We knew we wanted to fly to Hawaii around the 22nd, but we didn't know whether #1- there would be a flight, or #2 if there'd be enough seats. Why? Because flight schedules are posted just 72 hours (or less) in advance, and then you don't know how many seats are available until even later, there might be seventy, or just seven.
See another thing is that you must compete for a flight. As a retiree, we can sign up to fly 60 days before we compete. You must sign up at each base that you want to fly out of. When a flight comes up that you would like to take, you show up at the terminal for roll call, packed and ready to fly. That means you must check out of your hotel, return the rental car etc, even though you don't know if you will actually be flying! Oh and by the way, roll call generally tends to be very early morning, or even the middle of the night! About an hour before roll call, you arrive and mark yourself present to compete. At roll call, they will call out who made the list based initially on category and then on the date that you first signed up. Retirees are the lowest category, VI. If there are only 4 seats left and another retiree signed up an hour before us, they will get the seats.
If your name is called, you've made the flight. Now you wait around for boarding, which can be 30 minutes or a couple hours away. They'll scan your luggage before checking it and scan you and your carry on bags before boarding. These processes are similar to commercial flying, with one interesting exception, you'll need to give your body weight to the agent at check in. Once you've cleared security, you sit in another waiting area until boarding a bus that drives you across the flightline to your plane. Depending on your type of aircraft, this is where you'll want to put on ear protection (which they provide) and leave it on until you arrive at the destination terminal. That's another thing, you could be flying on all different types of planes. Most are military planes, C5, C17 or even the occasional commercial 757. Some have permanent seats while others have jumpseats arranged sideways. We flew mostly on C5s. After exiting the bus, we climbed an open stairway up to the plane. The only windows were two tiny portholes on the exit aisle. I didn't think the no-windows thing would be an issue, but for the first half hour all I heard was, "Mommy, are we flying? How about now? Now? Now??". We hadn't moved. At all. I assured them they will feel when we move and certainly when we take off. And then it happened and it was a bit unnerving to see the airplane was tilted downward instead of up. I frantically tapped my husband who was sitting in front of us and asked what was going on. "Didn't you notice we're facing the tail?" Ohhh, no, I didn't realize that! Whew!
So we arrived in Hawaii on the first flight that we competed for. It was 2am when we finally reached our cabin, but hey, that wasn't so bad! After a week in Hawaii we started watching for flights to Japan. A few days later one came up. Unfortunately roll call was at 2am, which meant we had to throw the kids in the rental car just after midnight to compete. As we were being bussed to the plane, I thought, "well, this has just gone so smoothly" and an hour later, they were UNloading us from the plane due to mechanical issues. No! We waited hours in the terminal's family room, a blessing for those with small children. My kids enjoyed playing with two other children and when the announcement finally came at noon that we wouldn't be flying out anytime soon, the other family invited us to come wait it out at their house near the beach. A super kind offer as it would have been expensive for us to get a new hotel room. We checked the terminal's page constantly, and there was never any messages about our flight. We had to keep calling for updates because our flight kept showing up then disappearing from the 72hr schedule. Three days later, the plane was ready to fly. We had enjoyed spending time with our new amazing friends and had to admit, getting "stuck" in Hawaii was probably more fun than if we had made our flight. Roll call was around 11pm. We had trouble keeping our now "litter" of five children (age 5 and under) awake until settling onto the plane, but the 7 hour flight was perfect for them to sleep and wake up on the other side of the planet already adjusted to the 17hr time difference! It couldn't have gone any smoother.
When it was time to start heading back to Travis (California), we realized we'd have better chances from Kadena (Okinawa) than Yokota (Tokyo), so we hopped to Kadena which first stopped in Iwakuni (Hiroshima). Catching this flight was a miracle. Roll call was originally 1145. As we checked out of our hotel I checked the schedule again to see that it was bumped back to 1730. No problem, we had the hotel hold our bags and we went to explore and eat at our favorite sushi go round. Just before arriving at lunch, I checked and saw roll call was moved back up to 1530, uhoh. Now we have to eat quickly and hustle back to the hotel for our bags. During lunch I checked again and they completely removed the flight from the schedule! What does that mean?! We didn't have the ability to call from our US phones so we checked the board at the hotel. 1430, great we have 5 minutes to collect our bags, take a shuttle and mark present at roll call. I insisted we go anyway. Upon arrival, the agents said there were plenty of seats and since they had changed roll call so many times that day, they made an exception and let us on. Whew! Thank goodness!
The night we arrived in Kadena, the 72 hour schedule was updated to reveal an upcoming flight to Travis with 70 seats. Perfect. But wait, the flight was going to Guam, then Hawaii, then Travis. Oh well, we had a deadline, and this would get us there, so no time to wait for a direct flight. In the end, it took 41 hours from the time we arrived at roll call until we landed at Travis. There were two layovers, one was 17 hours, and we spent about 18 hours flying. It was rough, especially with two 5 year olds, but they did well and hey, they made friends each time we sat in the terminal for any amount of time. After meeting these kids on our Guam layover, they decided to sit together for the 8 hour flight to Hawaii. EIGHT hours! I sat with their parents and enjoyed some adult conversation until we all started to get sleepy. Then Journey and the mommy switched seats and Journey spent the rest of the flight sleeping on me with her legs across the other daddy. HA! He was so good about it when I woke up the first time and found her legs were on his shoulder.
I also have to mention that flying Space A kind of feels like you're with friends that you just haven't quite met yet. If a mom is traveling alone with three children, it's normal for someone to step up and carry her bags or offer assistance somehow. I pushed strollers for people a couple times this trip. When we had a 17 hour layover, two moms (who had just met on the last plane) took turns watching each others' children while the other took a shower in peace. It's really nice to see our military family being just that, a family.
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