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2023 – My Year in Travel

Florian Buechting Just Blogging, Travel No Comments

Let’s try out something new: in addition to the Best of postings I present you at the end of the year, I start my end of year review postings with a looking back to my travel activities. As I have the best overview and statistics about my flight activities, there will be certain focus on that part – but I will also try to give you some facts about other stats regarding my travel activities. In contrast to the postings, which will close the year int he following days, this posting is fully neutral and statistical. There is no “best of”, “worst of” or whatever. Just some facts.

I am very curious about whether you like that posting or not. Additionally, if you liked it and there is some information you would like to see in the 2024 posting, just let me know.

 

Countries I Traveled To

I felt it is good to start with something very general: the list of countries I have set foot on this year. In 2022, there were still some Covid-19 restrictions, so that I was obviously more able lot travel more frequently and longer distances. Overall, I have visited 22 countries in 2023.

 

New Countries 2023

Visiting Japan was definitely my highlight in 2023. It was also the only new country I visited in 2024:

 

Countries I visited again in 2023

I visited a lot of countries and territories again. The order in here is roughly in chronological:

 

Aviation

Aviation is likely the part of my travels I have the best structured and best maintained statistics about. Here are some basic facts about my travels:

Number of Flights 92
Total Scheduled Flight Time 216:42 hrs
Total Distance Flown 121,421 km / 75,448 nm
Longest Distance (circle map) Zurich (ZRH) – Los Angeles (LAX), 22.12.2023, 9,547 km
Longest Flight (time) Tokyo-Haneda (HND) – Frankfurt (FRA), 4.10.2023, 14:25 hrs
Average Flight  2:21 hrs, 1,320 km
Number of Airports 37
Number of Airlines 25
Number of different planes 81
Number of Plane Types 21
Number of countries flown 20

My geographical span was quite nice in East-West direction, but not too far in North and South:

Northernmost Airport 2023 KEF – Keflavik International Airport
Southernmost Airport 2023 RAK – Marrakech Menara
Westernmost Airport 2023 LAX – Los Angeles International
Easternmost Airport 2023 HND – Tokyo Haneda

Regarding classes, I surprisingly just had one Premium Economy flight in 2023:

First Class Flights 2023 2
Business Class Flights 2023 55
Prem. Economy Flights 2023 1
Economy Class Flights 2023 34

I by the way do only count flights from one place to another. I also had a round trip in a C-47 in Palm Springs, which is not part of this statistics.

 

New Airports in 2023:

Here are the airports I flew to for the very first time in 2023, in chronological order:

 

New Airlines in 2023:

Here are the airlines I flew to for the very first time in 2023, in chronological order:

  • OU – Croatia Airlines
  • KL – KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
  • HV – Transavia

I did fly KLM Cityhopper before 2023, though.

 

Most Frequently Flown Airports in 2023:

Here are my most frequently used airports in 2023. Each take-off and landing counts separately.

Airport # Flights
1 DUS – Dusseldorf 32
2 LHR – London-Heathrow 22
3 AMS – Amsterdam 16
4 FRA – Frankfurt 11
5 CPH – Copenhagen 11

By the way, the most-frequently flown non-European airport is New York (JFK) with 7 departures and arrivals in 2023.

 

Most Frequently Flown Airlines in 2023:

In regards of airlines, British Airways and their subsidiaries flew almost a third of my flights this year.

Airlines # Flights
1 BA – British Airways 21
2 BA – BA Cityflyer 9
3 EW – Eurowings
KL – KLM Cityhopper		 6
(each)
5 LH – Lufthansa
ZQ – German Airways
AY – Finnair		 5
(each)
Most Frequently Flown Plane Type in 2023:

I typically do not distinguish between different sub-series of the same plane type in my statistics, e.g. between a A340-400 and an A340-600. I split out the neo and MAX versions, though.

Plane Types # Flights
1 Airbus A320 22
2 Embraer 190 19
3 Airbus A319 9
4 Boeing 737 7
5 Airbus A320neo 5

 

Rail Travel

That’s an area where I would love to have better statistics. Tracking rail travel in contrast to plane travel is not that easy, though. However, I can offer a few statistics, at least.

