traveldiary.stracke.us

We just cruised the skies non-stop for an entire night and entire day, aboard Air Canada AC 88, a Boeing 777-200LR, without refueling. We left Shanghai on August 27 at “sunset” and flew for 12:40 hours, going east against the travel of the Sun, and landed in Toronto at 19:45, still the same day, August 27!
This time, there was a real sunset. In Shanghai, all we saw was a dirty haze in the “air” and dusk at 5 PM. I was prepared to use our duckbill face masks in the Pudong Shanghai International Airport, but nobody around us was coughing or sneezing. We had to go through immigration, in order to check in our bags. We were a little worried that we would end up stranded here in the Terminal, like Tom Hanks in the movie.
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Cruising 10,972 m above the world, I look out my window and see offshore islands near Vietnam below. The temperature is -45 degrees C and we are cruising with a speed of 870 km/hr over the South China Sea on route to Shanghai, where we will need to, not only change planes, but actually have to go through immigration in order to claim and recheck our bags for our continuing flight to Canada. China does not allow baggage to be checked through, even though we will not touch Chinese soil, except within the airport terminal.

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