flight reports

AC460 YYZ-YOW B737? seat ?

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YYZ’s Maple Leaf Lounge is the best AC lounge I’ve seen to date: modern, stylish, and (in a very un-American way) equipped with free grub of the salad-and-soup variety, a fully stocked free booze bar and, the crowning touch, free Internet.

No puking toddlers or harried families on this flight, it was pinstriped suits and one weird Nordic guy with a laptop and a “HACKER” T-shirt all the way. I had an exit row bulkhead aisle seat, which was nice, but on this B737(?) that means there was no window, just a teensy porthole to squint at. We took off on time, business class was served refreshment but we weren’t, and pretty soon we landed. But there are worse things than uneventful flights.

AC981 NAS-YYZ A319 seat 27F

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NAS has a seriously bizarre boarding procedure. Once the boarding call comes, your boarding pass is checked, but kept intact, and you can’t board the plane: instead, you’re just moved to sit (or stand) in a corridor near the gates. Then, once everybody has been corralled up, the door is opened and you’re allowed to trek across to the plane, where your boarding card is finally collected. Is there a point to this?

After taking off, the aircraft did a 270 degree turn and flew over central Nassau and Paradise Island, rising up in its emerald majesty from the fathomless depths. Da-yamn.

They say Canada feels American if you arrive from Europe and European if you arrive from America, and boarding Air Canada flights fits the pattern. This A319 is old and crusty, but not as bad as mainline US carriers; seat pitch is bad, but not terrible; your meal is free, but booze still costs money; and there’s some inflight entertainment, just not much of it. Kind of a halfway house, in other words.

The plane arrived at Toronto more or less on time; unfortunately, Toronto was in the process of being hammered by a thunderstorm, so the pilot flew leisurely bumpy loops around it for an hour, allowing all passengers to get a good look at the impenetrable fog. Engrossed in my laptop, it didn’t even occur to me that others might find this distressing, but there was an audible groan when the pilot announced for the third time that we’d be on the ground in “20 minutes”, and only when landing (with distraction devices packed away) did I realize that the cabin was getting kinda whiffy. After landing, we spent another good half hour sitting around on tarmac, and the increasingly puke-laden atmosphere prompted the little girl in the seat in front of me to announce that she was going to be sick, even though the plane was perfectly stationary. On the way out, slowed down by an interminable shuffle of strollers and oversized carryons, we all got a good luck at the cause of the carnage: two green-faced toddlers and a spew of projectile vomit over any nearby seats. Welcome back to reality.

The new international wing of Toronto Pearson opened in January 2007, a mere 3 months before my first visit, so it’s nice and new-looking, although I do like the way they’ve nostalgically clung onto that fixture of North American airports, the big red dot LED panel, and used “dot matrix” fonts for spelling out gate numbers, baggage carousel numbers, etc. Immigration was fairly painless, with the agent spending most of his time looking for the fullest possible page in my passport and then clobbering a Korean stamp with his maple-leaved overprint, but baggage took ages to arrive.

I then had my first suspicion that this airport wasn’t quite up to its appearance when I had some trouble locating the exit from the baggage carousels. My suspicions deepened when the ATM manifestly refused to be where the map said it should be, and none of the three I eventually found would accept Visa Plus (which is, after all, only the world’s most common system) despite wanting $2 service fees. Every American airport has a handy panel of courtesy phones from where you can call your hotel; but YYZ doesn’t. Hotel shuttle signage was absent, but I consulted the map (of missing ATM fame) and navigated my way to the basement, which had a lonely looking stand outside. A call to the hotel on my own dime then revealed that the shuttle stops at “S5”; I peered around quizzically, unsuccessfully looking for numbers or letters on the stands scattered about, until I realized that the concrete pillars holding up the building were numbered high up, and “S5” was waaaaaaaaay at the other end, near the stand labeled “Group Drop-Off Only”.

Once I eventually schlepped myself to the other end, I lucked out and caught the shuttle almost immediately, and when I whined about how difficult it was to find, the driver commiserated: “Yeah, everybody else says that too.” Sigh.

 

US1053 CLT-NAS B737-400 seat 13A

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In the gloom of rain CLT looked like any other older American airport, all scuffed linoleum, white-on-black signage and acres and acres devoted to parking, but next morning proved sunnier and the terminal looked rather more modern and welcoming. US Airways made amends by checking me in speedily (although I had to assist the check-in lady with punching in my EuroBonus card) and allowing me into the US Airways Club which, to damn it with faint praise, was the best I’ve seen in the USA to date. Clean, spacious, free ice water, a powerplug-equipped cubicle to compute in and more free T-Mobile goodness was all I needed.

