Two weeks from today, I'll be a bit more than one hour into my non-stop flight from San Francisco to Abu Dhabi.
What a freaking crazy route map! The flight is 8,158 miles in length, and the direct route has a heading 3.1 degrees north of the North Pole. This means that we would fly just to the east of the north pole — but given the west-to-east nature of the winds, I suspect we'll be heading more to the east. Bottom line, I'm flying to the opposite side of the earth.
16 hours of scheduled flight time... I'm beginning to contemplate that reality. Fortunately, I'll be ensconced in the comfortable lie-flat business class seats of the Etihad-operated Jet Airways 777 jet, but 16 hours in the air is still a long time. 12 hours after take-off will be my normal bedtime ... and it will be four hours until landing (and only 1 p.m. in the afternoon when I do land).
Jet lag notwithstanding, I plan to hit the ground running, having a site inspection of Park Hyatt Dubai that evening ... and five more site inspections the next day (as well as a photo op at Ski Dubai).
Starting to get excited and (groan) starting to think about packing.
copyright (c) 2016 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. We provide Virtuoso and other Preferred Partner amenities as an affiliate of Brownell Travel. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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