Hi Ian,
Sounds like you've already got a lot of advise from people who have done the trip much more often than we have, but our two cents: we flew out of Cairns to Japan on a Jetstar flight (Qantas surrendered the route to Jetstar a couple of years back), had a couple of days there, and then onto the US. We flew into Detroit, passed customs/immigration there, then hopped from there onto NY (landing at LaGuardia 3 days after the US Airways plane ditched into the Hudson from there). I can't remember who we flew from Japan to the US, it was one of the minor US carriers who don't have an amazingly great rep, but we found them perfectly fine. Coming back was the same, only leaving from San Fran and with just with a 4hr stopover at Narita. At the time, that was the cheapest way we could go, plus it got us a visit to Japan (which was awesome).
It was a long flight though, even leaving from Cairns, it was 8hrs (from memory) to Japan, and then the full haul over to the US (15hrs? 19hrs?). Going over wasn't too bad, but coming home a direct flight would be much nicer - by that stage you just want to be home.
If doing connecting flights, it's worth paying more to get on flights that have agreements with each other for checked baggage. Because we were skint and flying Jetstar, we almost lost our baggage on the way back because Jetstar doesn't pay to have any baggage shuffling arrangements with any other airlines. Meant that when we got to Japan we were *supposed* to hop off the plane, collect our luggage, go through customs, cart luggage to Jetstar desk, check back in, check in luggage again, then go back through passport control and go airside. We asked half a dozen people who advised us differently, so we just stayed airside and went straight to the Jetstar dept gate. Thought we better ask one more time though, and the Jetstar staff confirmed that the above process was what we were meant to do. That said, they were really good and arranged our luggage to be shuffled across for us outside the normal rules, which was much appreciated. But if we hadn't checked that 6th time, we would have been stuffed. It was something that I would have happily paid extra to avoid, especially since we were so exhausted by that stage.
A couple of months after we locked it all in, V Aus launched and my cousin got direct BNE->LAX flights for the following year for half what we paid
. We had thought about holding off and seeing what V Aus would do to the prices, but chickened out and booked in early.
Anyway, that was our experience. Only other thing I'd add is to allow heaps of time at your first port of entry into the states to clear customs and immigration, etc. I think we had 4-5hrs, and that was probably around right. Keep in mind we didn't know what we were doing.
Completely OT, I'm interested to hear what D4D does and Steve did that take you both over there so often? Sounds very exciting to us desk-bound land-lubbers, but I guess, like anything, the shine would wear off after a while and it would just end up being a jolly long commute in a crowded aluminium tube. I'm still going to refer to them both from now on as the official Myswag International Men Of Mystery.
Thanks!
Matto