Today’s airplane was a bog-standard regional B737, which didn’t even pretend to offer frills like headphones or movies for this two-hour flight. The seat pitch was as bad as previously, but my seat was a window over the wing and thus a marginal improvement on yesterday, especially as I had no seatmates in my 3-seat row and was thus able to sprawl out freely.

No matter how many times I’ve done it, I still love the first few minutes of flight. Hitting the throttle, feeling the aircraft accelerate to Ludicrous Speed(tm), the moment of takeoff — and then as the aircraft banks, twists and turns on its way to its flight path and level, the cabin moving around in three dimensions, you remember that this is not a bus and you’re flying, an idea so magical and captivating that the entire state of North Carolina still commemorates the first successful attempt on its license plates.

Signs you’re in a country where people don’t do too much international travel: the pilot spends 10 minutes announcing line by line how to fill in the Bahamas immigration form and how to fill out the US Customs form for the return leg.

 

US968 SJU-CLT B767 seat 8F

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SJU looks slick from the outside (well, at least those parts that aren’t under construction), but there’s a fair dose of island/US airline lackadaisicalness about it. After I’d queued for 15 min in the First/Star Gold line, I was asked why my check-in bag didn’t have an agricultural inspection tag. What inspection? That inspection, she said, pointing over to a room behind me and off to the side, with a gaggle of people swarming around it. How was I supposed to know? Well, if you came regularly you’d know, she pouted. So why can’t you put a sign to tell people to go there before checking in? It’s a USDA inspection and not our problem. No, I told her, it’s your problem because it’s your line. I was advised to go complain to the USDA, and was duly punished for my effrontery by being assigned an aisle seat next to a blocked window, with a strategic sprinkling of crying babies around me.

As if this initial impression of US Airways weren’t unpleasant enough, the flight was also delayed by an hour. Once past the security circus filled with vacationing clowns (“Hey Bozo! Is Diet Coke a liquid?”), I settled down to munch on my mallorca con jamon y queso and mooch somebody’s free wifi.

On board, the plane smelled of old as soon as I stepped and was still in the old USAir livery. My knees were firmly jammed against the seat in front, just the way I like to spend 4-hour flights, but at least I was assigned a harmless (and non-bulky) crossword-filling granny as a seatmate. The deepest impression, though, was the sheer incompetence displayed by the staff when trying to run through the in-flight safety demo: not only did two different steward(esse)s try to talk simultaneously, but they did so on top of the video, with both their mike and the video flaking out at random intervals. Just how hard can it be?

US Airways’s in-flight magazine consists of thinly disguised advertorials and you have to pay $5 for headphones if you want to listen to Yanni on Channel 1. Not for the first time, I said a prayer of thanks to the elves at Panasonic’s battery factory and set to work computing. But I’ll say one good thing about US: at least they give you a full can of drink, even juice, instead of fiddling about with United-style urine sample cups.

 

UA960 IAD-SJU B757 seat 9A

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I haven’t been to Dulles in ages (some 25 years, in fact), but it looks just like any other older US airport: crowded and grim. I paid a rip-off price for a Nokia charger, a more reasonable price for a footlong Subway, and sequestered myself in the dark and gloomy cubicles of the business section of the Red Carpet Club until it was time to fly on.

And now a mainline UA flight, not that anything seems very different. I again lucked out with not just a Economy Plus seat, but one of the ones right in front of the door, with ludicrous legroom (but no place to stow your bags). Inflight entertainment was provided by the Flaming Latinos, a pair of, um, very intimate stewards who kept up a patter of rapidfire Spanglish with each other (“…that guy uah te digo que muy guapo and then when Juan said like oh my god voy a quitarle al mondongo un peso de encima…“) and did their best to crack each other up during any public announcements.

Drink service was the usual: OJ and pretzels. Thanks to the Great Terrorist Hunt, the seatbelt sign was kept on for 30 minutes until we were well and duly clear of the capital.

UA1470 LAS-IAD A320 seat 10D

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Despite living in the US for the better part of five years, I don’t think I really understood just how much Americans drive until I returned a rental car at LAS. I’ve seen 10-million-pax-a-year airports that are considerably smaller than the rental car depot here, complete with wings for different airlines, err, rental agencies and automated check-out machines, and the shuttle buses to the airport itself are packed despite leaving at 30-second intervals.

