Warning, this report will be spread over 3 months and is likely to ramble!
The Preamble
Last winter I didn’t take a holiday, things were looking grim at work and I decided my disposable income was better spent on a kitchen refit and a new car.
As a consequence I spent just over 12 months without a holiday or a flight and I started to get withdrawal symptoms.
After my company had made 750 people redundant, I was one of the fortunate ones to still have a job, I also found myself working back at Gatwick after stints at Heathrow and on other projects off airport.
My late summer holiday normally consists of 2 weeks of chilling out in Arizona, this year I decided to venture slightly further west and spend 2 weeks in Palm Springs.
March arrives and I think I will feel better with a holiday booked so I find a house to hire in Palm Springs and then set about finding flights. There are only really 2 logical choices flying from the U.K, AA or UA.
UA had by far the best schedules and although my experiences with them have been fairly negative and it means changing planes at LAX I decide to book with them.
At the time of booking i had a 2 and a half hour change in LAX and a return flight through Denver. Then the schedule changes started. Firstly they gave me a 1 hour 11 minute connection in LAX, for arriving aliens and a terminal change this was never going to work, so i ring them up and change it, i now have a 4 hour connection at LAX.
Next they cancel the DEN - LHR flight and book me a 7 hour connection in SFO leaving early in the morning. At this point ive had enough and since the schedule change was over 4 hours i cancel the booking.
I text Jo-anne and tell her, she thinks i'm a nutcase where travelling is concerned and assumes correctly i have an alternative plan.
On to the AA website and flights are booked via DFW, which is an altogether superior airport to LAX.
Move forward to June and i read on FT of the buy C get F offer on Emirates to various asian destinations with a stopover in Dubai allowed. For just over £1500 for 4 flights in F, this has just got to be done, so i get on the phone to Trailfinders to confirm they have the offer and LGW - DXB - BKK - DXB - LGW is booked.
Diane a friend of mine finds out i am doing this and wants to tag along, a quick phone call later and she too is booked.
Finally i decide to burn some US and Priority Club points and go to the States for Superbowl weekend, after playing around on the always fractious US website, i come up with a 60,000 mile Envoy trip to Savannah. The website refuses to take the booking so i end up on the phone. 30 minutes and the outrageous U.K departure tax later, i'm all set and 3 holidays are booked.
Moomba
Nov 3, 09, 2:26 pm
...As a consequence I spent just over 12 months without a holiday or a flight and I started to get withdrawal symptoms...
12 months :eek:
I get withdrawal symptoms after a month. ;)
I look forward to the reports, especially the one in the pointy end of the aircraft. :p
Gatwick Alan
Nov 3, 09, 3:33 pm
Holiday 1 - AA LHR-DFW-PSP-DFW(ORD)-LHR
LHR-DFW-PSP
Its 5am on Friday 25th September, we are supposed to be leaving in 45 minutes and Jo-anne isnt packed. In fairness she has just done a 21 hour non stop shift at work and is totally knackered. We eventually leave half hour late and i'm hoping the M25 wasnt going to be bad, amazingly it was really good so we rang the Purple Parking chauffer people on the way and told them we would be 30 minutes late and only ended up 15 minutes late.
A quick and easy check in at Terminal 3 and its time to get some breakfast. Last years breakfast up on the departures level was abysmal so we walked through to the pub at arrivals and had breakfast there.
Now it wouldnt be one of my trip reports without a moan or 2 so here is the first. When we reach security why do we have to have 3 people all shouting loudly about what you can and cant take through security, theres enough signs up and they seem to be competing to see who can be loudest. I couldnt make out a word of what they were saying and they seem to have the express purpose of raising peoples stress levels.
Anyway security was quick, polite and painless. LHR does seem to be getting its act together.
When you walk out of security you are in a shopping mall and its difficult to identify signs telling you where the gates are, eventually if you keep walking you will spot that you are actually in an airport.
After buying water and snacks for the flight, we notice that we are at the furthest possible gate from the terminal, felt like a 5 mile hike and when we got there most people had boarded well ahead of departure time.
AA51 was supposed to leave at 10.25am, everyones on by 10.15 so i'm thinking early arrival at DFW. Wrong. The captain announces luggage loading difficulties and we eventually leave the gate 25 minutes late. Im not worried about this as we have a 3 hour plus connection in Dallas.
I wont go into a lot of detail about an AA economy flight, promise to provide more details on the Emirates flight, but i will say last year and this have seen a definate improvement in crew service and for the first time in my memory we got a mid flight snack. Now it may only have been some cheesy nibbles, a shortcake biscuit and a very small toblerone bar, but at least it existed. The lunch was edible and of course the flight finished with the Pizza.
Our middle aged flight attendant was excellent, we had her again on the flight home, more about that later.
They didnt have any I94W forms on the plane which they blamed on London. This didnt help people on tight connections as the plane was 35 minutes late at the gate and we all had to stand in the immigration hall filling the I94W's in. Immgration and customs was quite slow for DFW taking 30 and 10 minutes respectively.
