rosscali
Mar 6, 08, 7:33 pm
INTRO
In the late seventies I started to go to boarding school in New Jersey. This was a long way from home in Berkeley in Northern California where I grew up and I turned 13 just after I got to the school, once a feeder school exclusively for Princeton University. During this time my mother was travelling 12-13 times per year from San Francisco to Washington, DC for business, so I would take the train down there to see her on weekends when I was back east and she was there for work. My mother often complained that her travel experience was not as good as it was for male travelers. She always struck me as a well educated, professional woman who would never consider herself a feminist. She just through that the flight attendants focused on male business travelers and not female business travelers. She was at a point where she was travelling a lot and had begun to hate it, even though every trip started and ended with SFO Helicopter Airlines from Berkeley to San Francisco, a company and a mode of transportation to the airport that is now long gone. Our family always flew United, and at that time in our downstairs den in the house there were two plaques engraved with my parent’s names on each, courtesy of United Airlines’ 100,000 mile club, a privilege gained after submitting a self-kept blue “flight log” that United used to give frequent fliers. I believe the dates on these plaques were sometime around 1965. That was a frequent flier program based on honor as frequent travelers were given a blue book to enter their trips in. They mailed this to United and got the plaque after this travel was somehow “verified.” According to my parents, before the Red Carpet Club there was the 100,000 mile club, free to 100,000 milers, but after a time the Red Carpet Club was established so anyone who paid could join.
I thought that for my mother’s birthday in 1977 I would do something to make her travel experience better. With money I had earned from a summer job I got a money order from the post office for the grand sum of $30.00. I also wrote a letter to United, in longhand, explaining that my mother was a busy person, who needed recognition when travelling; I explained about my mother’s dislike of travel and her frequent travel to Washington always on United. I thought that a Red Carpet membership would be just the thing to make her like travel like I did. At that time I made her reservations on the phone and then would submit a record of this to our travel agency and they wrote the tickets, and I booked her on United flight 50 on her birthday that year from SFO to IAD. In my letter I explained that my mother was on flight 50 on her birthday and would they please give her the membership card onboard. For years flight 50 was the morning DC-10 from San Francisco to Dulles. Flight 58 was the noon trip; things were more predictable and more stagnant than they are now, but then there was regulation in US air travel and now there is not.
Never hearing anything back from United I decided to tell my father what I had done. He was pretty angry that I had sent this money off with a letter to a busy airline. The day before she left for Washington, he sheepishly called the Red Carpet office, then in Boston, from work to ask if they had received such a letter, as I don’t think he believed me. The phone call went something like this:
“My son I think wrote a letter requesting that you issue a Red Carpet membership to my wife for her birthday on a flight of yours tomorrow…”
“Is this Mr. Lambert?” the lady replied.
“Yes” my father, shocked, responded.
“Is your wife still planning to travel on flight 50 tomorrow?”
“Yes she is” my father sputtered, shocked.
“We have everything taken care of; just make sure she is on the flight.”
End of phone call.
The next day my mother boarded flight 50 and saw there were a lot of empty seats. She didn’t sit in her assigned seat, but rather in the back, and settled in to her pre-occupied state of reading people’s dissertations, books, and magazines, whatever. Imagine her surprise when once in flight after the breakfast service the crew came on the PA asking if she was on board. Thinking some catastrophic emergency was evolving, she ran to the galley identifying herself and the crew simply asked where she was sitting.
Shortly thereafter a procession of the captain and all the crew filed down the aisle, the captain holding a birthday cake and singing. My mother described what happened next as sort of surreal; everyone singing Happy Birthday to her and then they presented her with this gold envelope and inside, a one-year membership to the Red carpet club and also a spouse card for my father; everyone stood and clapped and they made this announcement that there was a new member of the Red Carpet Club now onboard. Passengers sitting near her all had cake, and once at Dulles, when the mobile lounge pulled into the terminal, she was directed to the Red Carpet Club where the receptionist was expecting her, and they made her a drink on the house for her birthday. She got a bit liquored-up after the flight that time instead of before to start her Red Carpet Club experience. One year later she told me she sent in the princely sum of $200 to upgrade her membership to a life membership. I don’t believe there are any more life memberships with the Red Carpet Club.
This was the United Airlines in my mind I wanted to work for, seeking to be one of the people that cared and made some magic happen sometimes for travelers. Approximately six years later when I had just finished my second year of college I got a job with United in Santa Barbara, California at age 19. United Airlines had already changed a lot, and we all know that things like that don’t happen anymore, and a young business traveler today might not even believe this story, but it happened. I worked at a line station, with no union on property, which defined our duties quite differently than somewhere like Los Angeles or San Francisco. We did EVERYTHING NECESSARY to get a plane out. I did this for 2 years, and then was a flight attendant for 13 years both on domestic and international routes. I liked the job; thought working for United Airlines had a lot of advantages, but couldn’t believe the huge rift in onboard service levels, stimulated by the crew and their attitude on any given flight. There was also the unveiling of “what they forgot to board today,” when what is promised or expected by customers is not there and you have to improvise. I left before I hated it, and this is good because I have a good memory of the experience and know that I contributed to a little magic in the lives of many that I was on the plane with for that time. There were special occasions, and some magical moments, and lots of delays and problems, like life itself. Taking an educational leave in 1998, I went to Hotel School in Europe, got another degree, and resigned in early 2000. It is coming up on 10 years since I’ve been off of the plane as a crewmember.
Fast forward to today and I still try to remain loyal to United. The memories of the old are almost gone. I stay in contact with a few people in Honolulu where I was based for 9 years but consider myself just an anonymous being in the world of the “new” United. I recently spoke with someone who is probably close to a 1K with American; he aptly described elite mileage membership as a way to “bring travel to a level that it should be at for everyone, but isn’t.” Now being a Premier Exec with United for a few years, I sadly agree with him. Wanting to be Star Alliance Gold so that I don’t have to talk to a reservation agent in India is a transgression that the lady my father spoke to working in the Red Carpet Office 30 years ago could never or would never have forecast.
When I was a flight attendant I developed the yearning to travel to far off places and did research beforehand. All of us flight attendants seemed to have this same yearning. I was into the obscure though. After a trip to the Kingdom of Tonga and Samoa in 1986 I started to wonder about the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, who went there and how to get there. The Maldives Mission in New York sent no information so I found an adventure company that sold packages to the Maldives as a recuperation option after a Himalayan trek. I went in 1988 with a colleague from work and we took a 5-day safari trip around uninhabited islands and islands or atolls tourists don’t go to as a rule. A “luxury” resort we stayed at for $48 a night included showers with half-way desalinized water. They really shouldn’t have bothered. The plastic trash-can like tubs around the resort catching rain water captured what was served with meals in the resort’s restaurant. There were 40 such resorts in the Republic in 1988. Now, the Maldives has two Four Seasons Hotels, a W ! and a myriad of other resorts that had really changed the capacity of tourism for the Republic and probably the demographics of the visitors to the place. I saw it before all that, and this I treasure. 87 resorts now is over half of what was there 20 years ago.
So, Easter Island has been on my list for a long time. And now comes the time to go. I at the moment have a job allowing me to take 2 weeks off and I have a friend who also loves to travel, and has been a lot of places except Easter Island so we planned this all out last June. I wanted to get as close as I could on Star Alliance and then last June we bought tickets from Buenos Aires on the LAN website to Easter Island returning to Montevideo. Purchasing the ticket leaving from Argentina proves to be a lot cheaper than buying a ticket to Easter Island originating in Chile or elsewhere.
29 February 2008
UA 218F SFO-IAD 0950(0947) 1757(1750) A320 2B
I leave from home at 7:30AM on the Bayporter to SFO. Going to Hotel School in the French –speaking part of Switzerland, Swiss Romande, it doesn’t take long to identify the Bayporter driver as clearly French. My family name is like ‘Smith’ in French so he says something to me in French, and I respond, a bit automatically, as for 2 ½ years I had to speak French; I guess I remember enough to have a conversation with him. Another passenger boarding later is going to France and they embark on an endless conversation about politics, the world, etc. allowing me to exit the conversation and listen to some music on my iPod on the way to the airport.
Check-in is so fast I am in the security line about 2 minutes after I walked in to the terminal. I forgot to do online check-in at home before packing my computer, but today it doesn’t matter, my bag is on its way and so am I, through security in a moment. United’s operation seems smooth and relaxed, and there don’t seem to be the plethora of travelers there normally are. Maybe it’s a light travel day.
The Red Carpet Club isn’t even that crowded and time passes quickly, so soon I am off to the gate. Boarding has already begun and close to 10 minutes before departure the agent is shutting the door. The Captain is big on communication, which I love, and tells us he predicts smooth sailing ahead, and no major air traffic problems. As a flight attendant previously I really value that, as on many occasions I told the people what was going on when we were delayed as the captain just didn’t want to. I felt it was better to tell them what I knew when we were delayed than leave them in limbo. My late mother who was a School Psychologist, often reminded me when I was a flight attendant that passengers who travel these days are people used to being in control, and when the plane is delayed or something has gone wrong, the lack of information makes them not in the grove. They’ve had to give up control to be a customer on the plane, but during irregularities they need information in order to feel more secure. What great advice. I have told this to many burned-out flight attendants who no longer care when they go to work, hoping they would follow my lead, and while it didn’t always work, a few of them came up to me later when I would run into them and said simply: “I agree with your mom, we had a nasty delay and I told the people what was going on every step of the way, and customers thanks me personally.” How many Flyer Talkers are people in control in their lives and appreciate the same thing. My guess is many.
We push back a bit early or right on time and soon we are in the line-up to take-off. Today is a good day to fly from San Francisco. The purser is very young, with a nice smile, and the flight attendant helping her is in maybe her second trimester of pregnancy and wondering how bad it’s going to get. She’s pre-occupied and wants to be eating pizza or wishing she wasn’t pregnant. She takes orders for lunch before and after take-off, using our names during the process.
The purser lays the tablecloths on the tables before the drink service. When I started with United in 1983, the most senior flight attendant in the organization was Eddie Lauterbach, of San Francisco, who started in 1944. Her seniority number was 000001. She flew to Santa Barbara three times a week when I was an agent there. If the kitchen forgot to board something, she’d stand in the doorway, preventing you, the agent, wanting an on-time departure, from shutting the door until you found it and got it on the plane. When she did this to my boss it was pretty stellar. In Santa Barbara, if the flight was :01 late and it could have been prevented, we got a 30 minute lecture from the Station Manager, a woman who gave her heart and soul to the company until the day she passed away. Anyone, including Hillary, Barack, or Condoleezza would want the flight to go on time, versus hearing that lecture. When Eddie had her 40th anniversary, the first for a flight attendant with United at the time, there was a reception at near gate 81 at SFO’s North Terminal in 1984 celebrating this. My boss flew me up to San Francisco for the day to represent Santa Barbara, as she was a recent visitor to our station. It was a different time than now. On the flight from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, she got linen from the kitchen before every flight, and put linen down on everyone’s table before she served the drinks, for a 50 minute flight. She, like my mother, thought the DC-6B was the only way to travel. That was the plane cast in bronze on my parent’s 100,000 mile plaques. There was an all-first class configuration, flying from Sacramento to Los Angeles, many years ago, with real bone china and wine and both Eddie and my mother, who had never met one another, thought it was really flying. Supposedly the all coach configuration left an hour later, but in 1960 my mother’s work paid for first class, and until the day in 2006 when a truck without its brakes hit her car on her way to work, ending her life, she remembered that DC-6B experience as traveling that no one else could approach. Eddie preferred the Stratocruiser to Hawaii actually; a post Wrold War II long-range luxury aircraft that only flew for a few years. Eddie was on it as often as possible when it operated with the United “mainliner” livery.
