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The Most Bizarre Routing You've Travelled


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#1
kingoftheskies

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Share some of your most bizarre, unusual, complicated routings you've ever travelled from A to B. It could be a backtrack, itinerary with multiple stops, etc.

 

Here's my experience, it's not a long distance between the two cities, but it's a hell lot of travelling.

 

Back in June, a cousin of mine held a beach wedding in Penang, Malaysia. (How cliche -_- ) To get from Singapore to Penang, I could either drive, take the train or fly.

 

Driving

Driving wasn't ideal, as the journey would take at least 8 hours, and this does not include the ferry trip from the mainland (aka Butterworth) to the island. I could also drive directly to the island, skipping the ferry trip, but the bridge which connects Penang and Peninsular Malaysia has a reputation for traffic jams.  Long road trips is also not my thing. Thus, driving is out.

 

Train

Next option, the train. Now, taking the train is not as easy as it sounds. Malaysia's train system is NO China's or Europe's High Speed Train system. The train from Singapore to Penang is not direct. When I mean not direct, I do not mean services with stops, what I meant was I have to take 3 separate trains in order to get to Penang, bringing the journey time to over 10 hours, not ideal.

 

Flying

Lastly, my family decided on flying. There are 4 airlines flying nonstop between Singapore and Penang. I was searching for tickets 2 weeks in advance. Silkair, as usual, was offering a costly amount of SGD200 return trip per person. Tigerair, a low-cost airline, was offering somewhere around SGD150 base fare, and that was only one way.  >_>  (SIA what r u doing wif ur airlines) Jetstar has SGD140 base fares return, and AirAsia was $20 cheaper at SGD120.

 

However, I did some deep researching and found a unusual routing which was around SGD75 round trip (including additional ground transportation). Note that the flights are not under the same itinerary.

 

First, we took a taxi to Senai Airport in Johor Bahru, a city at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia, about an hour drive from Singapore.

 

We took a FireFly (a full-service subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines) flight to Subang (SZB), a secondary airport in Kuala Lumpur, for only RM40 per person (one-way). (A steal imo)

 

We had another flight booked on Malindo Air (for those of you who don't know, it's a full-service carrier) from KLIA (KUL) to Penang, which was RM80 per person (return). We had to transfer airports in Kuala Lumpur on the outbound trip, with 3 hours in between. The journey between Subang and KLIA took around 1.5 hours (depending on traffic). We took a coach service which costs us RM10 per person. Fortunately, we arrived at KLIA on time for check-in for our Malindo Air flight (thank god, if we did not we had to pay for us to get rebooked since these two flights are on different tickets, it's a good thing they moved from the overbudget "low-cost" :eyebrow: klia2 terminal to the KLIA Main Terminal). 

 

Fare for outbound trip per person : RM40 + (RM80/2 since it was a return fare) + (RM36/4 for taxi to JHB) + RM10 (Subang to KLIA coach) = RM99 or SGD32

 

Total travel time outbound : 1 hour taxi + 45 minutes at JHB + 45 minutes flight + 3 hour layover + 45 minutes at KLIA + 1 hour flight = around 7 hours (difference between driving not that much :/ )

 

On the way back from Penang, we flew to KLIA on Malindo Air (since it was a return ticket) and had to self-connect ourselves (again, but this time at the same airport) to a Malaysia Airlines flight back to Singapore. We had a 2 hour layover (which is alright for an international layover). As usual, we made it on time for check-in and breezed through immigration queues with my Malaysian passport  ;) . The Malaysia Airlines flight costs us RM90 per person, which we think is worth it, since we're arriving into Changi Airport, aka the best airport in the world.  :thumbup: (and costly taxes and service fees)

 

Fare for inbound trip per person : (RM80/2 + RM90) = RM130 or SGD43

 

Total travel time inbound : 45 minutes at PEN + 1 hour flight + 2 hours layover at KLIA + 1 hour flight = around 5 hours (somewhat huge difference between driving)

 

Total fare per person : RM230 or SGD75

 

Is the SGD45 difference worth this trouble? In my opinion, yes, since I get to travel on 3 different airlines and visit 4 different airports.

 

Sorry for this long post. :sleep: I would love to read your bizarre routing experiences.


