Globaliser

Are you doing this on a single (through) ticket, or on two separate tickets?

In general, airlines (or handling agents) aren't set up to deal with mass luggage mishandling. The baggage service desks are resourced to deal with the 0.5-1% of passengers who have a missing bag, not hundreds at once. A mass event happened to me once, but the airline sensibly sent on a list of bags that hadn't made it on to the flight. I kept my ears open when I could sense that something had gone badly wrong, so I was able to get my forwarding details on to the list early, and then got out of there before the mess started.

I have a suspicion that for this sort of card, you would pay handsomely/through the nose to buy the card in the foreign currency.

I don't think this is right, if the bags failed to make it on to the flight that they were tagged for and that the passenger flew on. AIUI, major (ie IATA) airlines will try to get the bag to you wherever you are. That, after all, is what happens if your bag does not make it on to your flight to your embarkation city, you stay overnight there, and embark on the ship the next day (note: that would be on a separate ticket). If the airline has enough details, your bag will chase you throughout your itinerary. I once even had my bag come out on the pilot cutter to my (already sailed) ship.

Was it somewhere in the roll call thread?

I would use one in an airline lounge. If you won't have access to an airline lounge, it seems that Auckland normally has a pay lounge called the Strata lounge, although that is not open at the moment (because of the pandemic). It's number 82 on this terminal map. It also looks like there is a public shower just below number 51 on that map. The dotted line seems to be the security border, so you'll be on the correct side if you use that one. I have done this once, in Sydney, and it basically involved remembering to bring a camping towel (one of those zero volume things that's actually more sponge than towel) and some shower gel. It wasn't luxurious, but I'd just flown from London to Sydney, I had no lounge access in Sydney, I had two more flights to get to Dunedin, and I had to be presentable and sociable as soon as I got there - so it was worth the effort.

What's wrong with three hours between flights? Given a choice, and if all other things are equal, I would go for the 3-hour connection over the 1-hour connection here. You won't be sitting around waiting for three hours. It'll take you half an hour to do the circuit through the transit/transfer stream, and you'll need to be at the gate about half an hour before the scheduled departure time of the next flight. So it's actually only two hours of waiting. For me, that's time to have a shower, drink some water to rehydrate, and get a decent and unrushed breakfast.

Ashland is in at least some of the relevant threads: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2854348-amsterdam-rcl-debark-times-and-getting-to-ams-airport/?do=findComment&comment=63262886 https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2850267-time-needed-at-amsterdam-airport/?do=findComment&comment=63169275

As far as I can see, the published Minimum Connecting Time for this is almost certainly 55 minutes. The airline won't allow you to book a connection that's any shorter than that, but at 55 minutes it expects that most passengers will make the connection most of the time. The airline has an incentive not to make it too short, because it incurs costs whenever someone misses their connection. AIUI, the transit/transfer stream simply requires security screening. That would be consistent with an MCT of that kind of duration. There's not a lot of margin if something goes wrong, but there should be plenty of alternative Auckland-Sydney flights to be reaccommodated on if you do misconnect.

Do multi-hour-long queues for security count as disruptions?

My crystal ball isn't feeling very well today. But my guess is that we are likely to see only moderate improvements during the remainder of northern summer 2022; although there are likely to be some increases in capacity, the summer demand peak is yet to come. Then we will enter the season of sickness, and who knows that that will do to the industry this year. June 2023? It seems like next century, so far as predictions are concerned.

Cathay does not make two award seats available in first class. And for the foreseeable future, there are bigger problems with booking on Cathay Pacific in any event.

In the absence of other input, is either of those things a problem? Stansted Airport is not easy even in the best circumstances. Three sophisticated and nearly-middle-aged ladies perform a well-known art song that includes a verse dedicated to the joys of a journey there.

No other country requires you to test and to be negative before you fly there? No other country in the whole world? Really?

It's a matter for you, but even that train time leaves you with very little margin for anything to go wrong. On a planning basis of 90 + 90 + 90 = 270 minutes, that's all of your 4½ hours. If your flight is even a couple of hours late, you're toast. What is your backup plan if you miss your train? Hope is not a strategy.

Global Entry and TSA Pre-Check are American things and have absolutely no relevance at Heathrow or any other UK airport. If you are going straight to Paris from Heathrow, the first piece of advice is to fly. Preferably on a through ticket so that you don't have to deal with clearing immigration, collecting your luggage, clearing customs, or transferring to St Pancras - all just to take a form of transport that will take much longer to take you to Paris (measured station-to-station) than flying (measured airport-to-airport). And so that you avoid the misconnection risk. Even if you have to buy a separate ticket for Heathrow to Paris, you take a great deal of the risk away by flying. The next piece of advice is to work out what kind of Eurostar ticket you are going to buy, and what happens if you miss the train that you've booked. Misconnection risk is something you always have to plan for, and a train ticket is no exception. For safety, I would personally allow for 90 minutes from arrival (aircraft parks at gate) to clear at the airport (although it should normally take only about half that). You would want to allow 90 minutes for the journey to St Pancras. I think that Eurostar minimum check-in is something like 30 minutes. Then ask yourself what you'll do if your inbound flight is three hours late (which is far from rare). More advice in a similar context in this thread: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2856108-time-needed-to-clear-customs-and-catch-the-bus-to-southampton/

This should be an absolute rule for pretty much all major airports everywhere in the world: always go to the official taxi rank.

Sorry for the pedantry, but to avoid confusion for the OP at the airport: VA = Virgin Australia VS = Virgin Atlantic VX = the former, but now defunct, Virgin America

Even better, stay on the SS Rotterdam herself: https://ssrotterdam.com/

If it helps to avoid people thinking that the ONS numbers are the same as the PHE / UKHSA numbers, I'm all for it.

And also, what is the 11-hour window? Is that published arrival time and departure time? Because if they are, then you'll lose time off either end because it may take you some time to get off the ship, and you'll have to allow some margin to sure of getting back to the ship before the time by which you have to board. So you may only have about 9 hours that you can plan to use, of which the best part of 3 would be spent simply driving to and from St Andrews.

Figures from the ONS, or more-accurately PHE, have been in a mess since the govt stopped publishing figures for friday thro monday plus the plethora of bank holidays. Isn't the ONS work independent and self-published? The media don't always make it clear, but the ONS' methodology is set out here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/methodologies/covid19infectionsurveypilotmethodsandfurtherinformation

That's because there aren't any. Many places (eg theatres) will request that you do not go if you may have Covid, but this isn't a rule and it isn't enforceable. So the approach is basically the same as if you have a cold or if you have flu. Most people I know are being responsible by staying at home if they have Covid, but it isn't because any rules require them to.

I think that the current problems at BA are largely a consequence of BA doing exactly the same thing to rein in an over-ambitious schedule.

Presumably, though, getting an ETOPS ticket is something that requires some additional training on specific procedures and differences for a pilot who already knows how to fly that aircraft? If nothing goes wrong, flying from Seattle to Kona shouldn't in itself be that different from flying from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale. What's different is all the "what if" stuff that goes in to ETOPS.