Our purser today sets the tables before serving the drinks, so I think about Eddie for a moment, wondering if she is still alive. Maybe not, but she was a legend for United, and flight attendants and their union. While sometimes difficult to deal with, Eddie was a link to a world those of us flying today might not understand, or appreciate. She frightened us all sometimes, but passing out trays of orange juice in coach because she wanted to land with it all used, as it was there for the customers, so they should receive it. Sadly, today, once the tables are lined on flight 218 to Dulles and all 12 drinks are presented, she whips into the lunch service. No time to savor the booze with the hot nuts if you are drinking booze at 10:30AM PT. I am going to Easter Island so I wanted to have a drink. Waiting 15 or 20 minutes would have changed the aspect of the service as not rushed, but then maybe no one notices or they are used to being rushed. They are so excited to see food on a plane again no one says anything. They’ve run out of cheese tortellini which was a coach entrée like 20 years ago, and I have the beef short ribs, also a coach entrée twenty years ago, but it is pretty good, and the salad is OK. She could have presented rolls from a basket, instead of alternating the two different types boarded today on everyone’s tray, but I think I might be the only person who noticed. I tried to go out of my way to make it all an experience when I was the flight attendant, or at least I thought I did, but I often noticed people didn’t seem to care. Maybe they did like so many FlyerTalkers but just never said anything about it. There was a period when I was quite young when I tired to pretend every flight I was on were on Golden Odyessy to Shangri-La, even if the plane was destined to Midland – Bay Cities, Saginaw, actually my first destination as a flight attendant, on a dreary day in 1985.
I watch the movie “Martian Child” a tribute to those lacking social skills, and it is poignant, as I identify somewhat with the kid, but I stop two thirds of the way through to write down some stuff here before it becomes omni-present and not substantive enough in my mind to include in this “report.”
The A-320’s first class seat are the newer blue version, and they are comfortable, and I firmly believe that this aircraft has one more foot of width then a 737. While A-319s with 8 first class seats feel truly cramped, the A-320 somehow feels more spacious. The guy in 1B, is very interested in having his seat fully reclined the whole flight, making getting my tray table out impossible. Finally I make it, but I remind myself that on day time flights I set a pretty good example by thinking of those around me before getting TOO comfortable. It would work if there were five feet between us, but there are not. I silently pat myself on the back for looking back at the legs of the customer I recline into so as not to straddle them in like I am currently.
Now they are showing the west-bound movie and it stars that “The Office dude,” who I am sure is crazy, and not acting, so I skip it. I’m not much of a TV person but the few shows I have seen worry that he seriously disturbed, but he’s rich and I’m not.
Seatguru.com says this plane, United’s A-320, as EMPOWER, and I’ve got my cords and attachments, but my EMPOWER plug has been sealed shut by the mechanics. Should I be the Virgo that I am and write to them, or have 100 others already done this before me? Or were they taken out years ago.. As of this writing, seatguru.com still shows EMPOWER on United’s A-320s.
Sadly, on this flight, no birthday, no Red Carpet membership presented, but that would never happen, would it? Eddie Lauterbach and her era are long gone, and what remains is the Darwinist components of the company who used to put the name William Patterson, a native of Hawaii, and a former company chairman who dreamed of his planes flying to Asia, on their 747s.
In the first row are a mid-aged lady and her mother, both well-dressed. When the flight attendant introduces herself, the mother reaches out and shakes her hand. The daughter looks like she could be a primary care physician, smart, knowledgeable, but down-to-earth because she deals with the human condition for a living She is nicely but not over-dressed. Her mother has a dress on and high heals, and she gets her hair “done” and she’s all ready to travel.. The daughter, I am postulating, took her mother to San Francisco for a warmer get-a-way than what they would have on the east coast. The mother looks twice or three times at their hotel bill from the Fairmont on Nob Hill, a hotel I got to visit once a year on Christmas Eve when my parents allowed me to ride the “outside elevator” to the rooftop bar for a drink after seeing Santa Claus at a now-closed department store called the City of Paris. I would imagine mom wanted to go back there, as it is a San Francisco original. When I was a child, before the neighbor’s trees sprout up taller then they should be, I could see that lit elevator shaft from our deck off of our living room. Sitting in the bulkhead, neither the mother nor the daughter kick off their shoes and put their feet on the bulkhead and then yell at the flight attendant about how dirty the plane is, as I witnessed so many times when I was a flight attendant. The mother is maybe 80, healthy, and smiling. She appreciates travel. She’s not a road-warrior, but she’s happy to be there, separate drink service or not. Her daughter notices her mother’s good spirits and is quietly satisfied.
I didn’t take pictures, but you know the drill. When I flew from Hawaii to Japan once a week for nine years as a crew member, and was younger, I was the focus of so many pictures because of my California look and youth, according to our treasured guests from the East, and the Japanese traveler to Hawaii ALWAYS took photos of the meals. I love seeing them on Flyer Talk, but would have to drink a lot more wine to actually snap some shots, but I’ll work on this later…
We arrive 7 minutes early, and I am on the mobile lounge to the B concourse at the arrival time of this flight. As I look over at the other mobile lounge, going to the main terminal and baggage claim, the ladies from 1CD are there, off to the main terminal. Mom is still smiling. Her daughter is still revering her quietly. They’ve made it back home, and the trip was a success. That’s great. Off to the Massage Bar, where I went once in 2006, as I think it is the best way to stay relaxed on layovers, and maybe healthier. I only wait about 10 minutes for a “double-shot” which is a 30 minute massage. “Luther” would certainly be whom I would request again; he is excellent. During the massage I fell asleep, cried out, and when I sat up my eyes were filled with water. I zigzagged back into the mobile lounge and back to the C concourse, where I go to the Red Carpet Club just outside the gate I am to leave from.
The weather is calm, it was supposed to rain, but it hasn’t started. It looks like the aircraft is here, also a good sign. The place starts to fill up but I’ve got a decent recharge-my-laptop seat.
29 February 2008
UA 847C IAD-EZE 2145 1125 767-300 8B
Boarding for the completely full flight starts on time and I board with the Business Class passengers, settling into my seat quickly. Approximately 10 minutes before departure, agents are running around making sure certain individuals are on board, and about 7 minutes before departure, they disembark satisfied with everything, and the door shuts, and we push back a few minutes early. It has not started to rain yet, unlike the weather forecast.
The crew is made up of nine flight attendants, and perhaps 5 of them are men, all quite senior. To me, the youngest looks to be one of my former colleagues in Honolulu, Melanie, who was based there when I was, over 10 years ago. Melanie works in the business class galley on this flight, as she did three years ago when I last flew from Buenos Aires, with my mother on what would be my mother’s last international trip before her untimely death. Melanie is wearing reading glasses now, as I will be in a year or two, but she still has adhered to the US airline’s now defunct weight check, and her good attitude still prevails. She checks with the couple seated behind me about their infant’s meal, smiles to everyone as she walks by during boarding, as seems happy to be there, and happy to be going to Buenos Aires. Perhaps the lure of Argentina, or the fact that we are flying into summer, or the spending power of the dollar draws these senior crew members to this flight, as from Washington a flight attendant for United with the seniority has many options these days of where to fly outside of the United States. Next to me sits a Latin business-man, whose colleagues are seated in other areas of the cabin, and they nod to each other and sometimes do a simultaneous thumbs-up as they pass each other in the cabin. I am a bit of a loaner, something I am working on changing, but the stud next to me calls no less than 5 ladies, before departure reminding them all in Spanish how much he loves them, and how is jetting off to Argentina. He’s would be a good candidate for the “put-the-fork-down” gym, but he’s got admirers, so good for him.
We push back on time, and are in the air 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time, and the captain soon announces that we will be 25 minutes ahead of schedule into Buenos Aires.
In our seat pockets are amenity kits, far downgraded from what they were 10 years ago, but there is an eye mask, ear plugs and a took brush and “one-shot” of toothpaste. What I don’t see are menus, and they weren’t distributed once we were all on board. So, they didn’t board them I guess, or maybe they don’t do this anymore. I hope the former is true. If I was paying $4,000+ for this seat, instead of the $2,000 H fare I am paying along with 60,000 miles, I would want a menu.
When the purser, a white-haired Spanish looking man with several last names, says: “We’ve got filet mignon, chicken curry, lasagna, or a quick meal” for dinner, it almost sounds like domestic did when I was saying it 20 years before. The gentlemen by the window has steak, and I think this is not the food one should eat before sleeping immediately so I choose the chicken curry.
Growing up in California in the parking lots of wineries in the Sonoma and Russian River Valleys while my parents were in drinking the place’s offerings every weekend, as I was too young to be admitted to the tasting room, and then going to Hotel School in Switzerland where one must memorize all of the appellations of France, I DO want to see what the wines are. When I was old enough, my mother made me memorize all about California wines and organize blind tastings for houseguest for her elaborate dinners. Nothing was ever simple at our house. After a time she only purchased wine on mailing list “futures” from vintners she knew who only sold estate bottles wines, only from the Russian River Valley (in Sonoma County about 80 miles north of San Francisco) So, you can call me a wine snob but when the crew slinging out the trays says: “Red or White” this is not good. I had Champagne from the start but it is served from the galley meaning it might be pre-departure champagne and not French, but it is as the gravelly, but smooth taste of the cuvee, consistent with the chardonnay grapes they grow in Champagne. I have another glass with the starter, an appetizer of a piece of chicken with some sort of yogurt sauce, a salad composed only of lettuce, and some choice of dressing. I choose whatever choice isn’t Blue Cheese and perhaps because I haven’t eaten in 8 hours, it tastes great.
When I have French red wine, I don’t know what it is, and later learn that it is Cotes du Rhone, and it was a stronger one than most, tasting like a Haut-Medoc.
The chicken curry doesn’t look great, slices of chicken that look like bleached ham, with a mild curry sauce, a spinach mash and some sort of starch I now forget, but again, as United’s food normally does, tastes wholesome and good.
When the cheese and dessert cart comes it does not have the two red wines they are serving with dinner. If these folks had ever run into the maitre d’ that taught us traditional French service at Ecole Hoteliere de Glion, they’d be shot. Port accompanies cheese and chocolate, but so does Bordeaux, or a good Cabernet, or a Malbec if you can handle the tannin.. I ask for another glass of red wine, the request is forgotten and when I am still eating and the purser tries to collect my tray I ask again. This shouldn’t happen, but I am not surprised. They want their rest break, but instead of offering stuff, you have to be persistent. Historically I am far too critical of United but basically, I have been on better International flights.
