Archive > The Amazing Race 16 Spoilers/Speculation

TAR 16 Timeline Thread

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Neobie:
Scroll down to the bolded text for the important bits!

I'm going to respectfully disagree with Apskip's choice of flights on the Episode Thread. I think he's switched up the arrival times of the three flights, and he can't find the 11.10am Austral Airlines flight out of Bariloche. Looking at a different date perhaps?

The first matter of business is to figure out which day the teams left Bariloche. We know the teams checked in the previous leg on the evening of the 2nd, and we have half the pack travelling through Sao Paulo, arriving at 3.40pm in Frankfurt.

The usual scheduled flight from Sao Paulo to Frankfurt leaves at 11.15pm and arrives at 2.00pm, but it is only on the flight departing on the 4th that the flight was delayed, arriving instead at 3.22pm on the 5th. We can therefore confirm that the Hamburg leg took place on the evening of the 5th, and that teams were released from the Bariloche Pit Stop on the evening of the 3rd, after a ~30h Pit Stop.

We had the Sao Paulo and direct flights, but missed out on the Paris flight as it was scheduled to leave earlier and arrive later than the Sao Paulo connection. Here are the flights that the teams took:

All teams, unless first flight is booked out
AR 2681 to Buenos Aires AEP: 1105-1305 (scheduled 1110-1313)
Transfer to Buenos Aires EZE

Jet/Cord, Michael/Louie
AF 417 to Paris: 1846-1127 (scheduled 1800-1100)
AF 1918 to Frankfurt: 1314-1424 (scheduled 1315-1435)
The show has them arriving at 1435.

Carol/Brandy, Daniel/Jordan
LH 511 to Frankfurt: 2213-1500 (scheduled 2150-1500)
The show has them arriving at 1500.

Jordan/Jeff, Brent/Caite, Steve/Allie, Joe/Heidi
JJ 8005, AR 1244, JJ 8011 or G3 7453 to Sao Paulo (3h40 flight)
JJ 8070 to Frankfurt 2315-1522 (scheduled arrival 1400)
The show has them arriving at 1540.

Had the final flight not been delayed, the main pack would have arrived in Frankfurt the earliest, followed 35min later by the Jet/Cord/Michael/Louie flight and an hour later by the Carol/Brandy/Daniel/Jordan flight. Lots of airport drama we missed out on.

The German train website no longer shows timetables for December 2009, having changed their schedule on 13 Dec, but they share the same booking system as the Austrian rail service, which still hosts the old timetables on their website! Here are the trains the teams took:

Jet/Cord, Michael/Louie
ICE 721 to Frankfurt (Main): 1537-1548
ICE 72 to Hamburg: 1558-1934

All other teams
ICE 574 to Hamburg: 1642-2035

The lead pair had a good one hour over the trailing teams arriving at Hamburg. Note that had the Sao Paulo flight not been delayed, they would have made it onto a direct train running 1442-1834, arriving a full hour ahead of Jet/Cord/Michael/Louie and two hours ahead of Carol/Brandy/Daniel/Jordan.

Timetable updated with the Reims leg. No major changes.

Leg Phil Teams Comments Valparaiso 29 Nov 29 Nov First leg Puerto Varas 30 Nov 1 Dec - Bariloche 2 Dec 2 Dec Short leg Hamburg 4 Dec 5 Dec Long leg Verdun 6 Dec 7 Dec Unconfirmed Reims 8 Dec 8 Dec Short leg Seychelles 10 Dec 11 Dec Long leg Penang 13 Dec 14 Dec Long leg Singapore 15 Dec 16 Dec - Shanghai I 17 Dec 18 Dec - Shanghai II 19 Dec 19 Dec Short leg San Francisco 20 Dec 20 Dec Final leg

georgiapeach:
Awesome work Neobie!! Did you see wp's screencap of 12/04 for the EZE flight??

What do you mean by short leg please?? You have that next to Bariloche, but I thought that was an extended Pitstop....

And those dates are arrival dates into the designated cities?

Thanks so much...love this!!

theschnauzers:
I assume "short leg" means a leg of short elapsed time between pit stop release and next pit stop check-in --  like the Dubai II leg last season.

