from the plane and going through the COVID checks and customs. I don't think I've ever been in a cleaner airport.

The United States Antarctic Program (USAP) building at the Christchurch airport.

 

Then, we loaded on a bus and were driven to the hotel. Cohort 4 was split up between 2 hotels; a few folks went to the Distinction, and the rest of us went to the Commodore. More on my stay in the fantastic Commodore hotel soon!