Still, the flight is on time, and hopefully in 3 hours and 45 minutes perhaps my bag was transferred, and the seat is comfortable. Since purchasing this ticket and redeeming miles for the upgrade I saw that United was introducing a new business class product. I worried that with a reduction in 6 business class seats a switch to the new configuration could result in someone upgraded on miles getting bumped into coach. I have done a lot of upgrades using mileage in advance, more than I care to say, and this has never happened, but you never know. A few days before the flight, there were 8 business class seats to play with, and then I realized that the new configuration aircraft would be reserved for more lucrative routes, such as Europe, and that such a new configuration would probably hit this route, in say, 2025, or later. Yeah I’ve seen their website, but I’ve also worked for them as well. I have no problems with the seat, with the possible exception that I can’t get the footrest to go out. The purser comes and fiddles around with it; he gets it to work, great! I forgot that I used to find ways to fix this stuff, but on airplanes older than this. I used my suitcase to keep the footrest up on the 747-100s and the Premier Execs thanked me. Don Juan next to me, out of cell phone contact with his women, eats his filet, has some dessert, and is totally passed out 1/3 of the way into the first set of movies. After dinner and the wine, etc., I watch “Gone Baby Gone” which was a very depressing drama I couldn’t stop watching. Morgan Freeman is one of my Hollywood heros I wanted to see but he plays a character I don’t like this time, a character I understand but don’t like. I only 5 times switched to the map showing us where we are, which I find better than any entertainment anyway, perhaps that reason I am writing this for FlyerTalk instead of watching another movie. I am easily pleased if I know where we are flying over and how fast we are going.
I sleep about 6 hours and wake up about 1:15 away from landing. The map tells me that we have just entered Argentina. The service hasn’t started. About an hour before landing they serve the breakfast, a one choice offering of fruit, a croissant and yogurt. It is enough but an omelet, even one of those ones they used to serve, or I used to serve, from San Francisco to Seattle on a 7:00AM flight in coach, would have been more appropriate. We land early as promised, to a muggy, rainy summer day in Buenos Aires, and the airport looks just like it did when I departed three years ago. There is a long line in Immigration, but it moves fast, and the bank line style numbering telling you where to go next is partially the reason; I waited a little under 10 minutes. Just after Immigration, I meet my traveling companion to Easter Island, a friend who happens to rent out the bottom part of the house I live in. We’ve had this plan since last June, and are both excited we made it there. He is without his one checked bag though, flying the day before I did to JFK on American and then connecting to LAN to Santiago. His AA flight is :45 late leaving him one hour in JFK. He makes his LAN flight but his luggage does not. He filed a claim in Santiago but has plans to go to EZE on this day to meet up with me. We both bought the same ticket out of EZE to Easter Island and back. They are to send his bag to Buenos Aires later that day, after the following day’s New York flight arrives, so he is in baggage limbo.
We exit and go to the Sheraton Libertador in downtown Buenos Aires, a very centrally located hotel that is aging, but convenient. I also don’t think they have a lot of Starwood Gold guests, and I don’t ask for upgrades, but they put us in a twin room on the Club floor, one of several such floor as the club itself is above them all and explain the offerings at the lounge. This is greatly appreciated. We both walk around town and get our bearings, nap a bit and then later have dinner. I guess it was 11:00PM. Things are just getting started on a Saturday night; but we tourists have decided it was long enough to wait. My friend went to this steakhouse before and a half a filet for $11.00 US is like one pound of meat and it is cooked perfectly. I had to research wineries in Argentina when I was with my wine drinking mother three years prior so it’s nice to be familiar with this small establishment’s 6 page wine list. When we pay the bill, the waiter pours each of us a glass of lemonciello. After a time I realize I should get to bed, it’s 1:00AM, and when we both sleep we are out like coma patients.
We awake on Sunday morning, check out the hotels’ club lounge and have a very nice light breakfast, with excellent coffee, something you don’t have to worry about in Latin America. His bag has still not arrived, and LAN’s baggage information on line is not updated, the phone numbers they gave him are all recordings with no opportunity to leave a message. I worry about checking my bag on this carrier.
We taxi out to the airport in plenty of time so we can try to get more information on my friend’s missing luggage, both of us worrying about the prospects of flying to Easter Island, with 4X per week service, without his bag. We check in at Buenos Aires, he without explaining about his bag, that was supposed to be sent there the day before. A supervisor emerges, punched away at the computer, and says that the bag wasn’t boarded out of JFK until 2 days after he arrived on American, but says it really is on this morning’s arrival from the Big Apple, and will be there at 12:05PM, and we arrive at 3:40PM. We believe her. I check my bag to Easter Island and we adjourn to the Admirals Club, the OneWorld lounge in Buenos Aires. There we experience that International Premium people watching, and I discover a bottle of Argentinean sparkling wine, and find it appealing. We see a guy in a burnt orange University of Texas t-shirt, and all of a sudden things seem far less exotic. We see a GOL 737-800 leave, looking like a much larger aircraft than a 737, and a 737-700 arrive, looking like a more expensive version of the 737-100 I used to fly on, and the passengers exit from what looks like stairs the maintenance crew uses to board, so what is used in Kathmandu for Biman Bangladesh, but the people get off, and walk right by us to customs, starting at the Admirals Club people drinking their booze. It is really raining now.
LA 450C 2MAR EZESCL 2L A320-200
We adjourn to gate 4 and board the A-320 with is 12 business class seats. They are wide and comfortable. In rows 1 and 3 are I think 4 businessmen traveling together. They board later than the other business class passengers and proceed to shout over us at the lack of carryon space. We have our luggage above and under our seats, but not taking up the room of others, and all of a sudden I remember the stern warning from my high-school music teacher, Mr. Loux, before our trip to England with a girl’s school in the summer of 1979.
“When you wear the blazer of The Lawrenceville School you represent Lawrenceville. When you travel from the United States to another country, regardless of what you are wearing, you represent the country you have come from. If you misbehave or act poorly outside of your home country, you diminish the reputation of your country. So, act accordingly and you will return to your country as proud citizens.”
I’ve been to about 33 countries so far, and this alone is a wonderful benefit and gift few can also experience. I must say that this is advice many other travelers, from many other countries besides the US, should really adhere to. I heard it first in a high school from a then-all-boys school about to be joined with an all-girl’s school on a trip singing our way around England. The gentlemen I am referring to are yelling over us at the lack of carry-on space on this plane, and acting as if they are on a caravan in the Sudan devoid of water for 3 days. It completely ruins any separate environment Business Class was meant to create, from the start. It might sound stern, but if I were their boss and witnessed this I’d give them a few days off without pay to think about how their behavior resonates. If there were down here selling something I wouldn’t buy anything from them, forget it. They finally shut up and the plane departs on time. The two flight attendants in business class are very nice and professional, and shortly after take-off serve a cold meal consisting of sliced beef, some shrimp and the Henriot Champagne is quite good. The wines offered are from Chile and Argentina, and tastefully presented, but showing the customers the labels, unlike on the United flight I took the day before. The meal is satisfying, but not too much food, and soon we are over the Andes. We fly over Mendoza and once over the peaks, begin a quick descent into Santiago. We arrive right on time. The final announcement is made in Spanish, English, and German. After the German announcement there are applauds from 40 or so customers in the airplane’s main cabin.
LA833C 2MAR SCL IPC B767-300 Seat 3L (aisle on the right)
Going to Easter Island from this flight one must clear Customs and Immigration in Chile, and then re-check your bag. My bag, checked 2:15 before the flight, does not come off the belt. I see other passenger’s Easter Island luggage but not mine. My traveling companion DOES see his bag, and I am grateful he is reunited with it, as I was really beginning to wonder if he’d see it again. It was put on the LAN flight to Santiago from New York 48 hours after he left, so it sat in JFK for a day. Mine still fails to show. The agent approaches me asking to see my claim check. He radios a man on the ramp who pokes his head through where the baggage is coming through, concerned, and goes out to look for it. If they put it on the plane in Buenos Aires then it is probably with the luggage for Tahiti, the final destination of our next flight, but maybe not. As I go to the counter to begin filling out information, a radio call comes in, and they’ve got my bag. It appears solo on a different carousel, corresponding to what I overhear on the radio. I failed to get outwardly irate, but I am so relieved to see it. So are they. Then they tell us we need to exit customs and then go up to the third floor and take it to counter 84 to be re-checked. We do this, and I wonder what it would be like with a connection of less than 2:45, which is what we have. We do this and the agent accepts my bag, and then checks my friend’s. We proceed to gate 20a in the domestic departure area. There is no lounge for business class passengers in Santiago departing on “National Flights.” Supposedly LAN has three lounges in SCL, but maybe they are all for International customers. We see through the glass the passengers for LA833 to Papette, leaving from 20b. Before boarding, two young men approach all of us sitting down match our passports or ID cards with our tickets, and make a yellow mark on our boarding passes, They are relaxed and smiling, doing the ID check before the boarding. Then they call the flight. At 5:30PM, :35 minutes before departure, we board the flight, and we Rapa Nui bound people and the Papette bound customers trickle down from both gates into the same jetway. The crowd on this flight reminds me of a flight I took from Bangkok to Kathmandu about 10 years before. There are people from everywhere. Some Americans, many British, many Germans, and a Polish tour group with a guide holding a Polish flag. The crowd is travel weary but has a gleam in their eye.
The 767-300 has the next seats and there is maybe 6 feet between each. There is a 13’ screen in front of us, and the seat folds out into a bed. The controls are rather self explanatory, but look daunting. All of the economy passengers board and the collection of people is story-book material. I have been studying Easter Island’s history and for 6 months have been brushing up on my Spanish after studying it for 8 years when I was in high school in college. I did a presentation on Easter Island 6 weeks prior and in my Spanish class at an Adult School near Berkeley. In preparation I learned about the MOAI statues, the people, and their difficult and isolated history for my Tuesday night diversion, and in 36 hours I need to email a bunch of pictures to be shown in the upcoming class I will be absent for. A group of Polynesians board, as well as a couple we saw on the earlier flight slowly translating Spanish into French in their heads. They must be going home to Tahiti. In business class, two very smart looking flight attendants, one for each aisle, are terribly gracious and friendly. On our right side is Ana Maria with blonde hair tied into a bun, with a very clear and pleasant English accent. The lady on the left is very nicely attired, but we feel there is a 20% chance that she was born a man. Her countenance during the safety video makes you look twice. The application of make-up doesn’t seem to exist in such force or complexity in the United States but then I live in Birkenstock-land. Ana Maria likes to have fun on the plane like I used to, offering the leftover Spanish newspapers on the jet way to all of us, suggesting we practice our Spanish on the 5 hour flight. A young steward passes with a cart with Spanish magazines suggesting the same thing. Everyone is smiling and it makes such a difference. When I try to put away what I think is a blanket Ana Maria tells me it is a duvet. The amenity kit is a disappointment, with an eye shade, pen, and an ear plug wrapped in a polyester type covering, which looks to be a pillow-case. I realize it is a pillow case for the pillow inside the duvet. I guess it could also be used as a burka if the flight got diverted to Jeddah. Ana Maria, I hate to say this, reminds me of me when I was 25 and still thought all of this was magic, and not high-priced, sometimes civilized public transportation. I got this system wide flight attendant-of-the-month award, in 1993, which was both an honor and a curse. Your photo is in the office in O’Hare although you are based in Honolulu, and other flight attendants stare at you when you walk through what we called the Terminal for Tomorrow then, (terminal 1 in O’Hare when it was built,) and colleagues challenge you to see if you are worthy of such an accolade from the company, especially if you are flying with those not from your home base, but after a while I didn’t care what they thought or observed, but it took a while. I got that Flight Attendant of the month stuff for the company for many reasons, but one was I wrote in many suggestions of the customers, and finally the company listened, a bit. Ana Maria tells us of the same thing, explaining that they have an edge over Aerolines Argentinas because they aren’t always on strike. Sadly, I don’t think she realizes that Aerolines Argentines has really scaled down and no longer flies to New Zealand like they used to. LAN has been for 5 years now, and she tells us of her conveying the comments of the OneWorld’s downunder customers to her management, and is happy to report they have improved service on their limited First Class A-340 flights. She tells me of their flight between Auckland and Sydney and how everyone has something to say about LAN in comparison to Qantas, etc. I remember our flights from Auckland to Sydney, and on each occasion I said what I thought I never would: “Sorry, we’ve run out of vodka.” It did happen on those flights. It is hard not to like Ana Maria. I just hope she is conveying the comments of passengers with a semi-functioning blood-alcohol level. Later in the flight she hands me a comment card written in Spanish, seeming confident I should be able to understand the questions. That was after her initial questioning me as to whether I was a spy or not, making me laugh as when I was a flight attendant I was observed 4 times by “Ghost Riders.”.The entertainment options are extensive, all on-demand, but I’d rather write to you, and thell you this little story.
