We had two options on choosing how to fly to Victoria

1. Fly to a large(ish) hub and fly a reasonable sized plane to Victoria.
2. Fly to Vancouver and catch a small turbo-prop across to the island.

I have to say from my point of view the second is more preferable. The overall travel time is much less and the journey in the smaller aircraft is only short. However it took quite a lot of persuasion to convince Amanda of the benefits. I did think at one point we were going to go via San Francisco or Toronto bit of which had relatively long stop-over times (total flight times were 19 hrs for SF and 16 hrs for Toronto) but the thought of a 12 hr journey by travelling via Vancouver proved decisive. So, via Vancouver it is.

We usually travel in the Autumn but because we want to see Grizzlies we have to go earlier so we’re planning late August rather than the usual November. This seems to have a dramatic effect on the cost of the flights (about 40-50% more expensive) but it’s not something we can control and now we feel for all the parents in the world who have to put up with peak time flights being so much more expensive than the rest of the year.

Also we’ll be flying with Air Canada again. Never had a bad flight, bad in flight meal, stroppy cabin crew or crappy planes so it’s a no brainer….and I like their iPhone app too.