The Shortest Distance Between 2 Points is ...

... a line that takes in 7 cities, 3 countries, 2 hemispheres and crosses the international date line twice. Or at least that is what United Airlines would have you believe.

I was looking for a flight this morning to get me from Adelaide to Brisbane on my upcoming trip. For those unfamiliar with Aussie geography, Adelaide to Brisbane is about a 2 and a quarter hour flight. But when I was checking United Airlines' website to get both the international and domestic flights booked at the same time, apparently United's computer system had a hard time figuring out how to get me from Adelaide to Brisbane with one of the domestic airlines. It presented me with an option that was so unbelievable, so impractical, so suicidal, I had to take a screen shot of it just to prove that it existed. And here it is:



If you click the image, you will get an enlarged view.

So that is Adelaide to Sydney to San Francisco to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Auckland and finally to Brisbane. I'll save you doing the math, that is a total travel time of 49 and a quarter hours.

Needless to say, I found another airline and saved myself 47 hours travel time, and certain death.

BTW, did you notice that this was the first flight in the list and the list was sorted by "Number of stops" - which means there were even worse options possible further down the list.