The menu and wine list are very impressive, a sommelier’s dream in terms of showcasing the flight’s offerings, which I think were the same as the previous flight. The people that made these wines would be so happy to hear Ana Maria describe them. Once airborne they go right into the dinner service. I would have preferred a cocktail service first but looking at our 70% full business cabin, I think the rest of the guests were grateful to eat and get it over with. Ana Maria has the wine pairings the menu mentions memorized, and wants you to sample and appreciate the wines of her country. She offers each passenger a taste before serving; everyone trusts her. Any member of LAN’s management team would have tears of joy in their eyes. She is responsive, genuine, and dotes over the English lady traveling solo in the seat across from us just as she engages the couple a few rows forward.
We fly directly over Archipielago Juan Fernandez but the sky is cloud covered. Most everyone falls asleep.
As we chase the sun going west we finally succumb to twilight, and then dusk. Dusk comes quickly as we descent and an announcement is made by the captain, his first of the flight, saying we are descending to Easter Island. Looking out of the right side of the airplane we see a single red light, and then realize we are only 100 feet above the ocean, We touch down at Matavederi International Airport, and after coming to a stop do a 180 degree turn and taxi down the runway.
Once stopped, it is now dark, but from the right window I see a lone catering truck, painted grey, with Kai Kai Catering stenciled on the side. In Hawaii, eating is Kau Kau. I wonder if Kai Kai means the same thing in Rapa Nui, the indigenous language of Easter Island. The truck slowly ascends its platform to the 1R door.
RAPA NUI – ISLA de PASQUA - IPC
I have put the lone British woman’s back pack in the overhead bin for her in Santiago as is it a long way up from where she is sitting. I offer to get it for her and she accepts. She is in front of me exiting. She exits the aircraft and sees the South Pacific sky dotted with clouds and the aircraft dominating the view. She turns to me and gently grabs my shoulders and shakes me: “We’re here; we’ve made it!” How many places are there left that cause world travelers to do this? I said: “Welcome to Easter Island” and put her hand on the hand rail, as she is reserved but truly excited, and I don’t want her to fall. She absent tly hands me her back-pack and descends the staircase, and once on the tarmac I give her her things back. She stands next to me in the baggage claim, telling me she is fulfilling a dream of many years. It’s poignant to hear her to say this to a stranger, to say the least. As we enter the baggage claim, an official with the friendliest drug dog I’ve ever seen, I’ll call her Sadie, greets us all with a wagging tail. We assemble and soon our bags are off. As the bags arrive the man and Sadie walk around us but Sadie seems to just be greeting us, however she does sniff a lot. We exit and Sadie is there again, and she has no interest in either mine nor the British woman’s luggage. Outside, Bill of the Hotel Taur’aa is waiting with two ladies. His wife Edith is at home in bed I presume. There are four names written on a board, mine is one of them. Our luggage goes into one van, and we into another. Leis go over all of us. It looks like the scene when I landed late one night in the Kingdom of Tonga in 1986, a month after I graduated from college, but Easter Island is more updated than Tonga was then. Still, many children in the background stare at you behind a fence and their teeth forming smiles and the whites of their eyes are present. Soon we are on our way to the hotel, a 3 or 4 minute journey.
We enter our room and it is basic, but very clean, with two twin beds that are narrower than most, but the floor and bathroom are scrubbed to perfection. It is close to 11:30PM local time, but I want to walk and look at the sky. When I walk at night in Berkeley I see the Big Dipper and wish I knew more about astronomy. Here is a totally different vista, with what must be the Milky Way galaxy exerting itself through the night. Shooting stars are plentiful. I want to get a lounge chair and just watch, but I am tired, so I retreat to my room and after a few hours, fall asleep.
We spent thee full days in Easter Island but despite our original plans, didn’t take tours. We hiked the first day to a large crater near two small islands famous for the Birdman competition, and the second day rented bikes and rode a whopping 18 miles around the island on its main road, sometimes paved and sometimes not. At the end of that day I worried my forehead, despite the SPF 30 sun block, might fall off. There are two British couples there as well, and I joked at breakfast on the morning of the third day that Two days later it is crusting up nicely, and I am hoping for some new skin in a few days. We humans are amazing creatures. Breakfast each morning at the hotel was a homemade collection of different things, an omelet with ham cheese and mushrooms on one day, mango and banana pancakes the next, ham, cheese and guacamole the third, and a fried egg and ham and some sort of breadfruit the day we left, which I crammed into the locally made bread and made a sandwich with.
The roads are 60% paved on the 66 square mile island. Biking on day 2 was a daunting expedition but we spend hours riding down the roads all on our own, with no one around. Truck drivers hauling stuff slowed almost to a halt so as not to pollute us with dust, pointing silently to places of interest they knew we were headed for. They are all cool and want you to be going the right way. I cannot say the same for tourists renting vehicles, and a large shirtless German man we’ll call Didier who whistled at us to get out of his way so he could snap a photo when we were doing the same thing. We reached the quarry where many MAOI stand finished but not moved into their intended places on the ocean, and it is a priceless experience. I buy some stone heads and wooden heads (MOAI) like everyone else and when we leave Edith Pakarati, wife and co-proprietor of the Hotel, gives us a rope with a shell and a feather attached, similar to what the winner of the birdman competition received. Mine is still on as I write this, on the way back to Santiago.
For dinner we eat the French Restaurant Lonely Planet likes the best on the first night, a ocean front restaurant with a great view the second, and Te Moana, a restaurant with delicious steak and fish the night before leaving, our favorite of the trip. We bring Chilean pesos to pay for the hotel, which seems to be appreciated, and the island’s one ATM machine does only accept MasterCard which we read in guide books.
Easter Island is a place quite unlike any other, and I guess I hope it stays that way.
We pass a shop selling tank-tops we like many times, but only once it is open. When it is we are filthy from walking for 8 miles and very very hot and sweaty. I refuse to try on t-shirts when I am not clean so we agree to come back. The following day however we never see the store open. Then that night, she is not there again.
Wednesday night before we leave the plane comes from Santiago and goes to Tahiti, and Bill tells us he is going on the flight to Tahiti to visit family in Australia. So he’s not there on the day we leave. Who will load the luggage when 6 of us are departing on the same flight?
The fan in the room works but does cool us down until 2:00AM. I remember old cab drivers in Washington DC when I was there to visit my mother on a weekend away from boarding school in the fall saying: “Finally the good sleeping weather has come.”
We awake on Thursday and are all ready to depart at 9:30AM for the airport but the ladies want us to a wait a bit. Edith comes out and settles everyone’s tab; we’ve given them cash days before to unload it. Bill isn’t there so I think I should help her with the luggage. Just the way my father raised me, I guess. I and my traveling companion, still wanting to get these tank-tops from the shop that is closed, silently decide she will make two trips to the airport, and we are business class and everyone else, we think, is in coach, so I load everyone’s luggage in the van and they all get in. In about 15 minutes she returns, and we put our luggage in. My friend asks her about this shop that is closed, and she says not to worry, that I will check us both in and we will go find the lady, who is her friend and probably still sleeping. We get to the airport and our checked luggage is manually inspected but a very polite man, who gives me the thumbs up and a handshake at it its conclusion and I get into the business class line. Soon I am in front of the agent and Edith appears behind me and says, not in Spanish, but what must be Rapa Nui: “I’m taking Larry to buy some shirts from my girlfriend whose asleep, check them both in…” The agent says to me in English: “Do you have Larry’s passport?” I say yes, and soon, we have our pre-assigned seats and boarding passes and he’s taken our luggage to a big guy with dreadlocks, who puts them in a container just behind the desk, for the Priority luggage.
15 minutes later I look up and see the 767 on approach from Tahiti, it has deposited Bill there on his way to Australia, and returned to get us and go back to the home country, Chile. I wish Larry had returned as I want to go through security. 15 minutes after that Edith and Larry return.
Edith took Larry to the shop owner’s home, where they did not find her, and then to the shop owner’s mother’s house, where again, they did not find her. The lady who owned the shop apparently is dating a medic at the hospital, and there they found them in front of the hospital kissing. Edith scooped up the lady, drove her to the shop, and they conducted business and she brought Larry back to the airport.
Larry has the tank-tops he wanted and some for me as well. Edith has chosen my size. She gets out of the van and walks up to me and gives me a big kiss, in front of everyone in the terminal. She tells me I am a gentlemen, I guess for helping with the luggage as she husband is out of town, and hands me a business card of the hotel. I am hoping to mail her monthly pills to combat fleas for her four dogs. One of these puppies sat on my foot at every opportunity, wanting to be touching me, like my former dog always did. To have a simple room with a breezy porch with a friendly dog sitting on your foot whenever he can isn’t a bad way to spend a few days. The room was too hot when the door was closed, but you’re in Easter Island, and air conditioning is only in a few places. This is a good place by the way.
LA 834C 6MAR IPC SCL B-767-300 Seat 2A
The plane is ready for boarding and we ascend the staircase to the air conditioned inner sanctum. I was overheated since the bicycle trip and was sort of happy to be back in the world of convenience.
The crew is cheery, but they pass out Pisco Sour and water, no champagne. I think they don’t board enough for this round trip, as in-flight they have none available, but the same wine they had a few days before is good.
Kai Kai Catering has done its thing and has boarded steak with mushroom sauce, tuna with spinach and mashed potatoes and gnocchi for the main courses. I have the tuna with some Argentinean Chardonnay and it is good. Befriending a British couple in the room next to us in the hotel who are on a delayed honeymoon we tell the crew it is their big trip and give them their seat number in the back. The purser doesn’t seem to speak much English and seems very appreciative I am trying my horrible Spanish.
We fly quickly to Santiago and I skip all of the entertainment in order to get up to date on this report. The service is quick, they don’t have champagne like on the menu, and like the first flight, don’t pass out water or any beverages once the meal service is over. I use the flight attendant call button, and get more drinks quickly.
