If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
Please include the web address (URL) of the report in which you found the error. Thank you! Send your email to:
First thing to note is ALL dates and times mentioned in this travel report after today will be for Australia Eastern Standard Time (AEST) which is a day ahead of the United States. The only exception is Noumea which is one hour ahead of AEST.
There are no photos on this page, but there should be photos posted for all days after today. Today only involved getting to the airport and boarding our flight at 10:35 PM so I didn't take any photos of that.
We pre-scheduled an Uber yesterday to pick us up at our Anaheim vacation house at 6 PM knowing there might be a lot of traffic at the height of the rush hour, as well as the delay there could be with all the procedures we might have to go through to board our international flight. Also, I was wondering if by pre-scheduling we may have gotten a bit of a lower rate by avoiding peak pricing. When there is high demand and there aren't enough Uber drivers available, Uber will often raise the rates dynamically to attract more drivers to get out on the road.
Uber sent a Lincoln Navigator car which was good as we were taking 3 medium size suitcases plus 2 backbacks. We have always fit in the smallest Uber cars, even with that much luggage, but one suitcase often has to go in the front passenger seat and we need to carry our backpacks on our laps. But with the large Lincoln Navigor, everthing fit in the cargo area. We did order a "Comfort" rather than an "UberX" this time, but the "Comfort" was only $4 more than the "UberX." And electric would have been $6 cheaper than the "UberX," but there is no guarantee which EV would arrive. A Tesla Model Y would have enough room. A Tesla Model 3 might have been a maybe. But any EV smaller than a Tesla Model 3 definitely would not have fit our luggage.
The traffic wasn't as bad as I had expected, but the ride from Anaheim Hills to LAX still took about an hour. The driver dropped us off right at the entrance to LAX United Airlines Terminal 6. There was an outside bag drop right where he let us out, but Barbara has always been a bit paranoid about the outside bag drops ever since one of her bags got lost that was checked in using that method. So, we dragged our 3 suitcases and 2 backpacks inside the terminal and had to go a bit of a ways to get to the inside bag drop. Since we had pre-checked our bags, we just used a self-serve kiosk to print the bag labels before putting them into the inside bag drop.
Next we went to the "CLEAR" lane as we get that free with one of our credit cards. They just scanned our faces and took us right to where we put our backpacks through the scaners. We didn't even have to show our ID, Boarding Passes, or Passports to any TSA Agent! In some airports, going through "CLEAR" just takes you to the front of the TSA line where you still have to show your ID and Boarding Pass to a TSA Agent. But I guess at LAX, "CLEAR" gets you to even bypass the TSA Agent. So far, everytime I've used "CLEAR," it hasn't seemed to save any time. Each time there hasn't been any more of a line at "TSA-Precheck" than at the "CLEAR" lane. A couple of times, using "CLEAR" has even gone slower than just going to the regular TSA-Precheck line. But, I assume the day will come that we'll encounter a huge line at TSA Pre-check and "CLEAR" will get us right past it.
My backpack was set aside for extra screening. At LAX screening, only one large electronic device can be left in a backpack. With my large notebook computer and Barbara's Chromebook, I had what they considered 2 large electronic devices. Actually, if you count my external notebook computer monitor as an electronic device, I had 3. They had me place Barbara's Chromebook outside my backpack, but still in the same tray, and ran it through the scanner again. That time it went through fine.
We have 3 different United Chase Credit Card Accounts. Barbara and I each have our own and we have one for our Silver Rails business. United sends us 2 United Club Passes each year for each of our 3 United Chase credit cards, which is 6 United Club passes every year in total. We rarely ever use the United Club Passes as we usually only fly on United Airlines when we fly internationally, which is rare. But we got to use them on this United Airlines flight to Australia.
We arrived at the United Airlines Club Lounge 3 hours and 5 minutes before the departure time of our flight. Because the pass only allows us to enter the lounge up to 3 hours before our flight departure, the computer would not allow the agent to validate our pass! We had to stand by the desk for 5 minutes until it was exactly 3 hours before the flight departure time. This is something lost by leaving things up to computers instead of the discretion of the agent. If it was up to the agent, she probably would have let us in 5 minutes early. But because the computer would not allow it, we had to stand by the desk and wait 5 minutes.
