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A man has gone on a Phileas Fogg-style quest to fly around the world in 80 hours through a succession of flights on low-budget airlines.
YouTube creator Noel Philips, 42, embarked on the literal round trip in April, departing out of Houston, Texas, and landing back at the city’s William P. Hobby Airport just over three days later.
His journey ultimately spanned nine flights, seven different airlines, five countries – and a total of 25,276 miles.
In the planning stages, Noel, a native of Leicester, England, who currently lives in rural Texas with his wife and two kids, established ‘five simple rules’ for completing his globe-circling mission.
Noel Philips, 42, embarked on a Phineas Fogg-style expedition in circling the globe in 80 hours through a series of low-budget flights
The YouTube creator, who is from the UK but lives in Texas, established five rules for his trip
As he laid out for his 419,000-strong YouTube following, he’d committed to: taking low-cost airlines; flying on economy tickets; crossing into both hemispheres; advancing further east with every flight (‘no backies,’ as he put it); and making it within his stated time goal.
Noel previously circled the globe by plane in 80 hours back in 2019, then departing and flying back into London – though in that go-round, he’d stuck to business class and didn’t cross the equator.
Of booking the low-budget airline journey, Noel told DailyMail.com: ‘It was just an absolute nightmare, to be honest.
‘Low-cost airlines are great to get onto cheap flights. But when it comes to making changes to their schedules, they’re not very flexible. So I actually had about three different itineraries planned for this.
‘This was the final incarnation of it…. The previous ones, I had airlines change flights on me. That then meant that all of the other flights after that had to just be lost, because with them not being flexible on low-cost airlines, you can’t just change to a different day or something,’ he explained.
‘So it probably cost more money than it would’ve had I gone on just regular airlines.’
The first leg of the trip was on Southwest, with a three-and-a-half hour flight departing at 11:10am from Houston’s Hobby to New York City’s LaGuardia.
The plane’s path revealed a brief glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from Noel’s window as it descended over NYC.
Noel got a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty while inbound to NYC from Houston
La Sagrada Familia came into view as he descended into Barcelona
Noel woke up to a distant view of the Acropolis after spending the night at a hotel in Athens
The Sydney Opera House was the final iconic landmark Noel encountered over his journey
He then hopped a Yellow Cab to JFK and, just after nightfall, caught a LEVEL airlines flight to Barcelona, with Noel deeming the conditions in economy to be ‘quite nice.’
Getting in to Barcelona in the wee hours after the seven-hour, 45-minute ride, Noel caught a glimpse of the iconic Antoni Gaudí-designed cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, from his window.
At two flights down and seven more to go, Noel still had just over 60 hours to complete the journey.
Then came a three-hour flight on Vueling to Athens, heralding the seasoned traveler’s first time in the city.
He spent the night in a hotel, waking up to a distant view of the Acropolis beyond a rather worn-down-looking cityscape.
‘Good morning from Greece! I’ve woken up to a view of the Acropolis, which is just sort of over there, between those buildings,’ he began his Athens dispatch.
‘I’m not going to lie, it’s not quite as impressive as they make it look in the pictures. I mean, they don’t show the council flats and the graffiti in the brochure, do they?’ he quipped of the panorama.
Next up on his itinerary was an 11-hour-flight on Scoot airlines bound for Singapore.
‘They don’t have the best reputation, I’ve not heard brilliant things about them,’ Noel admitted of the airline.
‘Scoot’s cabin feels more like a discotheque when you get on board,’ he observed of the technicolor mood lighting illuminating the plane’s interior.
‘Albeit a discotheque with really terrible seats.’
Riding Scoot from Athens to Singapore, Noel observed ‘discotheque’-like ambient lighting in the cabin
The $15 in-flight meal on Scoot airlines wasn’t worth writing home about
Rather than pay for in-flight entertainment en route on Jetstar to Melbourne, Noel made the gutsy call to pass the time with YouTuber Mentour Pilot’s play-by-plays of plane crashes
To be sure, the economy seats were cramped and without individual screens.
But, in lieu of pre-programmed in-flight entertainment, Noel passed the time watching a low-stakes drama unfold between his row-mates.
‘Things are getting a little bit awkward between the two passengers on the side of me,’ Noel began, angling his face toward the window to whisper into his mic, while giving a play-by-play of two fellow passengers’ exploits.
‘The guy on the aisle is Greek, and spent the entire flight chatting to this poor woman to the side of me, talking her ear off most of the flight to the point where she’s put headphones in to try to stop it,’ he continued the play-by-play.
‘She just took out her earphones to order food, at which point the guy on the aisle asked her out for a drink when they get to Singapore, which she sort of turned down.
‘Now, he’s not really saying much. It’s all gone very quiet. It’s a little bit awkward … who needs in-flight entertainment?’ he added with a chuckle.