We land on time and the luggage arrives promptly. Soon we are on the way to the Sheraton Santiago, where we checked into the smallest room I have seen in a long time, making Gold Status look like a punitive measure. After calling down and talking to the staff, we get a room on the Executive Level, and it is a lot larger and we are grateful.
http://picasaweb.google.com/rosscali4/EA08?authkey=GbXpxQlfsqk
In the late seventies I started to go to boarding school in New Jersey. This was a long way from home in Berkeley in Northern California where I grew up and I turned 13 just after I got to the school, once a feeder school exclusively for Princeton University. During this time my mother was travelling 12-13 times per year from San Francisco to Washington, DC for business, so I would take the train down there to see her on weekends when I was back east and she was there for work. My mother often complained that her travel experience was not as good as it was for male travelers. She always struck me as a well educated, professional woman who would never consider herself a feminist. She just through that the flight attendants focused on male business travelers and not female business travelers. She was at a point where she was travelling a lot and had begun to hate it, even though every trip started and ended with SFO Helicopter Airlines from Berkeley to San Francisco, a company and a mode of transportation to the airport that is now long gone. Our family always flew United, and at that time in our downstairs den in the house there were two plaques engraved with my parent’s names on each, courtesy of United Airlines’ 100,000 mile club, a privilege gained after submitting a self-kept blue “flight log” that United used to give frequent fliers. I believe the dates on these plaques were sometime around 1965. That was a frequent flier program based on honor as frequent travelers were given a blue book to enter their trips in. They mailed this to United and got the plaque after this travel was somehow “verified.” According to my parents, before the Red Carpet Club there was the 100,000 mile club, free to 100,000 milers, but after a time the Red Carpet Club was established so anyone who paid could join.
I thought that for my mother’s birthday in 1977 I would do something to make her travel experience better. With money I had earned from a summer job I got a money order from the post office for the grand sum of $30.00. I also wrote a letter to United, in longhand, explaining that my mother was a busy person, who needed recognition when travelling; I explained about my mother’s dislike of travel and her frequent travel to Washington always on United. I thought that a Red Carpet membership would be just the thing to make her like travel like I did. At that time I made her reservations on the phone and then would submit a record of this to our travel agency and they wrote the tickets, and I booked her on United flight 50 on her birthday that year from SFO to IAD. In my letter I explained that my mother was on flight 50 on her birthday and would they please give her the membership card onboard. For years flight 50 was the morning DC-10 from San Francisco to Dulles. Flight 58 was the noon trip; things were more predictable and more stagnant than they are now, but then there was regulation in US air travel and now there is not.
Never hearing anything back from United I decided to tell my father what I had done. He was pretty angry that I had sent this money off with a letter to a busy airline. The day before she left for Washington, he sheepishly called the Red Carpet office, then in Boston, from work to ask if they had received such a letter, as I don’t think he believed me. The phone call went something like this:
“My son I think wrote a letter requesting that you issue a Red Carpet membership to my wife for her birthday on a flight of yours tomorrow…”
“Is this Mr. Lambert?” the lady replied.
“Yes” my father, shocked, responded.
“Is your wife still planning to travel on flight 50 tomorrow?”
“Yes she is” my father sputtered, shocked.
“We have everything taken care of; just make sure she is on the flight.”
End of phone call.
The next day my mother boarded flight 50 and saw there were a lot of empty seats. She didn’t sit in her assigned seat, but rather in the back, and settled in to her pre-occupied state of reading people’s dissertations, books, and magazines, whatever. Imagine her surprise when once in flight after the breakfast service the crew came on the PA asking if she was on board. Thinking some catastrophic emergency was evolving, she ran to the galley identifying herself and the crew simply asked where she was sitting.
Shortly thereafter a procession of the captain and all the crew filed down the aisle, the captain holding a birthday cake and singing. My mother described what happened next as sort of surreal; everyone singing Happy Birthday to her and then they presented her with this gold envelope and inside, a one-year membership to the Red carpet club and also a spouse card for my father; everyone stood and clapped and they made this announcement that there was a new member of the Red Carpet Club now onboard. Passengers sitting near her all had cake, and once at Dulles, when the mobile lounge pulled into the terminal, she was directed to the Red Carpet Club where the receptionist was expecting her, and they made her a drink on the house for her birthday. She got a bit liquored-up after the flight that time instead of before to start her Red Carpet Club experience. One year later she told me she sent in the princely sum of $200 to upgrade her membership to a life membership. I don’t believe there are any more life memberships with the Red Carpet Club.
This was the United Airlines in my mind I wanted to work for, seeking to be one of the people that cared and made some magic happen sometimes for travelers. Approximately six years later when I had just finished my second year of college I got a job with United in Santa Barbara, California at age 19. United Airlines had already changed a lot, and we all know that things like that don’t happen anymore, and a young business traveler today might not even believe this story, but it happened. I worked at a line station, with no union on property, which defined our duties quite differently than somewhere like Los Angeles or San Francisco. We did EVERYTHING NECESSARY to get a plane out. I did this for 2 years, and then was a flight attendant for 13 years both on domestic and international routes. I liked the job; thought working for United Airlines had a lot of advantages, but couldn’t believe the huge rift in onboard service levels, stimulated by the crew and their attitude on any given flight. There was also the unveiling of “what they forgot to board today,” when what is promised or expected by customers is not there and you have to improvise. I left before I hated it, and this is good because I have a good memory of the experience and know that I contributed to a little magic in the lives of many that I was on the plane with for that time. There were special occasions, and some magical moments, and lots of delays and problems, like life itself. Taking an educational leave in 1998, I went to Hotel School in Europe, got another degree, and resigned in early 2000. It is coming up on 10 years since I’ve been off of the plane as a crewmember.
Fast forward to today and I still try to remain loyal to United. The memories of the old are almost gone. I stay in contact with a few people in Honolulu where I was based for 9 years but consider myself just an anonymous being in the world of the “new” United. I recently spoke with someone who is probably close to a 1K with American; he aptly described elite mileage membership as a way to “bring travel to a level that it should be at for everyone, but isn’t.” Now being a Premier Exec with United for a few years, I sadly agree with him. Wanting to be Star Alliance Gold so that I don’t have to talk to a reservation agent in India is a transgression that the lady my father spoke to working in the Red Carpet Office 30 years ago could never or would never have forecast.
When I was a flight attendant I developed the yearning to travel to far off places and did research beforehand. All of us flight attendants seemed to have this same yearning. I was into the obscure though. After a trip to the Kingdom of Tonga and Samoa in 1986 I started to wonder about the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, who went there and how to get there. The Maldives Mission in New York sent no information so I found an adventure company that sold packages to the Maldives as a recuperation option after a Himalayan trek. I went in 1988 with a colleague from work and we took a 5-day safari trip around uninhabited islands and islands or atolls tourists don’t go to as a rule. A “luxury” resort we stayed at for $48 a night included showers with half-way desalinized water. They really shouldn’t have bothered. The plastic trash-can like tubs around the resort catching rain water captured what was served with meals in the resort’s restaurant. There were 40 such resorts in the Republic in 1988. Now, the Maldives has two Four Seasons Hotels, a W ! and a myriad of other resorts that had really changed the capacity of tourism for the Republic and probably the demographics of the visitors to the place. I saw it before all that, and this I treasure. 87 resorts now is over half of what was there 20 years ago.
So, Easter Island has been on my list for a long time. And now comes the time to go. I at the moment have a job allowing me to take 2 weeks off and I have a friend who also loves to travel, and has been a lot of places except Easter Island so we planned this all out last June. I wanted to get as close as I could on Star Alliance and then last June we bought tickets from Buenos Aires on the LAN website to Easter Island returning to Montevideo. Purchasing the ticket leaving from Argentina proves to be a lot cheaper than buying a ticket to Easter Island originating in Chile or elsewhere.
29 February 2008
UA 218F SFO-IAD 0950(0947) 1757(1750) A320 2B
I leave from home at 7:30AM on the Bayporter to SFO. Going to Hotel School in the French –speaking part of Switzerland, Swiss Romande, it doesn’t take long to identify the Bayporter driver as clearly French. My family name is like ‘Smith’ in French so he says something to me in French, and I respond, a bit automatically, as for 2 ½ years I had to speak French; I guess I remember enough to have a conversation with him. Another passenger boarding later is going to France and they embark on an endless conversation about politics, the world, etc. allowing me to exit the conversation and listen to some music on my iPod on the way to the airport.
Check-in is so fast I am in the security line about 2 minutes after I walked in to the terminal. I forgot to do online check-in at home before packing my computer, but today it doesn’t matter, my bag is on its way and so am I, through security in a moment. United’s operation seems smooth and relaxed, and there don’t seem to be the plethora of travelers there normally are. Maybe it’s a light travel day.
The Red Carpet Club isn’t even that crowded and time passes quickly, so soon I am off to the gate. Boarding has already begun and close to 10 minutes before departure the agent is shutting the door. The Captain is big on communication, which I love, and tells us he predicts smooth sailing ahead, and no major air traffic problems. As a flight attendant previously I really value that, as on many occasions I told the people what was going on when we were delayed as the captain just didn’t want to. I felt it was better to tell them what I knew when we were delayed than leave them in limbo. My late mother who was a School Psychologist, often reminded me when I was a flight attendant that passengers who travel these days are people used to being in control, and when the plane is delayed or something has gone wrong, the lack of information makes them not in the grove. They’ve had to give up control to be a customer on the plane, but during irregularities they need information in order to feel more secure. What great advice. I have told this to many burned-out flight attendants who no longer care when they go to work, hoping they would follow my lead, and while it didn’t always work, a few of them came up to me later when I would run into them and said simply: “I agree with your mom, we had a nasty delay and I told the people what was going on every step of the way, and customers thanks me personally.” How many Flyer Talkers are people in control in their lives and appreciate the same thing. My guess is many.
We push back a bit early or right on time and soon we are in the line-up to take-off. Today is a good day to fly from San Francisco. The purser is very young, with a nice smile, and the flight attendant helping her is in maybe her second trimester of pregnancy and wondering how bad it’s going to get. She’s pre-occupied and wants to be eating pizza or wishing she wasn’t pregnant. She takes orders for lunch before and after take-off, using our names during the process.
The purser lays the tablecloths on the tables before the drink service. When I started with United in 1983, the most senior flight attendant in the organization was Eddie Lauterbach, of San Francisco, who started in 1944. Her seniority number was 000001. She flew to Santa Barbara three times a week when I was an agent there. If the kitchen forgot to board something, she’d stand in the doorway, preventing you, the agent, wanting an on-time departure, from shutting the door until you found it and got it on the plane. When she did this to my boss it was pretty stellar. In Santa Barbara, if the flight was :01 late and it could have been prevented, we got a 30 minute lecture from the Station Manager, a woman who gave her heart and soul to the company until the day she passed away. Anyone, including Hillary, Barack, or Condoleezza would want the flight to go on time, versus hearing that lecture. When Eddie had her 40th anniversary, the first for a flight attendant with United at the time, there was a reception at near gate 81 at SFO’s North Terminal in 1984 celebrating this. My boss flew me up to San Francisco for the day to represent Santa Barbara, as she was a recent visitor to our station. It was a different time than now. On the flight from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, she got linen from the kitchen before every flight, and put linen down on everyone’s table before she served the drinks, for a 50 minute flight. She, like my mother, thought the DC-6B was the only way to travel. That was the plane cast in bronze on my parent’s 100,000 mile plaques. There was an all-first class configuration, flying from Sacramento to Los Angeles, many years ago, with real bone china and wine and both Eddie and my mother, who had never met one another, thought it was really flying. Supposedly the all coach configuration left an hour later, but in 1960 my mother’s work paid for first class, and until the day in 2006 when a truck without its brakes hit her car on her way to work, ending her life, she remembered that DC-6B experience as traveling that no one else could approach. Eddie preferred the Stratocruiser to Hawaii actually; a post Wrold War II long-range luxury aircraft that only flew for a few years. Eddie was on it as often as possible when it operated with the United “mainliner” livery.
