Topic: TAR 29 Transportation

[Neobie]

Yep, Marionete, looks like Jessie/Francesca would have had a much better chance at beating Sara/Shamir if they weren't delayed!

I have no idea which pair of flights Brooke/Scott were debating. Here are the scheduled arrivals at Hanoi on 27 Jun 2016 (have excluded smaller airports and low-cost carriers):
0550: VN36 from Frankfurt
0620: VN18 from Paris
0755: VN224 from Ho Chi Minh City
0805: BL790/VN4238 from Ho Chi Minh City
0815: VN54 from London
0835: BL782/VN4232 from Ho Chi Minh City
0850: VN226 from Ho Chi Minh City
0920: VN7230 from Ho Chi Minh City
0925: VN579 from Taipei
0935: KA297/CX5297 from Hong Kong
0935: TG560 from Bangkok
1035: CI791 from Taipei
1040: VN234 from Ho Chi Minh City
1045: CZ3049 from Guangzhou
But there isn't a single pair of plausible routes that are 1h15 apart.

However, it's possible to figure out which flight teams actually took. Teams arrived at the international terminal in Hanoi, which rules out a connection via Ho Chi Minh City. Importantly, we see teams checking in at a Skyteam counter in Athens.

There's a long list of Skyteam airlines that fly into Athens (Aeroflot, Air Europa, Air France, Alitalia, Delta, KLM, Korean Air, Middle East Airlines, TAROM), but if you combine it with the flight arrival list above, you're left with one possibility:
AF1033 from Athens to Paris, 26 Jun 0624-0845 (scheduled 0630-0900)
VN18 from Paris to Hanoi, 26 Jun 1455-0734 (scheduled 1400-0620)

[Neobie]

I was wondering about that shot of Thai Airways landing as teams arrived in Hanoi. While it doesn't necessarily mean that teams arrived on Thai, production has frequently been nice to show us footage of the right airline.

If one-stop options were not available, teams might have ended up on this:
26 Jun
AZ717 from Athens to Rome 0555-0700
TG945 from Rome to Bangkok 1355-0545
27 Jun
TG560 from Bangkok to Hanoi 0745-0935 (actual arrival 0959)

And an option that would have got Brooke/Scott into Hanoi (roughly) 1h15 ahead would have been:
26 Jun
AF1033 from Athens to Paris 0630-0900
AF1580 from Paris to London 1010-1030
VN54 from London to Hanoi 1445-0815

Do we know what time teams were sighted at the fan dancing in Hanoi? The Bangkok flight might have arrived too late for the sighting.

[Zack.]

Fan dancing was around 0900 I believe?

Just from how Brooke/Scott were arguing I'm assuming the flight they vetoed had two stops as opposed to a single stop. I'm inclined to believe AF1033/VN18 as what everyone took though I have to wonder how they missed out on VN36; teams were free to find their own flights and had ~12 hours to figure things out.

[Marionete]

Maybe VN36 was full, we don't know that, do we?
Also, I might be missing/forgetting something, but Brooke & Scott didn't necessarily consider an alternate flight with an additional stop. They were just worried about possible delays, as then they would be the only team falling behind, as opposed to staying with the whole group. That's how I saw it.

[cbacbacba1]

Maybe VN36 was full, we don't know that, do we?
Also, I might be missing/forgetting something, but Brooke & Scott didn't necessarily consider an alternate flight with an additional stop. They were just worried about possible delays, as then they would be the only team falling behind, as opposed to staying with the whole group. That's how I saw it.

Scott mentioned the alternate option has two stops instead of one in an insider video

[Neobie]

Hmm I watched the Insider video again but I didn't hear them mentioning how many stops there were.

Looked at the timeline in closer detail, I'm now leaning towards the Athens-Rome-Bangkok-Hanoi routing.

Can no longer find Paul Frederiksen's original tweet, but Plaidmoon's post was posted at 12:43am board time, or 12:43pm Hanoi time. "2 hours ago" means Paul posted the picture of London/Logan with the fan dancers at 10:58am, taking into account Twitter's rounding mechanism. (Plaidmoon, do you live in the Pacific Time Zone?)

According to Google, it's 9min by taxi from Ly Thai To Garden to Quan Su Temple, 16min on foot to the ladder pick-up, 10min to the birdcage, 10min back, and 12min by taxi to Thong Nhat Park. Add 30min for getting lost and figuring out the ladder, and we're at 1h30 between the fan dancers and the Pit Stop.

Adding 1h30 to 10:58am fits perfectly with Paradoxinee and Emily's account, which puts the first few check-ins at around 12:30pm. Emily's photo of Becca/Floyd and Matt/Redmond checking in was posted at 12:28pm.

To further corroborate these timings, Brina2222's photo shows London/Logan's ladder still waiting at 12:04pm.

The weather also fits. We see puddles on the ground, but no rain except for a quick shot of a windscreen wiper in the taxi from the airport. There were thunderstorms in the morning stopping at 9:30am, and a short bout of light rain at 11:30am. If teams were racing before 9:30am they would have been drenched in rain rather than sweat!

Working backwards, teams left the airport at around 10:13am for a 45min journey downtown. That fits better with a 9:59am Thai Airways arrival from Bangkok than a 7:34am Vietnam Airways arrival from Paris. Granted, the taxis would have had to speed a bit considering the time needed for customs and immigration.

This would also give us Brooke/Scott's potential Athens-X-London-Hanoi itinerary, scheduled to arrive 1h20 earlier. By contrast, there is no flight arriving 1h15 before the Athens-Paris-Hanoi 6:20am arrival; the first flight into Hanoi that morning only arrives at 5:50am.

So even if we disregard the shot of the Thai Airways flight landing, it's pretty darn likely teams took that flight in, on a Athens-Rome-Bangkok-Hanoi routing! (The earlier flights would have been booked out.)

[Zack.]

As I said: I give up 

That said that seems like the best bet; beyond the overwhelming evidence, Phil checks L&L in at what I'm guessing is about 1:20pm; going from the departure times of the following leg, Becca & Floyd and Matt & Red would arrive around 1:00pm (I'm not about to figure out where 30 minutes went; unaired penalty, production issue, Emily posting retroactively, etc.).

My main hesitation was more of how production runs the race now; usually in these long haul Europe-Asia flights there's a fairly simple itinerary to prevent anyone from pulling a Uchenna & Joyce and ending up 12 hours behind, but I guess if they're all sold out then that doesn't factor in.

[naejae91]

The only way to know the exact Athens-Hanoi flight was asking Brooke on her Reddit AMA around 6pm ET today.