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#2
Alfrenzo

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Malaysian passport? So you're a Singaporean PR?


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#3
Andy-J

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Yep. That is bizzare. :) 

The moist crazy thing I've ever done was RAP(drive)DEN-DFW-CLT. Mostly fly nonstops these days :D


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#4
Yoshi

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Finally, something I can comment on.

I'm a son of a Delta flight attendant, so our family has travel benefits on the airline.  The only issue is that the flying is on standby, so we can only fly if there are seats available.

Last June, our family flew from Las Vegas up to Seattle in hopes of taking Delta's SEA-HKG flight.  SeaTac Airport was pretty nice, and I enjoyed some tasty fish and chips there.  After a five or six hour layover, we found out that the Hong Kong flight was "payload optimized", which means that, while there are seats, the plane would be too heavy otherwise to fly.  Only a few standbys got on.  We then had to fly from Seattle down to LAX so that we could fly Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong instead on a discounted ticket.

Here's my video trip report on it.


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--Yoshi


#5
kingoftheskies

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    I breathe SQ but not their fares :/

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Malaysian passport? So you're a Singaporean PR?

 

Yeah, so I kinda have immigration benefits on both sides.


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#6
Alfrenzo

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Yeah, so I kinda have immigration benefits on both sides.

 

I presume second-generation PR then.

 

You should hope for the best you don't get lucky with the Malaysian Government. Else, it's National Service on both sides. :)


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#7
tupolev204

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This year I flew from Bogota to Amsterdam on Turkish Airlines, the whole flight took about 19 hours:

Bogota - Panama City - Istanbul Ataturk - Amsterdam.  There is also a direct flight which takes about 10 hours but it was $300 more expensive..

it is still a mystery to me how it was possible to fly MORE miles but pay LESS money.



#8
kingoftheskies

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    I breathe SQ but not their fares :/

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This year I flew from Bogota to Amsterdam on Turkish Airlines, the whole flight took about 19 hours:

Bogota - Panama City - Istanbul Ataturk - Amsterdam.  There is also a direct flight which takes about 10 hours but it was $300 more expensive..

it is still a mystery to me how it was possible to fly MORE miles but pay LESS money.

 

Yeah that bugs me.

 

My friend flew China Eastern from Singapore to Auckland via Shanghai as it was $400 cheaper than the nonstop option with SQ.  -_-


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#9
NNR

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(not me, but a friend of mine)

 

A friend of mine, he lives in New York, he wanted to get a super last minute flight to Amsterdam (like within 4 days of flying). All the flights at the time were very expensive, and the cheapest he found was with American to Tokyo, then KLM onto Amsterdam. So he ended up flying LAX-AMS-NRT one leg, and just straight AMS-LAX on the way back.


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#10
bAnderson

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I found a flight online once (I search routes for fun sometimes) on United. Buffalo to ORD on a CRJ-200, ORD to IAH on a 752, IAH to EWR on a 738, and EWR to Saint Martin on a 738. Never understood the whole thing, United goes BUF-EWR daily....

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#11
cbw624

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To come to my wedding in SLC my brother-in-law flew from the Tri-Cities in Washington (PSC) to SEA, back across the state to Spokane (GEG) and then down to SLC. Three airports in one state! Also, Delta flies nonstop from PSC to SLC at least once a day. 'Tis the price we pay for being cheapskates :)



#12
LJ Aviation

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Harbin to LAX

The cheapest fare was to trans via Guangzhou w/China Southern. So first A321 Harbin to Guangzhou, then A380 Guangzhou to LAX.


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#13
Pom_tree2

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Not that I have, or ever would fly this, but I always find seeing this come up very amusing:

https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=ANC;t=FAI;d=2017-01-26;r=2017-01-29;tt=o;sel=ANCCDV0AS66-CDVYAK0AS66-YAKJNU0AS66-JNUPSG1AS64-PSGWRG1AS64-WRGKTN1AS64-KTNSEA1AS64-SEAFAI2AS123;so=c;eo=e


#14
Mobeer

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London Heathrow to Amsterdam to Boston - far cheaper than anything direct, but very frustrating to be flying back over London about 4 hours after leaving London






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