My 2025 A to Z theme is Airports, Airstrips, Aircraft, and Airlines I’ve known and flown with. I’ll be using IATA codes where they’re available. My inner travel agent emerges at this point as I’m the FTO (family travel organiser) and now, the online travel agent.
LOS Losuia Airport, Trobriand Islands, Milne Bay District, Papua New Guinea
In my first year living in Papua New Guinea I had two opportunities to visit Losuia on Kiriwina Island. As I had studied Anthropology subjects at uni, I was keen to see this part of the Trobriand Islands where Margaret Mead had undertaken extensive anthropological research. It was also an opportunity to maybe purchase a carving or two. It was only a short day trip with an hour or two on the ground at Losuia but it was fun.
Less fun was my next experience of flying into Losuia. This was the same trip where I’d travelled with my husband to Guasopa. On the return leg to Losuia, we woke from our nap to see the civilian in the co-pilot’s seat with maps spread wide. The sky had closed in to be fully clouded and there was some confusion about exactly where we were in relation to the airstrip, not to mention the hill between us and the airport. We landed safely with five minutes fuel left in the tank. Something of a relief, and arriving late afternoon we ended up with an unexpected overnight at one of the lodges there.
LAE Lae Airport, Lae, Morobe District, Papua New Guinea
I only flew into Lae once, in 1975 (?), with some friends. From memory we only had a day there and it was all quite uneventful – far less so than driving the corrugated “roads” of the Highlands Highway from Goroka over Kassam Pass.
LGW London Gatwick Airport, London, United Kingdom
Back in 1989, the travel agent my mother was using had booked us into London via Gatwick. What I remember is the hassle of getting three of us to the above-ground train and being the luggage carrier. It was a tedious end to a long-haul flight from Hong Kong.
LHR London Heathrow, London, United Kingdom
Admittedly, times have changed since the Gatwick experience, but while Heathrow poses its own issues in terms of size, it is closer to the city and has good, easy links to the Underground. I was quite pleased a few years ago to navigate myself solo from the Royal Victoria Dock area to Heathrow without any dramas. Overall, I prefer to avoid Heathrow if I can make a direct connection from Dubai to the main location of my trip.
LAX Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, USA
Some airports stick in your mind for the worst reasons. In 1989, after a long and not especially successful holiday, my young daughter and I were due to return to Australia from LAX. I’d been confirming my flights regularly as one was required to do in those days. On departure day, a friend’s husband had dropped us at LAX many hours in advance of our flight with Air New Zealand (NZ). The notice boards were out of action, and I eventually registered that I could no longer hear any Aussie accents around me. Returning to the check-in desk (remember those?), I could see our suitcases behind the counter. Apologising, kind of, the staff member said there was no capacity for us on the plane, however, they would offer us business class the next day and accommodation at a Disneyland hotel. To this day, I’m convinced they decided a single woman with a child would leap at the chance. Well, not this woman, and not her stressed child. I remained assertive and polite as they told me they’d have to take someone else off the flight…not my problem, ma’am, just sort it. And so it was that another family came out of economy having been promised the same offering on the next day – they were quite happy. Bizarrely, we were still allocated to Business Class, in the bubble – the only time I’ve flown business long-haul, though the benefits were largely lost on this stressed mother. I have flown through LAX once since then, to go to RootsTech in Salt Lake City, but I haven’t flown Air New Zealand since.
LIS Lisbon airport, formally Humberto Delgado Airport, Lisbon, Portugal
We had planned Lisbon as a long-weekend break from Dublin, as we’d never visited before. It was so exciting to catch the airport bus with just one carry-on rather than our long-trip luggage. It was less exciting when we arrived at Lisbon to discover no luggage, though there was another purple bag doing the rounds of the carousel. Eventually, we had to throw ourselves on the mercies of the Lost Luggage people and I thanked the man profusely for speaking to us in English. Meanwhile calls to the AirBnB owner who waited for us although by then it was late at night. It turned out that this inept person had picked up the wrong purple bag from beside our other luggage in the hotel locker room. After much phone-calling etc, ours was located back in the Dublin hotel where we collected it on return and the airline re-routed the other woman’s luggage to her in England. Very embarrassing! And now I have even more ribbons and tags on my luggage.
Have you ever been off-loaded from flight? How did that turn out? Have you ever made a stupid mistake with luggage like I did?