Our purser today sets the tables before serving the drinks, so I think about Eddie for a moment, wondering if she is still alive. Maybe not, but she was a legend for United, and flight attendants and their union. While sometimes difficult to deal with, Eddie was a link to a world those of us flying today might not understand, or appreciate. She frightened us all sometimes, but passing out trays of orange juice in coach because she wanted to land with it all used, as it was there for the customers, so they should receive it. Sadly, today, once the tables are lined on flight 218 to Dulles and all 12 drinks are presented, she whips into the lunch service. No time to savor the booze with the hot nuts if you are drinking booze at 10:30AM PT. I am going to Easter Island so I wanted to have a drink. Waiting 15 or 20 minutes would have changed the aspect of the service as not rushed, but then maybe no one notices or they are used to being rushed. They are so excited to see food on a plane again no one says anything. They’ve run out of cheese tortellini which was a coach entrée like 20 years ago, and I have the beef short ribs, also a coach entrée twenty years ago, but it is pretty good, and the salad is OK. She could have presented rolls from a basket, instead of alternating the two different types boarded today on everyone’s tray, but I think I might be the only person who noticed. I tried to go out of my way to make it all an experience when I was the flight attendant, or at least I thought I did, but I often noticed people didn’t seem to care. Maybe they did like so many FlyerTalkers but just never said anything about it. There was a period when I was quite young when I tired to pretend every flight I was on were on Golden Odyessy to Shangri-La, even if the plane was destined to Midland – Bay Cities, Saginaw, actually my first destination as a flight attendant, on a dreary day in 1985.
I watch the movie “Martian Child” a tribute to those lacking social skills, and it is poignant, as I identify somewhat with the kid, but I stop two thirds of the way through to write down some stuff here before it becomes omni-present and not substantive enough in my mind to include in this “report.”
The A-320’s first class seat are the newer blue version, and they are comfortable, and I firmly believe that this aircraft has one more foot of width then a 737. While A-319s with 8 first class seats feel truly cramped, the A-320 somehow feels more spacious. The guy in 1B, is very interested in having his seat fully reclined the whole flight, making getting my tray table out impossible. Finally I make it, but I remind myself that on day time flights I set a pretty good example by thinking of those around me before getting TOO comfortable. It would work if there were five feet between us, but there are not. I silently pat myself on the back for looking back at the legs of the customer I recline into so as not to straddle them in like I am currently.
Now they are showing the west-bound movie and it stars that “The Office dude,” who I am sure is crazy, and not acting, so I skip it. I’m not much of a TV person but the few shows I have seen worry that he seriously disturbed, but he’s rich and I’m not.
Seatguru.com says this plane, United’s A-320, as EMPOWER, and I’ve got my cords and attachments, but my EMPOWER plug has been sealed shut by the mechanics. Should I be the Virgo that I am and write to them, or have 100 others already done this before me? Or were they taken out years ago.. As of this writing, seatguru.com still shows EMPOWER on United’s A-320s.
Sadly, on this flight, no birthday, no Red Carpet membership presented, but that would never happen, would it? Eddie Lauterbach and her era are long gone, and what remains is the Darwinist components of the company who used to put the name William Patterson, a native of Hawaii, and a former company chairman who dreamed of his planes flying to Asia, on their 747s.
In the first row are a mid-aged lady and her mother, both well-dressed. When the flight attendant introduces herself, the mother reaches out and shakes her hand. The daughter looks like she could be a primary care physician, smart, knowledgeable, but down-to-earth because she deals with the human condition for a living She is nicely but not over-dressed. Her mother has a dress on and high heals, and she gets her hair “done” and she’s all ready to travel.. The daughter, I am postulating, took her mother to San Francisco for a warmer get-a-way than what they would have on the east coast. The mother looks twice or three times at their hotel bill from the Fairmont on Nob Hill, a hotel I got to visit once a year on Christmas Eve when my parents allowed me to ride the “outside elevator” to the rooftop bar for a drink after seeing Santa Claus at a now-closed department store called the City of Paris. I would imagine mom wanted to go back there, as it is a San Francisco original. When I was a child, before the neighbor’s trees sprout up taller then they should be, I could see that lit elevator shaft from our deck off of our living room. Sitting in the bulkhead, neither the mother nor the daughter kick off their shoes and put their feet on the bulkhead and then yell at the flight attendant about how dirty the plane is, as I witnessed so many times when I was a flight attendant. The mother is maybe 80, healthy, and smiling. She appreciates travel. She’s not a road-warrior, but she’s happy to be there, separate drink service or not. Her daughter notices her mother’s good spirits and is quietly satisfied.
I didn’t take pictures, but you know the drill. When I flew from Hawaii to Japan once a week for nine years as a crew member, and was younger, I was the focus of so many pictures because of my California look and youth, according to our treasured guests from the East, and the Japanese traveler to Hawaii ALWAYS took photos of the meals. I love seeing them on Flyer Talk, but would have to drink a lot more wine to actually snap some shots, but I’ll work on this later…
We arrive 7 minutes early, and I am on the mobile lounge to the B concourse at the arrival time of this flight. As I look over at the other mobile lounge, going to the main terminal and baggage claim, the ladies from 1CD are there, off to the main terminal. Mom is still smiling. Her daughter is still revering her quietly. They’ve made it back home, and the trip was a success. That’s great. Off to the Massage Bar, where I went once in 2006, as I think it is the best way to stay relaxed on layovers, and maybe healthier. I only wait about 10 minutes for a “double-shot” which is a 30 minute massage. “Luther” would certainly be whom I would request again; he is excellent. During the massage I fell asleep, cried out, and when I sat up my eyes were filled with water. I zigzagged back into the mobile lounge and back to the C concourse, where I go to the Red Carpet Club just outside the gate I am to leave from.
The weather is calm, it was supposed to rain, but it hasn’t started. It looks like the aircraft is here, also a good sign. The place starts to fill up but I’ve got a decent recharge-my-laptop seat.
29 February 2008
UA 847C IAD-EZE 2145 1125 767-300 8B
Boarding for the completely full flight starts on time and I board with the Business Class passengers, settling into my seat quickly. Approximately 10 minutes before departure, agents are running around making sure certain individuals are on board, and about 7 minutes before departure, they disembark satisfied with everything, and the door shuts, and we push back a few minutes early. It has not started to rain yet, unlike the weather forecast.
The crew is made up of nine flight attendants, and perhaps 5 of them are men, all quite senior. To me, the youngest looks to be one of my former colleagues in Honolulu, Melanie, who was based there when I was, over 10 years ago. Melanie works in the business class galley on this flight, as she did three years ago when I last flew from Buenos Aires, with my mother on what would be my mother’s last international trip before her untimely death. Melanie is wearing reading glasses now, as I will be in a year or two, but she still has adhered to the US airline’s now defunct weight check, and her good attitude still prevails. She checks with the couple seated behind me about their infant’s meal, smiles to everyone as she walks by during boarding, as seems happy to be there, and happy to be going to Buenos Aires. Perhaps the lure of Argentina, or the fact that we are flying into summer, or the spending power of the dollar draws these senior crew members to this flight, as from Washington a flight attendant for United with the seniority has many options these days of where to fly outside of the United States. Next to me sits a Latin business-man, whose colleagues are seated in other areas of the cabin, and they nod to each other and sometimes do a simultaneous thumbs-up as they pass each other in the cabin. I am a bit of a loaner, something I am working on changing, but the stud next to me calls no less than 5 ladies, before departure reminding them all in Spanish how much he loves them, and how is jetting off to Argentina. He’s would be a good candidate for the “put-the-fork-down” gym, but he’s got admirers, so good for him.
We push back on time, and are in the air 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time, and the captain soon announces that we will be 25 minutes ahead of schedule into Buenos Aires.
In our seat pockets are amenity kits, far downgraded from what they were 10 years ago, but there is an eye mask, ear plugs and a took brush and “one-shot” of toothpaste. What I don’t see are menus, and they weren’t distributed once we were all on board. So, they didn’t board them I guess, or maybe they don’t do this anymore. I hope the former is true. If I was paying $4,000+ for this seat, instead of the $2,000 H fare I am paying along with 60,000 miles, I would want a menu.
When the purser, a white-haired Spanish looking man with several last names, says: “We’ve got filet mignon, chicken curry, lasagna, or a quick meal” for dinner, it almost sounds like domestic did when I was saying it 20 years before. The gentlemen by the window has steak, and I think this is not the food one should eat before sleeping immediately so I choose the chicken curry.
Growing up in California in the parking lots of wineries in the Sonoma and Russian River Valleys while my parents were in drinking the place’s offerings every weekend, as I was too young to be admitted to the tasting room, and then going to Hotel School in Switzerland where one must memorize all of the appellations of France, I DO want to see what the wines are. When I was old enough, my mother made me memorize all about California wines and organize blind tastings for houseguest for her elaborate dinners. Nothing was ever simple at our house. After a time she only purchased wine on mailing list “futures” from vintners she knew who only sold estate bottles wines, only from the Russian River Valley (in Sonoma County about 80 miles north of San Francisco) So, you can call me a wine snob but when the crew slinging out the trays says: “Red or White” this is not good. I had Champagne from the start but it is served from the galley meaning it might be pre-departure champagne and not French, but it is as the gravelly, but smooth taste of the cuvee, consistent with the chardonnay grapes they grow in Champagne. I have another glass with the starter, an appetizer of a piece of chicken with some sort of yogurt sauce, a salad composed only of lettuce, and some choice of dressing. I choose whatever choice isn’t Blue Cheese and perhaps because I haven’t eaten in 8 hours, it tastes great.
When I have French red wine, I don’t know what it is, and later learn that it is Cotes du Rhone, and it was a stronger one than most, tasting like a Haut-Medoc.
The chicken curry doesn’t look great, slices of chicken that look like bleached ham, with a mild curry sauce, a spinach mash and some sort of starch I now forget, but again, as United’s food normally does, tastes wholesome and good.
When the cheese and dessert cart comes it does not have the two red wines they are serving with dinner. If these folks had ever run into the maitre d’ that taught us traditional French service at Ecole Hoteliere de Glion, they’d be shot. Port accompanies cheese and chocolate, but so does Bordeaux, or a good Cabernet, or a Malbec if you can handle the tannin.. I ask for another glass of red wine, the request is forgotten and when I am still eating and the purser tries to collect my tray I ask again. This shouldn’t happen, but I am not surprised. They want their rest break, but instead of offering stuff, you have to be persistent. Historically I am far too critical of United but basically, I have been on better International flights.
