UPDATED WITH MORE INFO AT THE BOTTOM OF POST
Well we made it to Hawaii, very early on the 19th, but since J is getting the rental car, I thought I would take a moment to upload the pictures from the adventure of getting here. We had the privilege of hopping on a C17 via the space-a program. We flew as a Cat 3, there is a whole ranking on who has priority, since we were going for a vacation and didn't need to fly on this airplane. We lucked out that most of the other registered users trying to get on were Cat 4 and Cat 5's and scored five of the 30 seats available. There were a ton of people trying to get to Hickam, but luckily there are several other planes for them over the course of the next three days...which is what we would have tried to get on if we didn't score these seats.
The boys were a little impatient with the whole hurry up and wait, you have to be there early to claim your seats during roll call (which you can still be bumped up until the plane takes off if a Cat 1 type emergency passenger shows up) and then you get to go through the normal commercial flying routine. You can check 2 bags (weight limit is 70 lbs/bag), order you in flight meal for a small cost, and get your boarding passes. Then you wait until that same person is done checking everyone in to head to the screening/security area, again think very small airport...all the same TSA rules apply (but they are nice and a bit more flexible IMO). Now you have gone through the golden gate (: you are almost there! We boarded a bus and were taken to the parked plane and loaded up once all the supplies were in place to accommodate passengers. You can see from the above photo that in the type of plane we flew in we sat in sideways in a type of jump seat.
Once we were on they loaded the pallet with all of the checked bags/strollers/carseats. This is a picture of backend of the plane as they were using large flatbed to load our stuff up.
Enjoying our sandwiches, sunchips, bottled water, chocolate bar, apple, and a soda...all for around 5 bucks.
The best part of an almost 6 hour flight on a cargo plane...sleeping. We brought 2 sleeping bags a pillow and of course our favorite stuffies (: They did have blankets (VERY thin ones) and pillows (VERY small ones), but it got a little chilly on the plane towards the end, some were complaining earlier...I didn't mind it at first, thanks to all those years in MN I think.
We also killed time with our MP3 players, DS's and playing some games on the Ipad. The plane is semi loud, some wore earplugs, we didn't...kids didn't say much about it being too loud until they were tired and wanted to sleep. There were also at least a dozen kids on the plane and the boys had a good time socializing and found another boy to play their ds with.
Well that is it for now, time to go have some fun!
Ps I'll add to this post about once you land since it seems relavent.
So since we weren't sure if we would actually make it on any of those flights, remember there were a ton of people waiting to catch a flight, we didn't make any reservations. Well we landed around 110 local time and started calling all the bases/posts around to see if they had a room for us to crash in...no such luck. Then we called all the hotels listed on the sheet they recomend, strike two! Then we just started calling everything local and finally found a room someone had checked out early out of, phew! By this time our checked bags were being unloaded and we called a cab, resigned us up on a flight out and headed to the hotel and crashed for a couple of hours. Overall the boys have been awesome travelers and slept realatively well for all the transitions and time changes.
