Aeromoe's 2018 Round-the-World Journey
Leg 1: PHX-SFO

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My trip covered by the next seven flights has been nearly a year in the making. My desire to do some birding and bird photography in Thailand was primarily driven by the desire to see the critically engangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper. "Spoonies" breed in the high Russian tundra in eastern Siberia in summer and migrate to Southeast Asia for the winter. There are some well-known locations to observe spoonies, one of them being some salt pans southwest of Bangkok, Thailand. Thailand is well known for its outstanding birding so it was only natural to select Thailand for a birding adventure.

In March 2017, I mentioned this to my birding buddy Louis who in turn asked his father-in-law Mike if he'd like to do a trip to Thailand in early 2018. This timeframe was selected based on eBird reports of spoonies being regularly reported. Mike took the ball and ran with it, setting up their itinerary which included a tour around the Bangkok area for several days, followed by a personally-guided tour with Nick Upton of thaibirding.com

I forecasted some time off for February 2018 and built an itinerary around joining them in Bangkok the day before our guided tour followed by a couple of days at the Bangkok airport for plane watching and photography. To this end, I chose Singapore Airlines and booked a westbound itinerary that would take me around the world in the Northern Hemisphere while adding a round-trip to Bangkok from Singapore.

Like my first trip on Singapore Airlines in November 2016, I chose to arrive SFO a day early to minimize risk I'd miss the 10am departure for Singapore on the Monday morning. Travelling with only my carry-on rollerbag and camera bag, I avoided the need to check baggage. I rented a car at PHX on the Saturday to help my daughter pick up a new puppy from Tucson and this car provided me with transportation to PHX on Sunday morning so I wouldn't have to leave a vehicle parked at the airport for nearly two weeks.

Everything worked out as planned and I arrived early enough Sunday morning to drop the rental and get the bus to terminal 2 for my 630am United departure to SFO.

Below is my photo of N76519 at PHX prior to my flight to SFO:



Here is a photo of N76519 at SFO after my flight from PHX:



Below is the Flight Radar 24 screenshot of my flight from PHX to SFO:



Below is the Flight Aware screenshot of my flight from PHX to SFO:

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