 

Rail Companies I Used in 2023

Especially in the United Kingdom, I had a major number of different rail companies – there might even be some missing ones. I tried to have chronological order.

The difference between rail companies and light rails or funiculars is sometimes hard to take. I tried to focus on longer distance rail situations.

 

Longest Rail Trips in 2023

I try to have a better statistics on rail trips in 2024 – but these three trips should be the longest ones, based on the scheduled trip time. Only the EuroNight service and the Pennsylvanian were direct services, the other trips included transfers.

Hrs Trip
23:50 hrs Frankfurt – Hamburg – Berlin – Munich – Mannheim – Saarbrücken
(All German States within 24 hrs, 14.1.2023)
16:25 hrs Budapest – Berlin (EN 40476 Night Train), 2.11.2023
9:59 hrs Copenhagen – Hamburg – Leverkusen, 13./14.5.2023
9:44 hrs Copenhagen – Hamburg – Cologne, 20.5.2023
9:13 hrs New York City – Pittsburgh
(Amtrak Pennsylvanian, 27.11.2023)

Hotels 2023

Regarding hotel stays, I had a massive volume in 2023 – and honestly hope to reduce it a bit. Overall, I stayed 130 nights in hotels in 2023. Here are some statistics about it.

 

Most Popular Hotels 2023

I had five nights each in three hotels during 2023. Due to the blogging, I typically try out “new” places, so that this is quite a lot. The most remarkable of those three places is the Hilton Garden Inn Faroe Islands, which I visited during two stays in 2023.

# Nights Hotel
5 Hilton Garden Inn Faroe Islands
5 Hampton by Hilton Dortmund Phoenix See
5 Conrad Tokyo
Hotel Nights by Country 2023

Home sweet home. I had the most hotel stays in… Germany. Here are some more countries I visited overnight:

# Nights Country
38 Germany
27 United Kingdom
20 USA
8 Iceland
6 Japan

 

Hotel Nights by City 2023

Even though there have been times where I had even more trips to London, it is still my most popular sleep-over town. Frankfurt surprised me a bit – but it is also getting boosted by a couple of pre-flight stays.

# Nights City
10 London
7 Frankfurt
6
(each)		 Tokyo
Pittsburgh
Hamburg

 

Hotel Nights by Hotel Group 2023

I need roll-over nights this year to secure my Hilton Diamond status, which would require 60 nights. I also prolonged my Accor Gold status and became top tier at GHA Discovery (which contains several hotel chains). You also see that I am generally more of a hotel chain sleeper – only ten nights were individual stays.

# Nights Brand
54 Hilton
21 Accor ALL
10 Non-branded hotels
9 Premier Inn
5
(each)		 IHG
Choice Hotels

 

Hotel Stays by Hotel Group 2023

If you just count the stays (i.e. regardless of the number of nights I stayed in), the statistics does not look that much different.

# Nights Brand
30 Hilton
18 Accor ALL
9 Non-branded Hotels
5
(each)		 Premier Inn
IHG
4 Choice Hotels

 

Other

I feel that there is a lot more potential for information than I am providing here. But still, maybe you like this initial view.

 

Car Rental by Provider

I just had a look into calendar days, not rental days, which should be even lower. With a total of 48 car rental days, I have not been that much on roads. I simply more and more prefer rail connections and other ways of relaxed travel. Since many years, I am majorly favoring Hertz – which is also reflected in this statistics: Blue Car Rental became huge due to my Ring Road Trip in Iceland this year.

# Cal. Days Provider
22 Hertz
9 Blue Car Rental
4 RentYourCar.Fo
3
(each)		 Arctic Car Rental (Faroe Islands)
Avis
Europcar

 

Postings about Flyctory.com

I sometimes write about the development of this blog, upgrades and other internal topics:

 

Japan on Flyctory.com

Here are all my postings related to Japan:

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