Noel recalled looking up at planes as a child in Leicester, England, and wondering about what the people on them could see from their vantage point in the sky
Noel touched down in Sydney with just over 24 hours remaining on his countdown
The meal on Scoot, which set Noel back $15, consisted of ‘black-pepper beef with rice’ and a can of Coke.
Piercing the rice with his fork lifted the entire, rectangular-shaped portion out of his tray at once – prompting Noel to shoot a disappointed look toward his camera.
From Singapore, Noel hopped on a roughly seven-and-a-half-hour Jetstar flight bound for Melbourne.
While there were seatback screens with in-flight entertainment, viewing films like Hotel Transylvania cost $9 a pop. An ‘all-access’ pass was $13 – but Noel weighed that the price was hardly worth it for the remaining flight time.
He instead made the gutsy decision to watch videos from Mentour Pilot – a YouTube channel known for its detailed clips of plane crashes.
Upon landing, Noel discovered Jetstar had cancelled his flight from Melbourne to Sydney. He ruefully confessed that he’d been rebooked on Qantas, ‘which breaks the chain of low-cost,’ he bemoaned.
‘Please forgive me!’ he implored his viewers.
He had just enough time during his Sydney layover to do some sightseeing, dropping by the Opera House. ‘It’s quite a nice place, really!’ he quipped.
Despite his concerns about again relying on Jetstar to make it to Honolulu on time for his next connection, the nearly 10-hour flight went smoothly enough.
Though he tried to snooze while cruising over the Pacific Ocean, the ‘nonexistent’ legroom made it so he ‘could not get comfortable, at all.’
He went on to declare the Sydney-to-Honolulu leg ‘the most uncomfortable flight’ of his trip.
In any case, the plane touched down at night in Hawaii, with the countdown clock nearing the final 12 hours.
He made it back to Houston with a little under an hour to spare
Noel triumphantly signed off from the entrance of Houston’s Hobby airport, declaring he was headed home to get some sleep and ‘and then try and get to the chiropractor’s’
Tallying up the cost of just his flights, the total cost came up to just under $3,000
As he settled into his Southwest flight to Phoenix, Arizona, he recalled being on the same airplane model – a Max 8 – ‘a couple of days ago’ when flying out to NYC.
‘Crikey, it feels like forever since then,’ he added.
The second-to-last flight took up six hours and he touched down in the mainland US with a few hours to spare.
He took off again on Southwest as the sun set over Phoenix, finally touching down in Houston just after midnight.
‘Here we are, 25,000 miles later, back here at Hobby airport in Houston! And a little under 80 hours since I was last here. Wow, what a trip!’ Noel triumphantly concluded.
He added that he was going to head home to ‘try and get some sleep, and then try and get to the chiropractor’s.’
Reflecting on the experience, Noel told DailyMail.com ‘it was a incredible trip,’ adding with a laugh: ‘I don’t think I’ll be wanting to do it again anytime soon on low-cost airlines.’
‘As anti-climactic as it was at the end, when I just got back and realized that nobody else actually cares about what I’ve done – I’m just standing in an airport parking lot – it was amazing to literally have been around the world and been to both hemispheres in just a couple [of days] like that,’ he said of getting off his final flight.
‘I do feel a bit of a sense of achievement, having done it. I think it was a great thing to do.’
In all, Noel spent just over 51 of the 80 hours on flights, leaving a full day plus five hours for making his connections and light, on-the-ground sightseeing.
Noel became increasingly exhausted in the final stretch of his sojourn
He’d gotten his start on YouTube more than a decade ago posting videos he’d taken of the view from his windows on flights
In a cost breakdown, Noel calculated he’d spent $2,908.33 on just the airfare from his trek.
This didn’t include what he’d spent on previous versions of the itinerary that had fallen through due to scheduling changes affected by the low-budget airlines that, per policy, didn’t refund him for his missed connecting flights.
The self-described ‘aviation geek’ traces his fascination with plane travel back to his childhood.
‘I’ve been into planes as long as I can remember. Never got to travel much as a kid. I’m from a background where we didn’t have a lot to be able to travel internationally or anything,’ he told DailyMail.com.
‘So plane-spotting and watching planes at the airport was always what I enjoyed when I was growing up.
‘And I was always like, “Where are they going? What are they doing? Who’s on that plane?”
‘They’re getting to view from really high up and being able to see these amazing views. And I guess it was kind of the fact that these planes could transport people halfway around the world in a few hours. And the fact that they go literally up to the edge of space, just taking people for a ride along. I found it really cool.’
In adulthood, Noel ‘made a bit of a game, effectively, to fly on as many different airlines as I could, as many different types of aircraft and just fly as much as I could really.’
On his YouTube, the creator’s earliest videos – the first from 13 years ago – reflect his initial hobby of simply filming the view from the windows throughout his flights.
‘It just kind of turned into an obsession over the years,’ he added with a laugh.
‘I enjoy the flying, I think, more than anything else.’
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