Flights Booked!

"We're going to China!"  It's as if that has become my mantra, I say it so often.  I said it when we announced we're adopting. I said it when we got our referrals.  And I said it even with yet more confidence when China issued our Letter of Acceptance and followed with their Travel Approval, giving us the green light to go to China to pick up our children.  But with our tickets now booked, we are definitely going to China!

Figuring out our flights was overall challenging because there are so many factors to consider.  We're flying into Beijing in northern China and back home from Southern China.  I spent way too much time analyzing flights on sites like Expedia and Kayak and surveing my fellow adoptive moms on Facebook.  They advised me on the airlines you'd rather be flying with on a 13-hour flight and those to avoid.  They gave me a head's up about needing a longer connection time in the U.S. than our travel agent who specializes in adoption travel recommended.  When I  finally had zeroed in on flights last week, we couldn't book because we had yet verified our provincial dates.  Meanwhile, the prices for our four tickets crept up by a total of a $1,000.

Deciding on flights to Beijing was easy part of the travel equation.  Even though Korean Airlines and Cathway Pacific were consistently mentioned as the best airlines to fly to China, our location in Minnesota doesn't make either airline practical.  Because we want to take advantage of the perks that come with Chris's frequent flyer status with Delta, we accepted that's really the only option for us. Beyond the airline, my main criteria was to pick a flight that didn't leave too early in the morning so we wouldn't start our 24-hour journey already tired, and one that landed later in the afternoon in Beijing so, if need be, we can go straight to bed once we make it our hotel.   We settled on flying via Seattle with a 2.5-hour layover, getting into Beijing at 8:00 p.m. (China time) the next day.

The last part of any American's adoption trip takes place in Guangzhou in southern China, which is where the American consulate is located.  We can't leave Guangzhou until we have our children's American visas, which aren't ready for pick-up until later in the afternoon.  That means that unless you take one of the few late evening flights available, you need to stay an extra night.  Whether we fly out the day we get our children's visas or the next, there aren't any ideal flights from Guangzhou to Minnesota.  The "best" option would have been to fly to via Los Angeles, have a 6.5-hour layover, get on a red-eye, and land in Minnesota at 6:00 in the morning.  No thanks.

Many families choose to make the two-hour trip from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, stay the night and fly from Hong Kong the next day. I'm not keen on the idea of packing the four of us up to travel to another city (the fourth for the trip) for what will be a stay of not much more than 12 hours.  But there are so many more flight options for us and we're guessing that the cost difference in flights out of Hong Kong compared with Guangzhou will make up for the cost of staying a night in an expensive city like Hong Kong.

Since we unfortunately can't get a direct flight from Hong Kong to Minnesota, we had to take two factors into consideration for our layover: time and where.  It's anyone's guess how long it takes to get through customs with children you've just adopted from another country, even ones who "automatically" become American citizens when they pass through customs stateside.  No matter what point of entry I asked about, the stories about easy or hard it was getting through customs varied.  Some adoptive families had horror stories of surly customs officials and two-hour-plus waits when others spoke of breezing through in 20 minutes. What everyone agreed on, though, is that you should have a layover with a minimum of three hours.

The other consideration was where our layover would be.  Because our children are flying on Chinese passports with U.S. visas, we cannot fly through Canada, the Philippines or Taiwan. (My guess is that they'd need a visa for these countries.)  Korea and Japan, for whatever reason, are okay.  There are no direct flights from Seoul to Minneapolis and the one flight from Tokyo directly to Minneapolis was almost $4,000!  That's too bad because it would have been really nice to have our kids become American citizens by landing in our home state.

Instead, they will become Americans in Seattle.  We will have a four-and-a-half layover before taking our second flight home to Minnesota, where we're scheduled to arrive just after dinner.  No matter how dirty or tired I am, what I look forward to most is reuniting with the other half of our family.  I predict by that point I'll be a crying mess.