Our flight home was departing from Chubu Centrair International Airport at 10:20AM today on Christmas. And over the last few days, we received the usual email reminders from Singapore Air nudging us to do online pre-departure check-in. We dutifully did so, and made the assumption that the further-on check-in process at arrival at the airport would be quick – like it was at Changi Airport on two weeks ago. Well, more on that later!
Our transfer from the Nagoya Hotel to the airport was uneventful. Thankfully, the downpour of snow on Day 14 was absent today, and most of the snow had melted – which meant it was easy for us to pull our two large luggage cases along the road pavements, albeit in the chilly cold still. We’d earlier on already bought through Klook and received the hotel to airport tickets that would let us ride on the Meitetsu-Limited Express to get to and fro. Except that in Peter’s case – in order to save some money, we opted to put him on child’s admission, which required us to purchase the child ticket in-person at the Meitetsu Information Counter at the station on the day of travel itself. No biggie of course: but in future, we just might purchase an adult ticket for him just to reduce the hassle.
A quick note: the first class tickets for the airport-hotel-airport transfer was only marginally more expensive on Klook at SGD3.65 per adult, so go for it.
Chubu Centrair International Airport from the first look is pretty functional: i.e. nothing like the sheer beauty and over-the-top-ness one sees at Changi Airport. We made our way to the SQ check-in row, and that’s when we saw to our horror the long snaky queues just for check-in, even for those who had already done pre-flight check-in online. We were fortunate that we’d taken the 7:49AM to 8:18AM Meitetsu-Limited Express transfer, so arrived 2 hours before flight departure. I can’t imagine if we’d made the (very) wrong assumption that the process would be fast since we’d done online check-in, and slept in a bit longer at the hotel! It took us a full hour to send our baggage, get our boarding passes, clear immigration, and get to boarding gate. With plenty of time to spare, but still.
On the upside, the flight home was pretty smooth very minor disturbance, and was quicker than what was stated on the flight itinerary. We were scheduled for an arrival home at Changi at 4:15PM and flight time of 6 hrs 55 minutes, but in actuality took 15 minutes less than that. Clearance and baggage pick-up at Changi was extremely quick, as always – and within an hour, we were back at home.
Over the next few days, we’d be looking through the several thousands of photos and videos, fact-checking and polishing up our blog entries, tidying up our spreadsheets of expenditure and itinerary, and putting up our usual round of reflective posts. So, more to come soon!