Family history across the seas 
we have lost luggage several times but never because someone took ours. However I was reminded when you mentioned Heathrow London of my first time there in 1998. We were directed to a sign marked “Aliens” for processing and were treated with a marked lack of respect. I could certainly empathise with people who are treated that way all the time. I think that sign was no longer in use on my second visit in 2004.
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Our daughter had hers taken by mistake when relocating to the NT for her first job…you can imagine. So far, so good for us in terms of lost luggage. The one I’d taken looked just like mine, and had been placed beside our other luggage. I’d guess she was in Dublin for a hen’s weekend and everything was tossed in.Not like mine 🙂
you’ve reminded me too of arriving at LHR in Sept just as all the international students were arriving for the academic year. The queue for non-EU was ridiculous. I had an Irish passport but no use when himself was in the slow queue. I can’t remember being treated poorly by the staff though as you were. So much for the Commonwealth!
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At last here are multiple airports here that I’ve been to – LAX LHR LGW. My lost luggage story is that it was lost when I flew home from Madrid after walking the Camino. I was very stressed as my father had died and I had had to bring my flight forward a couple of days and make this arrangements over the phone with a spanish speaker. Fortunately the put me through to their London office and it was easy from then. At the airport, I decided to get my pack with all it’s dangly bits on it, wrapped in plastic. That is the only time I have ever done that and the only time my luggage hasn’t turned up. At Tullamarine there was nothing for it but to burst into tears, as it was the last straw. The luggage was delivered to me in Bendigo the next day which impressed me.
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Oh Jennifer, that would have been horribly stressful when you were already shocked and sad. Being able to speak in English would have been a great help. I’m so pleased the luggage did turn up though. I’m impressed you’ve walked the Camino.
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I have been through the LAX airport in the summer of 1968 when going to a student conference in Santa Barbara. They picked us up at the airport and drove us out, I think. No memories of the airport.
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That’s the best way to deal with LAX – get picked up.
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It appears that in PNG you used light planes instead of cars because of few or poor roads. Your airport list from there is impressive.
I have been through the gateway ports (for Australians) of LAX and LHR many times and LGW a couple. Last year through Heathrow a shop in Southampton hadn’t given me the correct receipt for goods purchased so I wasn’t able to get a tax refund. My bargain wasn’t such a bargain after all
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How annoying about the tax receipt and losing the bargain element. Hard to predict.
Yes, there were roads/streets in towns but really only one road connecting towns, the Highlands Highway which was a challenge in a variety of ways. So planes it was, and we had family to visit as well.
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Happy Dance – I’ve done LCY, London City Airport along with Heathrow and Gadwick. As for lost bags our best story is the time that a crowd of people are trying to talk to the lost bag people in Melbourne. Stephen is waiting at the back for his turn. The man at the counter stands up on his toes and calls out “Mr Reade, we call you when we find your bags”. He had lost so many in a run of flights that the guy could remember him.
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I had to laugh, ironically, at the lost property people knowing Stephen.
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When I was an IT consultant, I had a home office due to the amount of US travel but the main office was in Thousand Oaks, CA. Thus, several times a year I flew from Rochester, NY to LA, then drove up to Thousand Oaks. Not a fun trip due to traffic!
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I had to look up Thousand Oaks and while Google says it’s 50 mins I can imagine it was/is often much slower and annoying with traffic.
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I’ve been to London Gatwick airport which was where we departed to Dublin. It has easy access to rail service which we used to get to and from the airport to the city.
Trips to London would be via landing at Heathrow and I believe the last time I was there, the terminal I travelled from wasn’t refurbished yet so everthing felt old. My last trip there, my mother and I was on standby because we were travelling on staff tickets (my dad was a pilot) but the dates we were travelling on had too many folks holding staff tickets for travel. So we didn’t get on our scheduled flight and spent the night at the airport, getting on the next available flight back to Malaysia.
LAX was an airport I was used to because my dad would bring some of us kids “to work” with him. But that was ages ago and all I remember now about LAX was that it was utter chaos.
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Having a parent who’s a pilot seems like fun but could make seeing them erratic. That’s the problem with staff fares isn’t it. I hope you got to go to Disneyland when you travelled “for work” with your dad.
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Yes, all us kids got to take turns to follow our dad for work and a trip to LA always meant a trip to Disneyland or Universal Studios LOL
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