Still, the flight is on time, and hopefully in 3 hours and 45 minutes perhaps my bag was transferred, and the seat is comfortable. Since purchasing this ticket and redeeming miles for the upgrade I saw that United was introducing a new business class product. I worried that with a reduction in 6 business class seats a switch to the new configuration could result in someone upgraded on miles getting bumped into coach. I have done a lot of upgrades using mileage in advance, more than I care to say, and this has never happened, but you never know. A few days before the flight, there were 8 business class seats to play with, and then I realized that the new configuration aircraft would be reserved for more lucrative routes, such as Europe, and that such a new configuration would probably hit this route, in say, 2025, or later. Yeah I’ve seen their website, but I’ve also worked for them as well. I have no problems with the seat, with the possible exception that I can’t get the footrest to go out. The purser comes and fiddles around with it; he gets it to work, great! I forgot that I used to find ways to fix this stuff, but on airplanes older than this. I used my suitcase to keep the footrest up on the 747-100s and the Premier Execs thanked me. Don Juan next to me, out of cell phone contact with his women, eats his filet, has some dessert, and is totally passed out 1/3 of the way into the first set of movies. After dinner and the wine, etc., I watch “Gone Baby Gone” which was a very depressing drama I couldn’t stop watching. Morgan Freeman is one of my Hollywood heros I wanted to see but he plays a character I don’t like this time, a character I understand but don’t like. I only 5 times switched to the map showing us where we are, which I find better than any entertainment anyway, perhaps that reason I am writing this for FlyerTalk instead of watching another movie. I am easily pleased if I know where we are flying over and how fast we are going.
I sleep about 6 hours and wake up about 1:15 away from landing. The map tells me that we have just entered Argentina. The service hasn’t started. About an hour before landing they serve the breakfast, a one choice offering of fruit, a croissant and yogurt. It is enough but an omelet, even one of those ones they used to serve, or I used to serve, from San Francisco to Seattle on a 7:00AM flight in coach, would have been more appropriate. We land early as promised, to a muggy, rainy summer day in Buenos Aires, and the airport looks just like it did when I departed three years ago. There is a long line in Immigration, but it moves fast, and the bank line style numbering telling you where to go next is partially the reason; I waited a little under 10 minutes. Just after Immigration, I meet my traveling companion to Easter Island, a friend who happens to rent out the bottom part of the house I live in. We’ve had this plan since last June, and are both excited we made it there. He is without his one checked bag though, flying the day before I did to JFK on American and then connecting to LAN to Santiago. His AA flight is :45 late leaving him one hour in JFK. He makes his LAN flight but his luggage does not. He filed a claim in Santiago but has plans to go to EZE on this day to meet up with me. We both bought the same ticket out of EZE to Easter Island and back. They are to send his bag to Buenos Aires later that day, after the following day’s New York flight arrives, so he is in baggage limbo.
We exit and go to the Sheraton Libertador in downtown Buenos Aires, a very centrally located hotel that is aging, but convenient. I also don’t think they have a lot of Starwood Gold guests, and I don’t ask for upgrades, but they put us in a twin room on the Club floor, one of several such floor as the club itself is above them all and explain the offerings at the lounge. This is greatly appreciated. We both walk around town and get our bearings, nap a bit and then later have dinner. I guess it was 11:00PM. Things are just getting started on a Saturday night; but we tourists have decided it was long enough to wait. My friend went to this steakhouse before and a half a filet for $11.00 US is like one pound of meat and it is cooked perfectly. I had to research wineries in Argentina when I was with my wine drinking mother three years prior so it’s nice to be familiar with this small establishment’s 6 page wine list. When we pay the bill, the waiter pours each of us a glass of lemonciello. After a time I realize I should get to bed, it’s 1:00AM, and when we both sleep we are out like coma patients.
We awake on Sunday morning, check out the hotels’ club lounge and have a very nice light breakfast, with excellent coffee, something you don’t have to worry about in Latin America. His bag has still not arrived, and LAN’s baggage information on line is not updated, the phone numbers they gave him are all recordings with no opportunity to leave a message. I worry about checking my bag on this carrier.
We taxi out to the airport in plenty of time so we can try to get more information on my friend’s missing luggage, both of us worrying about the prospects of flying to Easter Island, with 4X per week service, without his bag. We check in at Buenos Aires, he without explaining about his bag, that was supposed to be sent there the day before. A supervisor emerges, punched away at the computer, and says that the bag wasn’t boarded out of JFK until 2 days after he arrived on American, but says it really is on this morning’s arrival from the Big Apple, and will be there at 12:05PM, and we arrive at 3:40PM. We believe her. I check my bag to Easter Island and we adjourn to the Admirals Club, the OneWorld lounge in Buenos Aires. There we experience that International Premium people watching, and I discover a bottle of Argentinean sparkling wine, and find it appealing. We see a guy in a burnt orange University of Texas t-shirt, and all of a sudden things seem far less exotic. We see a GOL 737-800 leave, looking like a much larger aircraft than a 737, and a 737-700 arrive, looking like a more expensive version of the 737-100 I used to fly on, and the passengers exit from what looks like stairs the maintenance crew uses to board, so what is used in Kathmandu for Biman Bangladesh, but the people get off, and walk right by us to customs, starting at the Admirals Club people drinking their booze. It is really raining now.
LA 450C 2MAR EZESCL 2L A320-200
We adjourn to gate 4 and board the A-320 with is 12 business class seats. They are wide and comfortable. In rows 1 and 3 are I think 4 businessmen traveling together. They board later than the other business class passengers and proceed to shout over us at the lack of carryon space. We have our luggage above and under our seats, but not taking up the room of others, and all of a sudden I remember the stern warning from my high-school music teacher, Mr. Loux, before our trip to England with a girl’s school in the summer of 1979.
“When you wear the blazer of The Lawrenceville School you represent Lawrenceville. When you travel from the United States to another country, regardless of what you are wearing, you represent the country you have come from. If you misbehave or act poorly outside of your home country, you diminish the reputation of your country. So, act accordingly and you will return to your country as proud citizens.”
I’ve been to about 33 countries so far, and this alone is a wonderful benefit and gift few can also experience. I must say that this is advice many other travelers, from many other countries besides the US, should really adhere to. I heard it first in a high school from a then-all-boys school about to be joined with an all-girl’s school on a trip singing our way around England. The gentlemen I am referring to are yelling over us at the lack of carry-on space on this plane, and acting as if they are on a caravan in the Sudan devoid of water for 3 days. It completely ruins any separate environment Business Class was meant to create, from the start. It might sound stern, but if I were their boss and witnessed this I’d give them a few days off without pay to think about how their behavior resonates. If there were down here selling something I wouldn’t buy anything from them, forget it. They finally shut up and the plane departs on time. The two flight attendants in business class are very nice and professional, and shortly after take-off serve a cold meal consisting of sliced beef, some shrimp and the Henriot Champagne is quite good. The wines offered are from Chile and Argentina, and tastefully presented, but showing the customers the labels, unlike on the United flight I took the day before. The meal is satisfying, but not too much food, and soon we are over the Andes. We fly over Mendoza and once over the peaks, begin a quick descent into Santiago. We arrive right on time. The final announcement is made in Spanish, English, and German. After the German announcement there are applauds from 40 or so customers in the airplane’s main cabin.
LA833C 2MAR SCL IPC B767-300 Seat 3L (aisle on the right)
Going to Easter Island from this flight one must clear Customs and Immigration in Chile, and then re-check your bag. My bag, checked 2:15 before the flight, does not come off the belt. I see other passenger’s Easter Island luggage but not mine. My traveling companion DOES see his bag, and I am grateful he is reunited with it, as I was really beginning to wonder if he’d see it again. It was put on the LAN flight to Santiago from New York 48 hours after he left, so it sat in JFK for a day. Mine still fails to show. The agent approaches me asking to see my claim check. He radios a man on the ramp who pokes his head through where the baggage is coming through, concerned, and goes out to look for it. If they put it on the plane in Buenos Aires then it is probably with the luggage for Tahiti, the final destination of our next flight, but maybe not. As I go to the counter to begin filling out information, a radio call comes in, and they’ve got my bag. It appears solo on a different carousel, corresponding to what I overhear on the radio. I failed to get outwardly irate, but I am so relieved to see it. So are they. Then they tell us we need to exit customs and then go up to the third floor and take it to counter 84 to be re-checked. We do this, and I wonder what it would be like with a connection of less than 2:45, which is what we have. We do this and the agent accepts my bag, and then checks my friend’s. We proceed to gate 20a in the domestic departure area. There is no lounge for business class passengers in Santiago departing on “National Flights.” Supposedly LAN has three lounges in SCL, but maybe they are all for International customers. We see through the glass the passengers for LA833 to Papette, leaving from 20b. Before boarding, two young men approach all of us sitting down match our passports or ID cards with our tickets, and make a yellow mark on our boarding passes, They are relaxed and smiling, doing the ID check before the boarding. Then they call the flight. At 5:30PM, :35 minutes before departure, we board the flight, and we Rapa Nui bound people and the Papette bound customers trickle down from both gates into the same jetway. The crowd on this flight reminds me of a flight I took from Bangkok to Kathmandu about 10 years before. There are people from everywhere. Some Americans, many British, many Germans, and a Polish tour group with a guide holding a Polish flag. The crowd is travel weary but has a gleam in their eye.
The 767-300 has the next seats and there is maybe 6 feet between each. There is a 13’ screen in front of us, and the seat folds out into a bed. The controls are rather self explanatory, but look daunting. All of the economy passengers board and the collection of people is story-book material. I have been studying Easter Island’s history and for 6 months have been brushing up on my Spanish after studying it for 8 years when I was in high school in college. I did a presentation on Easter Island 6 weeks prior and in my Spanish class at an Adult School near Berkeley. In preparation I learned about the MOAI statues, the people, and their difficult and isolated history for my Tuesday night diversion, and in 36 hours I need to email a bunch of pictures to be shown in the upcoming class I will be absent for. A group of Polynesians board, as well as a couple we saw on the earlier flight slowly translating Spanish into French in their heads. They must be going home to Tahiti. In business class, two very smart looking flight attendants, one for each aisle, are terribly gracious and friendly. On our right side is Ana Maria with blonde hair tied into a bun, with a very clear and pleasant English accent. The lady on the left is very nicely attired, but we feel there is a 20% chance that she was born a man. Her countenance during the safety video makes you look twice. The application of make-up doesn’t seem to exist in such force or complexity in the United States but then I live in Birkenstock-land. Ana Maria likes to have fun on the plane like I used to, offering the leftover Spanish newspapers on the jet way to all of us, suggesting we practice our Spanish on the 5 hour flight. A young steward passes with a cart with Spanish magazines suggesting the same thing. Everyone is smiling and it makes such a difference. When I try to put away what I think is a blanket Ana Maria tells me it is a duvet. The amenity kit is a disappointment, with an eye shade, pen, and an ear plug wrapped in a polyester type covering, which looks to be a pillow-case. I realize it is a pillow case for the pillow inside the duvet. I guess it could also be used as a burka if the flight got diverted to Jeddah. Ana Maria, I hate to say this, reminds me of me when I was 25 and still thought all of this was magic, and not high-priced, sometimes civilized public transportation. I got this system wide flight attendant-of-the-month award, in 1993, which was both an honor and a curse. Your photo is in the office in O’Hare although you are based in Honolulu, and other flight attendants stare at you when you walk through what we called the Terminal for Tomorrow then, (terminal 1 in O’Hare when it was built,) and colleagues challenge you to see if you are worthy of such an accolade from the company, especially if you are flying with those not from your home base, but after a while I didn’t care what they thought or observed, but it took a while. I got that Flight Attendant of the month stuff for the company for many reasons, but one was I wrote in many suggestions of the customers, and finally the company listened, a bit. Ana Maria tells us of the same thing, explaining that they have an edge over Aerolines Argentinas because they aren’t always on strike. Sadly, I don’t think she realizes that Aerolines Argentines has really scaled down and no longer flies to New Zealand like they used to. LAN has been for 5 years now, and she tells us of her conveying the comments of the OneWorld’s downunder customers to her management, and is happy to report they have improved service on their limited First Class A-340 flights. She tells me of their flight between Auckland and Sydney and how everyone has something to say about LAN in comparison to Qantas, etc. I remember our flights from Auckland to Sydney, and on each occasion I said what I thought I never would: “Sorry, we’ve run out of vodka.” It did happen on those flights. It is hard not to like Ana Maria. I just hope she is conveying the comments of passengers with a semi-functioning blood-alcohol level. Later in the flight she hands me a comment card written in Spanish, seeming confident I should be able to understand the questions. That was after her initial questioning me as to whether I was a spy or not, making me laugh as when I was a flight attendant I was observed 4 times by “Ghost Riders.”.The entertainment options are extensive, all on-demand, but I’d rather write to you, and thell you this little story.
