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Comparing travel times to get to Spain

Arctic_Alex

Veteran Member
Time of past OR future Camino
CF 2019
CPrim 2023
[Moderator note: 7 posts have been moved from another thread]

Saint Mike II said:
(...) and given that from Oz its a full day each way flying (...)
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Not that bad! I live at the northern Edge of Europe and getting to most places in Spain will take me considerably more than a full day ;-)
 
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Hola - @Arctic_Alex tic but I don't understand your reasoning. Care to provide some advice. For me its a 13+ hour flight Syd to Dubai, 3-4 hr layover and then 5+ hours to Madrid. Works out at around 24 hrs. Coming home its LHR (London Heathrow) to Dubai around 8-10 hrs again a 3 hour layover and then another 13+ hours to Sydney. Having made the the SYD_DXB flight more than 20 times I can tell you that regardless of class of travel there is no real effective way to overcome the jet lag. Thanks for your feedback.
 
Oh, I am (and was) not questioning that you spend way more time on planes than I and that you have to fight a jet-lag which I have not when traveling within Europe. But some people like me do live quite remote and not really close to any motorway or even a paved road. While the next small airport is less than 300 km away, in order to get a morning flight, I need to travel with a huge safety margin as snow conditions or weather in general might cost some extra hours even though we are just talking about around 300 km. Roads might not be cleared at night so most of the time I need to start traveling the day before my flight, sleep over at the airport and get a morning flight to Stockholm. From there, it usually takes till late evening or night to my destination in Spain .... overall travel time 30hrs plus. Usually it takes 3 different flights from 2 companies. An alternative to this is to take the night train to Stockholm and skip the first of the three flights but this makes no real difference.
I could take a mid day or afternoon flight to Stockholm, but then I usually have to sleep over in Stockholm. So this also has no real advantage.
Certain times of the year it is worse, as then there is the risk that the first 40 k of gravel/mud track are impassable for a day or two. But this is usually predictable in time to arrange some advance transport.
I have to admit my situation is a bit special but in Europe some people like myself are not well connected to air traffic.
 
Get a Spanish mobil number + data while on the Camino
Get a spanish phone number with Airalo. eSim, so no physical SIM card. Easy to use app to add more funds if needed.
Blister Bill said:
Not quite to back to back 13/14 hour flights I suspect
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No, as stated in a later reply, it is not total flight time, but time to get to the first airport and from there to get to a major hub to connected to the world/Europe. That usually includes sleeping over one night at an airport or in a sleeper train.
 
In that case double it....and no train options !!
 
Get a Spanish mobil number + data while on the Camino
Get a spanish phone number with Airalo. eSim, so no physical SIM card. Easy to use app to add more funds if needed.

5 hours from home to Sydney. Overnight in Sydney, flight to Europe. Flight time varies depending on destination and how many changes - usually one but sometimes two, then journey to start of Camino. It generally takes around two days to start of Camino and two days return.
 
@Arctic_Alex, I feel for you. Any journey that requires a large number of connexions and has several different modes of travel is always going to be fraught with uncertainty. I know that just trying to get to Oslo last year from Perth took me just over 46 hours, but quite a lot of that was in transit at airports (about 19 hours between flights). So only the end points had modal changes that were points where one could get delayed waiting for a train or a bus. The start wasn't too bad, as I had been staying with my daughter perhaps 15 min from the airport, so I didn't have the issues that @Lindsay53 would have getting to an international hub. But between Qantas and British Airways, I had over 13 hours to kill in London, and I wasn't booked through as a transit, so I had to collect and re-check my bags. I quickly figured I could get across to Rochester, where my son works, and have lunch with him in the time I had available. That was a far better use of my time than sitting around Terminal 3 twiddling my thumbs!
 
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2nd ed.
Anyway, thanks to the moderator who moved this to a separate thread! I felt a bit guilty for derailing the original thread by starting this topic
 
Exactly ... in the end it is not the total flight time that decides. If you live in Tokyo it takes less time to get to London than it takes for me, living in Europe, but not at any hub and without any direct connections.
 
Let us pick up your suitcase once you arrive in Europe....
...and ship it to Santiago for storage. You pick it up once in Santiago. Service offered by Casa Ivar (we use DHL for transportation).
Blister Bill said:
Sorry I'm lost. Decides what ?
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I think its a reference to the total travel time. By the time you get to the airport three hours before departure time and then have some transit time along the way, a wait for checked baggage to arrive and then perhaps have to clear customs/quarantine, something that might only have 20 or so hours of flight time quickly spins out into 30 plus hours of travel from doorstep to doorstep.
 
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