Once there, the agent at check-in just rolled her eyes when I asked if there was a lounge I could use. Then again, this, too, makes perfect sense when you think about it with Vegas logic — there are slot machines all the way to the gates, and not a few glassy-eyed people pumping the bandits’ arms at 7 AM in the morning.

Like my flight in, this flight was operated by Ted, and as it’s a 4.5-hour flight, he (it?) gave me two tasteless biscuits in addition to a glass of juice, and graciously allowed us the opportunity to purchase a Snack Pack. Thank you, Ted! But Ted did also give me an Economy Extra seat, and I had the foresight to stuff myself with breakfast first, so I’m not going to complain too loudly.

XM Satellite Radio’s “BPM” channel gives me the chills. I can’t believe they’re playing Detroit techno and supa-frooty trance, and OMG does it feel good after a week of solid country music, if interleaved with the occasional “Nacho Nacho” courtesy of Punjabi superstar Sarbjit Cheema. (Click the link. You know you want to.)

 

UA1540 SFO-PHX A320 seat 4A

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We were in SFO almost an hour ahead of scheduled time. Immigration was painless, and the officer even managed to make me laugh by asking why I never smile. (‘Coz you aren’t allowed to in Finnish passport photos.) After its NRT adventure, my bag was unsurprisingly among the first to come out, and I embarked on a semi-circular quest to find my check-in counter — I thought I had an America West flight codeshared as UA, a double mistake at that as “America West” turned into US Airways some time ago, but no, it turned out to be the real thing. Or at least almost: this was my first encounter with the faceless, amorphous, omnipresent entity known only as Ted. There were no earlier UA flights, although I could, theoretically, have gotten onto an HP flight that left 30 minutes earlier, in exchange for spending umpty-ump minutes trying to endorse my RTW over to them — no thanks. But with grandmotherly kindness, Ted gave me an Economy Plus seat.

It was my first visit to SFO, and while it’s heads and shoulders above LAX (which is why I routed this way), seeing signs proclaim it the best airport in the US was a little depressing: surely you could do a little better? The TSA security carnival seemed positively painless compared to LHR last year (although that bit with the shoes was still ludicrous). Only one problem now: I was dog-tired and in severe danger of falling asleep, but I had no watch, my cellphone’s battery was dead and my charger doesn’t like 110V, so I couldn’t set an alarm. The Red Carpet Club was packed to the rafters, but I managed to snag a seat and, through a minor miracle, even get free wireless thanks to some bizarre T-Mobile/Vista crosspromotion thingy, valid until the end of the month to boot — just long enough to cover the US portion of my trip, and just the distraction device I needed to keep me awake. Spiffy.

Dodging somebody else’s projectile vomit all over the men’s bathroom, I eventually headed out of the lounge to find a refugee camp assembling at the gates. Both had Ted flights, and both were late, mine by 20 minutes — but the one to Vancouver, scheduled to leave half an hour before me, was still there as we pulled back.

As expected, the plane was a museum piece, but I was again a little surprised to find an Airbus in this land of Boeings. Oppressively chirpy video announcements told me that Ted wants me to do all kinds of things, including following instructions and fasten my seatbelt. As soon as we were airborne and in the impenetrable fog, I stuck in my earbuds, put on my eyeshades, closed the windowshades and drifted off into a twilight zone of fitful, unfulfilling sleep.

 

NH8 NRT-SFO B777-300 seat 27K

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 The next day, I pottered around Ueno Park and its sozzled hanami (cherry blossom viewing) celebrations and then, finally, got on the long haul out of Ueno by Keisei. Narita’s never been one of my favorite airports, but the advent of the new South Wing at T1 has certainly pushed it up a few notches in my book. While my favorite “last chance in Japan” sushi restaurant seems to have disappeared, alas, it’s been replaced by a tolerable if somewhat overpriced conveyor belt joint (on 5F) and a whole load of new shops. Check-in for Star Golds was as efficient as always, security was a breeze, immigration had the usual queue and the new ANA huge lounge in slick shades of black and white was a sight to behold. Quirky feature award goes to the free noodle bar, although I won’t be changing my NRT routine until they add in a free sushi bar as well…!

At the gate, the boarding pass reader said “boop” and I was taken aside. My RTW was issued as five physical paper tickets and I’d only shown the first at check-in, so could I show my connecting flight onward from the US? Well, I pointed out, it’s a RTW ticket (see the little “YRWSTAR1” notation there?) and the itinerary is shown in computerese at the bottom: starting in BKK, then TYOSFOPHX, out later via NASYYZYOWYVRCDG and eventually back to BKK. The gate agent was convinced and let me through… but came back a few minutes later: the US immigration authorities, she said, wouldn’t let me in without a return ticket (a valid theoretical point, I’ll admit, although I’ve never been asked), so they’d dug up my baggage from the hold and wanted me to get my ticket. Err, OK — my bag was truly procured, I demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction that my RTW does, indeed, exit the US at some point, and I was allowed back in, this time with ticket in hand.