The flight to PSP was on time from Dallas and arrived 15 minutes early. You have to love PSP airport, walk out the gate and then walk outside to get to the baggage hall, one of the nicest small airports ive been through and free wifi everywhere too. Being compact, the car hire desks are opposite the reclaim belts and the cars are all on airport. We were away 20 minutes after disembarking.
The next 2 weeks were spent soaking up the sun and chilling out.
Next up - The flight home and a diversion to ORD.
camsean
Nov 3, 09, 11:43 pm
keep it coming!
Gatwick Alan
Nov 4, 09, 11:48 am
PSP-DFW(ORD)-LHR
Pitched up at Palm Springs airport at 9.30am, dropped the car off and walked into the terminal, as i'm walking through i notice the inbound flight is scheduled in an hour late.
At the check in, the AA agent is on the ball, he's noticed i'm on an international connection, we discuss the delay and i tell him i'm comfortable with the delay as Dallas is a good airport for changing terminals, he tells me if the delay gets significantly worse he will page me and route us through Chicago instead, little did i know at this point i'd be going there anyway.
The delay got a little worse and the 11.25am flight eventually closed the doors at 12.45. A good run into DFW meant we hit the gate 45 minutes behind schedule and we still had an hour to change terminals and grab a bite to eat.
When the flight attendant reads out the list of connecting gates on the plane, i wonder why they never seem to give out international destinations, i knew it was likely to be the D terminal, but theres no reason why it had to be and confirmation would have been nice.
When we reached the gate for the LHR flight at boarding time, they announced boarding would be a little delayed, but not to worry as we had strong tail winds and with a sub 8 hour flying time, would still be arriving an hour early.
I guess they havent heard about the Heathrow effect, arrive in the area an hour early and you are guaranteed a scenic tour of south east England.
We eventually got off the ground at 8pm, 50 minutes late.
I was delighted to see we had the same flight attendant serving us as we had on the flight out, she was a real diamond, she seemed to instinctively know which passengers to interact and share a joke with and those who wanted to be left alone. Her anecdotes helped to keep us amused later on in the flight.
About an hour into the flight, and before dinner had been served, the captain came on and made an announcement. He said that due to toilet blockages we were going to divert into Chicago and change planes and that they had a plane available for us. The Purser then came on and she fleshed (not flushed) out the announcement by explaining that 3 toilets were blocked already and they didnt want to risk an unpleasant situation developing later in the flight.
The plane incidentally was a 767, not my favourite plane as it doesnt have seatback TV's like the 777, but for an overnight flight its not really an issue as sleep is the priority. I do miss the chance to look at the map though.
As we are approaching Chicago the captain comes on and explains that we will be doing an overweight landing as obviously we were fuelled to cross the Atlantic and that there were procedures to be followed. This would entail the runway being lined with fire engines and that we should not worry as this was standard practice and precautionary. We thumped down at ORD at about 9.45 pm.
The purser asked us to remain in our seats for a moment whilst they checked with the authorities how they wanted to deal with the transfer of passengers onto the new plane as technically we had left the country. We were also asked to keep hold of our boading passes.
I was expecting us to pull up on an adjacent gate and be sheparded straight onto the new plane. Not so.
We pulled up at gate K9 and were asked to walk across to gate K16. There they told us boarding would start in 20 mins once everybody was at the gate and anybody needing a new boarding pass had approached the desk so that they could check us onto the new plane.
I decided to go for a walk to see if i could have simply walked out of the airport and surprise, surprise i easily could have done just that.
I realise that the passenger manifest would have shown me as not on board but by then i could have been far way. I guess i was surprised by the trusting nature of it all, not something i'm used to in U.S airports.
When boarding was called, youve never seen a plane board so quickly and efficiently, since the plane was the same configuration, everybody knew where their seat was and that there would be space in the overhead bins, in less than 15 minutes we were all sat down and ready to go, unfortunately the plane wasnt. In fact it was more than another hour before we pulled back from the gate.
Now this is where a good crew comes into its own and we were fortunate enough to have one. We were constantly updated as to what was going on and why. The purser explained the problems of transferring the catering from the previous flight. The captain explained the extra maintenance tests that had to be done for a flight over water and why we would be hearing the engines being started up and shutdown to test for leaks. When the maintenance logs were signed off we were finally on our way.
When the drinks cart came round we wanted a nightcap and i had $12 ready but the flight attendant said im not taking your money after what we just put you through.
We eventually landed at Heathrow about 2 hours late and i had to get the Chauffer parking people to go fetch the car.
When i got home i emailed AA to tell thm how well the crew had handled the situation and in particular how good our flight attendant was. They replied by email and later by letter and rewarded me with 20,000 miles for the inconvenience. I was pretty surprised, and of course pleased as the thrust of my email was to compliment, not complain.
Well thats it for holiday 1, in a few weeks its on to holiday 2, as Moomba puts it, in the pointy end. Stay tuned