The menu and wine list are very impressive, a sommelier’s dream in terms of showcasing the flight’s offerings, which I think were the same as the previous flight. The people that made these wines would be so happy to hear Ana Maria describe them. Once airborne they go right into the dinner service. I would have preferred a cocktail service first but looking at our 70% full business cabin, I think the rest of the guests were grateful to eat and get it over with. Ana Maria has the wine pairings the menu mentions memorized, and wants you to sample and appreciate the wines of her country. She offers each passenger a taste before serving; everyone trusts her. Any member of LAN’s management team would have tears of joy in their eyes. She is responsive, genuine, and dotes over the English lady traveling solo in the seat across from us just as she engages the couple a few rows forward.
We fly directly over Archipielago Juan Fernandez but the sky is cloud covered. Most everyone falls asleep.
As we chase the sun going west we finally succumb to twilight, and then dusk. Dusk comes quickly as we descent and an announcement is made by the captain, his first of the flight, saying we are descending to Easter Island. Looking out of the right side of the airplane we see a single red light, and then realize we are only 100 feet above the ocean, We touch down at Matavederi International Airport, and after coming to a stop do a 180 degree turn and taxi down the runway.
Once stopped, it is now dark, but from the right window I see a lone catering truck, painted grey, with Kai Kai Catering stenciled on the side. In Hawaii, eating is Kau Kau. I wonder if Kai Kai means the same thing in Rapa Nui, the indigenous language of Easter Island. The truck slowly ascends its platform to the 1R door.
RAPA NUI – ISLA de PASQUA - IPC
I have put the lone British woman’s back pack in the overhead bin for her in Santiago as is it a long way up from where she is sitting. I offer to get it for her and she accepts. She is in front of me exiting. She exits the aircraft and sees the South Pacific sky dotted with clouds and the aircraft dominating the view. She turns to me and gently grabs my shoulders and shakes me: “We’re here; we’ve made it!” How many places are there left that cause world travelers to do this? I said: “Welcome to Easter Island” and put her hand on the hand rail, as she is reserved but truly excited, and I don’t want her to fall. She absent tly hands me her back-pack and descends the staircase, and once on the tarmac I give her her things back. She stands next to me in the baggage claim, telling me she is fulfilling a dream of many years. It’s poignant to hear her to say this to a stranger, to say the least. As we enter the baggage claim, an official with the friendliest drug dog I’ve ever seen, I’ll call her Sadie, greets us all with a wagging tail. We assemble and soon our bags are off. As the bags arrive the man and Sadie walk around us but Sadie seems to just be greeting us, however she does sniff a lot. We exit and Sadie is there again, and she has no interest in either mine nor the British woman’s luggage. Outside, Bill of the Hotel Taur’aa is waiting with two ladies. His wife Edith is at home in bed I presume. There are four names written on a board, mine is one of them. Our luggage goes into one van, and we into another. Leis go over all of us. It looks like the scene when I landed late one night in the Kingdom of Tonga in 1986, a month after I graduated from college, but Easter Island is more updated than Tonga was then. Still, many children in the background stare at you behind a fence and their teeth forming smiles and the whites of their eyes are present. Soon we are on our way to the hotel, a 3 or 4 minute journey.
We enter our room and it is basic, but very clean, with two twin beds that are narrower than most, but the floor and bathroom are scrubbed to perfection. It is close to 11:30PM local time, but I want to walk and look at the sky. When I walk at night in Berkeley I see the Big Dipper and wish I knew more about astronomy. Here is a totally different vista, with what must be the Milky Way galaxy exerting itself through the night. Shooting stars are plentiful. I want to get a lounge chair and just watch, but I am tired, so I retreat to my room and after a few hours, fall asleep.
We spent thee full days in Easter Island but despite our original plans, didn’t take tours. We hiked the first day to a large crater near two small islands famous for the Birdman competition, and the second day rented bikes and rode a whopping 18 miles around the island on its main road, sometimes paved and sometimes not. At the end of that day I worried my forehead, despite the SPF 30 sun block, might fall off. There are two British couples there as well, and I joked at breakfast on the morning of the third day that Two days later it is crusting up nicely, and I am hoping for some new skin in a few days. We humans are amazing creatures. Breakfast each morning at the hotel was a homemade collection of different things, an omelet with ham cheese and mushrooms on one day, mango and banana pancakes the next, ham, cheese and guacamole the third, and a fried egg and ham and some sort of breadfruit the day we left, which I crammed into the locally made bread and made a sandwich with.
The roads are 60% paved on the 66 square mile island. Biking on day 2 was a daunting expedition but we spend hours riding down the roads all on our own, with no one around. Truck drivers hauling stuff slowed almost to a halt so as not to pollute us with dust, pointing silently to places of interest they knew we were headed for. They are all cool and want you to be going the right way. I cannot say the same for tourists renting vehicles, and a large shirtless German man we’ll call Didier who whistled at us to get out of his way so he could snap a photo when we were doing the same thing. We reached the quarry where many MAOI stand finished but not moved into their intended places on the ocean, and it is a priceless experience. I buy some stone heads and wooden heads (MOAI) like everyone else and when we leave Edith Pakarati, wife and co-proprietor of the Hotel, gives us a rope with a shell and a feather attached, similar to what the winner of the birdman competition received. Mine is still on as I write this, on the way back to Santiago.
For dinner we eat the French Restaurant Lonely Planet likes the best on the first night, a ocean front restaurant with a great view the second, and Te Moana, a restaurant with delicious steak and fish the night before leaving, our favorite of the trip. We bring Chilean pesos to pay for the hotel, which seems to be appreciated, and the island’s one ATM machine does only accept MasterCard which we read in guide books.
Easter Island is a place quite unlike any other, and I guess I hope it stays that way.
We pass a shop selling tank-tops we like many times, but only once it is open. When it is we are filthy from walking for 8 miles and very very hot and sweaty. I refuse to try on t-shirts when I am not clean so we agree to come back. The following day however we never see the store open. Then that night, she is not there again.
Wednesday night before we leave the plane comes from Santiago and goes to Tahiti, and Bill tells us he is going on the flight to Tahiti to visit family in Australia. So he’s not there on the day we leave. Who will load the luggage when 6 of us are departing on the same flight?
The fan in the room works but does cool us down until 2:00AM. I remember old cab drivers in Washington DC when I was there to visit my mother on a weekend away from boarding school in the fall saying: “Finally the good sleeping weather has come.”
We awake on Thursday and are all ready to depart at 9:30AM for the airport but the ladies want us to a wait a bit. Edith comes out and settles everyone’s tab; we’ve given them cash days before to unload it. Bill isn’t there so I think I should help her with the luggage. Just the way my father raised me, I guess. I and my traveling companion, still wanting to get these tank-tops from the shop that is closed, silently decide she will make two trips to the airport, and we are business class and everyone else, we think, is in coach, so I load everyone’s luggage in the van and they all get in. In about 15 minutes she returns, and we put our luggage in. My friend asks her about this shop that is closed, and she says not to worry, that I will check us both in and we will go find the lady, who is her friend and probably still sleeping. We get to the airport and our checked luggage is manually inspected but a very polite man, who gives me the thumbs up and a handshake at it its conclusion and I get into the business class line. Soon I am in front of the agent and Edith appears behind me and says, not in Spanish, but what must be Rapa Nui: “I’m taking Larry to buy some shirts from my girlfriend whose asleep, check them both in…” The agent says to me in English: “Do you have Larry’s passport?” I say yes, and soon, we have our pre-assigned seats and boarding passes and he’s taken our luggage to a big guy with dreadlocks, who puts them in a container just behind the desk, for the Priority luggage.
15 minutes later I look up and see the 767 on approach from Tahiti, it has deposited Bill there on his way to Australia, and returned to get us and go back to the home country, Chile. I wish Larry had returned as I want to go through security. 15 minutes after that Edith and Larry return.
Edith took Larry to the shop owner’s home, where they did not find her, and then to the shop owner’s mother’s house, where again, they did not find her. The lady who owned the shop apparently is dating a medic at the hospital, and there they found them in front of the hospital kissing. Edith scooped up the lady, drove her to the shop, and they conducted business and she brought Larry back to the airport.
Larry has the tank-tops he wanted and some for me as well. Edith has chosen my size. She gets out of the van and walks up to me and gives me a big kiss, in front of everyone in the terminal. She tells me I am a gentlemen, I guess for helping with the luggage as she husband is out of town, and hands me a business card of the hotel. I am hoping to mail her monthly pills to combat fleas for her four dogs. One of these puppies sat on my foot at every opportunity, wanting to be touching me, like my former dog always did. To have a simple room with a breezy porch with a friendly dog sitting on your foot whenever he can isn’t a bad way to spend a few days. The room was too hot when the door was closed, but you’re in Easter Island, and air conditioning is only in a few places. This is a good place by the way.
LA 834C 6MAR IPC SCL B-767-300 Seat 2A
The plane is ready for boarding and we ascend the staircase to the air conditioned inner sanctum. I was overheated since the bicycle trip and was sort of happy to be back in the world of convenience.
The crew is cheery, but they pass out Pisco Sour and water, no champagne. I think they don’t board enough for this round trip, as in-flight they have none available, but the same wine they had a few days before is good.
Kai Kai Catering has done its thing and has boarded steak with mushroom sauce, tuna with spinach and mashed potatoes and gnocchi for the main courses. I have the tuna with some Argentinean Chardonnay and it is good. Befriending a British couple in the room next to us in the hotel who are on a delayed honeymoon we tell the crew it is their big trip and give them their seat number in the back. The purser doesn’t seem to speak much English and seems very appreciative I am trying my horrible Spanish.
We fly quickly to Santiago and I skip all of the entertainment in order to get up to date on this report. The service is quick, they don’t have champagne like on the menu, and like the first flight, don’t pass out water or any beverages once the meal service is over. I use the flight attendant call button, and get more drinks quickly.
We land on time and the luggage arrives promptly. Soon we are on the way to the Sheraton Santiago, where we checked into the smallest room I have seen in a long time, making Gold Status look like a punitive measure. After calling down and talking to the staff, we get a room on the Executive Level, and it is a lot larger and we are grateful.
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