Cross winds are a bitch happy I were not on those flights.
Any good stories or videos?
Recently spend 18 hours on a non stop flight from LAX to BKK (15 hours the other way) and the take off took 60 secs because of the weight of the plane even after they reduced the number of pax from 200+ to 145 which gives a lot of room in monkey class but you just wait and wait for the plane to take off usually its less than half that time on the runway and not to much room to spare on the runway after takeoff.
A345HGW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A340#A340-500HGW