Flying: Jetstar Japan Sapporo New Chitose to Tokyo Narita 2016

Our itinerary for the final day involved a trip to the White Lovers Chocolate Factory (白い恋人チョコレート工場), which was on the outskirts of Sapporo. Despite originally planning to cover the factory in about an hour, it was quite a richly decorated wonderland dream house that we ended up spending much longer than that.

Thankfully the trains from Sapporo to CTS only takes slightly more than half an hour, though when rushing for time we did not manage to make seat reservations and stood all the way to the airport.

The machine couldn't recongise the barcode on our itinerary, though the staff at the counter was able to assist us with check-in.

The receipt like slip of paper felt closer to a budget carrier than the glossy card back at Narita.

Jetstar Japan 110

Tokyo Narita (NRT) – Sapporo (CTS) 

Saturday, May 28 2016

Depart: 01:55PM

Arrive: 03:30PM

Flight time: 1hr35min

Aircraft: Airbus 320

Seat: 16A

CTS has a fairly small terminal building so the boarding area is right behind the security line, though flying budget implies that we board from the furthest gates and had to climb one level up to the third floor, whereas most other flights board at the second floor.

Climbing stairs with luggage can be a minor inconvenience, though standing on higher grounds can also be great of capturing aircrafts on the tarmac.

Air Do Boeing 737 CTS

At about 1:27PM, I looked over to the runway and saw a Jetstar A320 on final approach. Knowing that this was likely to be the bird ferrying us to Narita, a delay seemed inevitable, so I quiet began to nibble away at the bento bought from the train station.

In the meantime, there was some really interesting traffic in and out of CTS. Whiles CTS is an international airport, most of the services are actually domestic, and international traffic typically cater to leisure travellers and regional destinations. Hence, it's quite interesting that Taiwanese carriers are serving this destination with wide-bodies, some on a daily basis. This is especially interesting considering that even northern Chinese destinations are served with narrow bodies, despite claims of an ever increasing influx of Chinese tourists into Hokkaido.

China Airlines Boeing 747 CTS

Transasia A330 CTS

Finally, boarding was called at 1:50PM. Perhaps because CTS is a fairly small airport where traffic isn't that busy, hence we had the luxury (in the case of flying budget carriers) of using a jet bridge (albeit the bridge furthest away from the terminal) instead of walking down the tarmac.

From here it was clockwork, boarding was completed in about 15 minutes despite having close to a full load, and we pushed off at 2:11PM.

It was a smooth landing into Narita at 3:53PM, and we taxied back to where we departed from 6 days ago. As the cabin was depressurised, the crew apologised once again for the delay, which I appreciated, especially considering the delay was only for 20 minutes. Then again, this is a country where trains follow a printed schedule and stick to it.