Neobie:
Haha, guess I need to do a little explanation of that table!

This table, which sets up the schedule for both the crew and the teams, allows us to predict the existence of extra legs (for example, the second leg in Shanghai this season), or the location of these legs (for example, that an extra leg in TAR 15 - Cai Be - was geographically close to Ho Chi Minh City).

The dates in the table represent the day on which most tasks take place. For Phil, this is the day he films his stand-ups. For the teams, this is the day they do the bulk of their racing. For example, if teams arrive in Puerto Varas on the night of the 29th but the majority of the challenges take place on the 30th, the table will indicate the 30th.

The schedule of the recent races (I started paying attention in TAR 14) follows a general pattern. Phil arrives one day before the teams, spends the next day checking in the teams, and sets up the next leg on the third day while teams are held back by extended Pit Stops, by transportation schedules or by hours of operation. An example in table form:

Leg Phil Teams Comments Leg 4 1 Jan 2 Jan - Leg 5 3 Jan 4 Jan - Leg 6 5 Jan 6 Jan -
There are several notable exceptions. The first type is what I call short legs. This is when Phil films his stand-ups on the same day the racers are doing the challenges.
TAR 14: Stechelberg to Salzburg, Phuket to Bangkok, Beijing to Beijing
TAR 15: Cai Be to Ho Chi Minh City, Dubai to Dubai, Prague to Prague

I don't dare to present a rationale, but these one thing these legs have in common is the short travel distance. And as TheSchnauzers says, they are often temporally short as well, since flights are often not involved. In TAR 16, this comes in the form of Puerto Varas to Bariloche, Hamburg to France or France to France, and Shanghai to Shanghai. In fact, the legs on which Phil films his stand-ups the same day as the teams are racing are always the shortest legs, distance-wise, in their respective seasons. Short legs, at least since TAR 14, have never been back to back. In table form:

Leg Phil Teams Comments Leg 7 7 Jan 7 Jan Short leg Leg 8 8 Jan 9 Jan -
The second group of exceptions, on contrast, involves long travel legs. Sometimes Phil spends so much time travelling to the next destination he doesn't have enough daylight to work with, and so the entire schedule is pushed back. These legs often involve long multi-leg flights.
TAR 14: Bran to Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk to Jaipur
TAR 15: None, since they stuck to major cities with good airport hubs
TAR 16: Bariloche to Hamburg, France to Seychelles, Seychelles to Penang

Leg Phil Teams Comments Leg 9 10 Jan 11 Jan - Leg 10 13 Jan 14 Jan Long leg Here, Phil flies to his destination on the 12th, while teams travel on the 13th.

The third type of exception involves the premiere and finale legs. Premieres, if flight schedules allow, often involve an overnight rest on the first day, giving Phil some wiggle room to film his stand-ups. For example, the TAR 14 premiere had teams travel to Locarno for an overnight while Phil heads directly to Interlaken for his narration, and the TAR 15 premiere had teams stay over in the magical Green Room, giving Phil some time for filming in Tokyo. This doesn't always apply, especially if the first leg takes place in South America. TAR 9 and TAR 16, in particular, had flight schedules with morning arrivals, meaning Phil has had to hustle to get his filming done. Finales are often single-day affairs. I suppose Phil has all the times to film his stand-ups after wrapping up the race formalities.

Leg Phil Teams Comments Leg 11 15 Jan 16 Jan - Leg 12 17 Jan 17 Jan Final leg
After all that... Piecing together the dates Phil and teams are sighted along the racecourse allows us to fill in the table, allowing us to figure out where the gaps are and how long production has available for legs. Confusing, but it's worked pretty well so far!

theschnauzers:
This recent filming pattern seems to be something they've worked out over the years by trial and error, because TPTB have been able to compress filming down to 21-22 days, even for 12 legs; when in earlier seasons that would often involve an additional week to get 12 legs in the can. But that gap for the Bariloche-Hamburg leg is quite unusual, even for early season because of the limited flight options. (Go back and look at TAR 5 Baruloche departure episode; teams had to get to Buenos Aires that season as well, and it took a series of buses plus flights to get all the teams out of the country.

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