I had tried to get a Star Alliance upgrade for this flight, unsuccessfully — I was told that Friday’s a very popular day to fly out, and hence biz was always full. Needless to say, once on board it became clear that at least half the seats in C were actually empty… and I’d already mentally composed half my angry letter blasting KrisFlyer, ANA and Star Alliance for their intolerable incompetence when it dawned on me that, due to the aforementioned Int’l Date Line muddle, I’d been requesting the upgrade for the wrong day. D’oh! (That would also explain why they had some problems finding my booking, although KF never actually confessed that they couldn’t actually find it.)

My consolations were that flight time was just 8 hours (vs a scheduled 9:30) and that there was nobody in the middle seat, allowing me to stretch out a little. This was my first taste of long-haul NH in eco, and I quite liked the on-demand video-and-more system, which had a pretty good selection of J-pop and allowed me to finally watch 2001 from beginning to end (definitely a movie best sampled in the middle of the night at 33,000 feet over a moonlit Pacific).

The Japanese food, though, was surprisingly terrible, especially considering the excellence of NH’s biz fare. For dinner, it was gluey rice with soggy breaded whitefish, and for breakfast, it was a morbidly fatty chunk of bacon coupled with a rice patty topped with salsa (…?). Other flight amenities were nonexistent: no shades, no socks, no earplugs, no toothbrush, not even a shared bottle of moisturizer in the loo. The control box for the AV system, under the middle seat, was huge and prevented me from stretching out from my window seat; I would be chewing my legs off if I had to sit there! Fortunately I was prepared with all the essentials, and thanks to my new laptop’s 8-hr battery capacity killing time on non-sleepy pursuits wasn’t an issue.

In other good news, my threshold for pain seems to have gone higher. Four hours in economy used to be the point at which I started getting antsy, but half a year of commuting between Singapore and Delhi has pushed that up to six. On this flight, though, I experimentally determined that over seven hours is still unpleasant. Fortunately I’ve timed every other flight remaining on this trip to avoid this situation… except the last. Time to pay for an upgrade?

NH318 FUK-KMQ 737-800 “Super Dolphin” seat 2F

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I headed back to T1 and got there with an hour to spare. While the international side of FUK is pretty slick, T1, which only caters to small planes to obscure domestic destinations, is a bit worn around the edges. After half a year in cricket-crazy India, though, I did like the way that the gate entrances were termed “Wickets” in the English signage. (Bowled for a duck, wot wot?) And then it was time to end this maiden visit and wave buh-bye to Kyushu; I’ll be back.

Sometimes the sheer dedication of Japanese to their job amazes me. As the aircraft rolled out of the gate, they all lined up in front of the gate, waved goodbye to the plane and its passengers, and then bowed deeply. Maybe it was just jet lag and lack of sleep, but I swear I had to wipe away a tear just watching it.

This zippy little dolphin, which can take barely 100 pax, is one-class and as cramped as a cheap can of tuna. But it’s only an hour’s flight to KMQ, so I’ll manage…

TG648 BKK-FUK A300 seat 34K

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The plane turned out to be the flying museum piece I expected, a crunky old Airbus (the oldest in Thai’s fleet, if I’m not very much mistaken) with all the aesthetic charm and usability of a Commodore 64. I can understand Thai flying these domestically, or even making the occasional hop to Singapore and back, but medium-range redeyes with these things is pushing it. But then again, flying to FUK instead of KIX/NGO/NRT saved some time and (for NRT/KIX) a pretty painful transfer, so beggars can’t be choosers…And it could’ve been worse. The flight was around 70%-ish full, but my neighbor jumped across the aisle, leaving me with two seats to use. After a “light meal” that consisted of a pastry and a cup of juice, I stretched out diagonally and, much to my own surprise, slept for ~3 hours of this 4.5 hr flight.Breakfast was big but bad. Yogurt, fruits and juice I could deal with, but the centerpiece was a “crepe omelette” gruesomely splattered with a vomitous white sauce so foul I could only eat one — I can’t remember ever running across literally inedible airline food before. What happened at TG catering, which is usually pretty good?

The sky over Kyushu was cloudy as we flew in, only the shapes of a few hills peeking through the mist. I girded myself for the battle that awaited.