The United Club lounge at Terminal 6 at LAX is pretty big with a great view of the planes on the tarmac and taking off and landing. There were quite a few passengers in the club lounge, but there was still plenty of open seating available. Years ago the club lounges used to be extremely crowded. But ever since United implemented a policy that only passengers holding boarding passes for United and affiliate flights could use the United lounges, the crowds have thinned out a lot. We always used to use the United Lounge in Portland and Orange County when we flew on Southwest Airlines, which was a lot. But now we can't use them anymore except on those rare occassions that we fly on United Airlines.
We started off with a free glass of a red blend wine each. Most people tip the bar tender $1 per drink. I made sure to have my $2 tip in view as she poured the wine with the hope she'd fill the glasses a bit more. She did fill each glass to as much as the glass could possible hold, which was a lot, about twice a normal wine pour! I don't know if she always fills glasses this much or if my $2 tip had the influence I hoped. I could always come back for more free wine, but that would mean more trips back to the bar and more tipping.
There was plenty of free food available served buffet style. They had all kinds of salads, soups, sandwiches, pastas, eggs, noodles, rice, plus a few desserts. Barbara and I hadn't eaten all day yet knowing they'd have this feast at the club lounge. We selected some salad, a couple of sandwiches, and some eggs. We didn't want to overdo it as we knew they'd be feeding us all night on the flight also.
We left the club lounge about 20 minutes before the boarding time for our flight. We were assigned boarding Group 2 which meant we'd be some of the earliest passengers to board the plane. We had selected seats "A" and "C" leaving an empty seat between us hoping nobody would pick that seat. Almost half the time that middle seat is left empty on flights leaving us with 3 seats all to ourselves. Luckily, it turned out that way on this 15 hour flight. Whenever it turns out someone does have the middle seat, Barbara moves from her aisle seat to the middle seat next to me, which is often a pleasant surprise to the person who thought they'd be sitting in a middle seat.
At the boarding gate was the first time we needed our passports. But it was all done electronically. They just had us stand in front of a camera. As soon as the camera verified our identity, they allowed us to continue to board. They didn't even need to look at our passports. As long as we had our passports in hand, we didn't even have to open them. The computer and camera they were using to verify our identity I guess was also remotely scanning our digital passports.
Many people are surprised to find that Barbara and I always fly Economy, just regular Economy, not Economy-Plus, not Preferred Seats, not Business Class. We always use points to fly and anything above just plain Economy Class costs so many more points that it just doesn't seem worth the extra points. I'd rather use my points to fly round-trip 3 times to an international destination than use the same number of points to fly business class just 1 time round-trip. It could be my imagination, but airlines are now allocating SO MANY seats to these extra cost levels, that there aren't that many just plain Economy seats on planes anymore, and not so many people book just plain Economy seats. That leaves a lot of the Economy seats empty like on our flight.
They did serve us a meal shortly after take-off. It wasn't anything special, but it was OK and enough food to satisfy us. I had a glass of red wine with my meal and that was served free. Oddly they served another meal, which they probably considered just a "snack" around 2 AM ! Again, I had a complimentary glass of red wine with that. In the morning, they served a breakfast choice of either pancakes or scrambled eggs. We both had a cup of coffee with that. Each of the meals they served came with plenty of sides to make them quite filling.
And last but not least, I want to mention the saga regarding our U.S. Passports and Australia ETA Visa. A few weeks ago I got notified that our passports would be expiring in one year and that we were invited to apply online to renew them. They said our passports probably wouldn't arrive until early June 2026. I thought that was perfect as we'd be back from this trip by then and we needed new passports for a cruise we had already booked for next year. But, the new passports arrived much sooner than expected, only a couple of weeks after I applied to renew them online! The problem with that was that we already had Australia ETA Visas attached to our old passports. I did a lot of research and almost everything I found said that our old passports immediately become invalid as soon as we got the new ones, and the Australia ETA Visa that was attached to our old passport would no longer be valid either. After a few mistakes, I finally realized that I would have to completed delete our old Australia ETA Visa and apply for a new Australia ETA Visa with our new U.S. Passport. Fortunatley, obtaining an Australia ETA Visa online is almost an instantaneous process. It took me less than 30 minutes to obtain new Austrail ETA Visas that were now connected to our new U.S. Passports. So, we were able to approach this trip with clear minds that we should have no problem boarding the flight and getting into Australia.
So ... click the "NEXT" link below to go to my report for the next time. And don't forget, even though this is a report from Thursday, May 7, tomorrow will be Saturday, May 9, 2026! We'll skip Friday as we cross the International Date Line. However, we'll gain it back on our return trip when we get to live Monday, May 25, 2026, twice!
If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
Please include the web address (URL) of the report in which you found the error. Thank you! Send your email to:
