hermanni
Aug 24, 08, 5:03 am
I took a combined work / holiday trip with my 13-year old son. Here's the trip report, consisting of these legs:
HEL-JFK (Finnair)
JFK-LAS (Jetblue)
LAS-LAX (American)
LAX-JFK (Virgin America)
JFK-HEL (Finnair)
The trip did include some nice hotel stays and car rentals (including a H2 and a Shelby GT-H) but I'm going to focus on the flights only.
Flight 1: Helsinki - New York (JFK) on Finnair in business class
Finnair has lots of regular long-haul routes but only one of them flies west from Helsinki; the daily HEL-JFK flight which is being operated by one of their MD-11s. I understand this route will be operated by a new A340 in a few months.
We arrived to the Helsinki airport around 13:00 for our 14:20 departure. We checked in at the queueless Finnair Platinum desk (thanks to my BA Gold card) and then queued for security (fast track security sure would be nice in Helsinki). After proceeding airside we walked towards the non-schengen area and went through the passport check. We then passed time by playing the nice Playstation 3 in the long-haul lounge.
Our flight was called and we proceeded to enter the plane. This happened through probably the longest airbridge in the world as some of the Finnair long-haul planes are parked outside of the construction site of a new terminal and they've built a temporary tube to get to these planes. We were greeted at the door by flight attendants and we proceeded to our seats 1A and 1B.
My son was in Finnair business class for the first time and he was definitely happy with the seat and the space around us. The middle seats in row 1 have even more legroom on these planes, but I don't like those seats as storage space is limited and the seat pocket located in the bulkhead is too far away to reach while being seated.
Flight had a good service and the flight attendants took extra nice care of my son. We asked for a Playstation Portable which was duly delivered - but I was disappointed to find out Finnair has replaced the business-class-only game selection with new games, and this meant that my favourite game was no longer available (PSP World Series of Poker). Bummer. I ended up playing some random car game on the console while my son was playing with his laptop.
The seats on this MD-11 had screens but no on-demand movies. We later asked for a portable DVD player which was duly delivered with a binder of maybe 30 movies and 10 audio CDs. Much later in the flight we also asked for a power converter to be able to use a laptop with the in-flight power system. After troubleshooting for the right power connector for a Fujitsu laptop, the power worked flawlessly.
As a dinner, we ate shrimp salad as a starter (excellent) and reindeer stew for my son (he liked it) and salmon for me (which was ok).
The plane landed on schedule and the immigration at JFK took maybe 20 minutes. We proceeded to get our luggage and boarded the free Airtrain all-terminals-loop to get from T8 to Jetblue terminal T6.
Flight 2: New York (JFK) to Las Vegas on Jetblue
As I had already checked in online for this flight on the previous day, we only needed to get rid of our luggage at the Jetblue check-in to able to proceed through security.
The current Jetblue terminal at JFK is a mess, but the construction of the new T5 dedicated Jetblue terminal seemed to be almost completed and it looked quite impressive!
The whole process from the landing of the Finnair flight to getting airside in Jetblue took little over an hour. We had another hour and a half to burn, so we proceeded to the Deep Blue Sushi restaurant to enjoy some quality sushis - heartily recommended!
Once our boarding time got closer, we started searching for our gate. Turns out we had to board a bus to get to a remote, apparently temporary terminal building where our flight to Las Vegas eventually boarded around 7pm.
I had booked us seats from the front of the plane with extra legroom ($30 extra) and indeed the seats and the legroom was fine - especially compared to previous JFK-LAS flights which I had taken on TED (never again). The crew announced that some of the seats had the DirectTV satellite TV system broken and people would be able to get some sort of a refund for that. Fortunately our seats worked fine, and we passed the time onboard watching live TV, including Comedy Central, ESPN and CNN.
I assumed a budget airline like Jetblue would not be offering free food onboard but I had expected I would have been able to purchase food. This turned out to be incorrect. However, they were serving sodas, chips, cookies and candy for free. The crew was great and definitely had a great sense of humor.
We landed to Las Vegas little before 10pm. While taxiing, I pointed out three completely white commercial jets to my son. They had no markings (except fin numbers) and were powered up at this late hour. I told him that these are used by the commuters who work at Area 51. Whether that really was the case or not, I don't know.
We proceeded to pick up our luggage and were met at the carousel with our limo driver from LVTrans who I had prebooked online ($59). The driver took our luggage to a nice 10-seater black limo and proceeded to drop us off to our hotel (Caesar's Palace). Good service and cheap too - especially with the current exchange rate of the US dollar…
Flight 3: Las Vegas - Los Angeles on American Airlines in economy class
Two days later, we continued our journey from Las Vegas to LAX. I had booked cheap tickets (33 euros) on American Airlines for this 1-hour flight. At the check-in, we had to pay $15 extra (in cash) for both of our checked pieces of luggage - thanks AA.
For some reason, we didn't get seat numbers at the checking, they were only given to us late during the boarding process by the gate agent when almost everyone else had boarded. We ended up getting seated separately but that really was not a problem for such a short flight. In-flight service during the flight: class of water.
Flight 4: Los Angeles - New York (JFK) on Virgin America in domestic first class
After spending two days in sunny California, it was time to leave for New York.
We arrived to LAX a bit late for our 21:25 red-eye departure. In fact, we had planned to have a dinner at the Sepulveda Blvd In-n-Out Burger and do some plane watching but there was no time for that (we spent too long at the Santa Monica Beach, a 15 minutes drive from LAX).
As a result, we were among the last persons to check-in at T6 VX check-in. We were flying First class - that is, US domestic first class, so it was business class really.
Quite surprisingly, Virgin America has no lounge services available for the premium class travelers. Even in SFO where Virgin Atlantic would have their own Clubhouse lounge, Virgin America customers would have to pay to get it. As a backup, I had planned to visit the Continental President's Club in T6, but now none of this mattered as we were running late. Instead we proceeded to board the plane.
Onboard everything looked new and nice! Nice mood lighting, nice white and clean leather seats. Plenty of legroom. VX First class has only two rows or four seats each, and the second row where we were seated had better legroom than the first row bulkhead seats. We had a male attendant look after us in the first class. I asked for a glass of champagne and he was sorry to inform me that they only had sparkling wine.
We proceeded to play around with the IFE "Red" system. It was nice but we were maybe expecting something even nicer. We managed to crash our systems twice. The DOOM port they had running was nice but slow, and the seat-to-seat online chat had just the two of us in there (this was a night flight). Movie and TV show selection was comprehensive and live TV was available.
I had read about VX food in First class being quite nice, but on this night flight, they had no real food to speak about at all - quite surprising. I only got a cold bread roll. There would have been breakfast available before arrival but we decided to sleep instead. Although the seats were not cradle seats, they do recline quite nicely and we did manage to sleep some hours.
We landed early, around 5:30am to JFK terminal 4. Tired as hell.
So off we went to pick up our luggage and then to locate The Oasis lounge in JFK T4. This was found from the check-in level in the far away left-hand corner. We entered with my Priority Pass. I believe the lounge had just opened for the day as there was only one other customer in addition to us - sleeping on the leather couch in a board-room like room with a fireplace. The lounge was quite huge. They were serving a nice selection of breakfast which we used to the fullest. We also used the available computers to check the news and weather. Then we used the washrooms for freshening up for the day.
Our plan was to leave the lounge, locate a left luggage service and spend the day downtown in New York, then in the evening come back, pick our luggage and go to Terminal 8 for our flight home. As I asked the lounge dragonette for the location of a left luggage service in T4, she told me we could just leave our luggage in the lounge and they would look after it - really nice!
We left JFK via Airtrain to Jamaica station and then took the Long Island railroad (LIRR) to Penn Station. This took maybe 40 minutes total and then we were right in the middle of Manhattan.
We spent the day in Manhattan and one of the locations we visited was the Ground Zero Museum Workshop. This is a small (one room!) museum that covers the recovery effort of the 2001 terrorist attacks. This is a guided tour that needs to be booked beforehand. I can recommend this museum - it's quite impressive and touching.
Flight 5: New York (JFK) - Helsinki on Finnair in business class
We arrived back to JFK with a yellow cab and proceeded back to The Oasis lounge in T4. By this time they were serving dinner (noodles, samosas etc) so we had a bite before picking up our luggage. Very nice lounge.
Then we took Airtrain to get to T8, checked in for our final Finnair flight and proceeded to the American Airlines flagship lounge. I had a quick shower and by this time they were already announcing the 17:45 flight to be boarding.
It was the same plane we had flown six days earlier, and we had the same seats reserved to us. Once we had pulled back, we were halted on the taxiway by some serious traffic jam; there was a thunderstorm in the neighborhood (not visible to us though). As a result, we spent more than an hour on the taxiway, sitting still, engines running. During this time the fasten seatbelt sign stayed on. The flight attendants were moving around the cabin but when asked, they denied the use of lavatories. During this time, they served nothing. I was quite surprised by the lack of service but didn't challenge it further.
Once airborne, drinks were finally served. Then the dinner service started. Out of the starter choices (Clam Soup / Salad / Grilled vegatables, mozzarella and pesto) we went for the last one which was quite decent. For the main course my son went for fillet of beef in red wine sauce (reported to be good) while I unfortunately chose the Swordfish skewer which was dry and small. Desert choice was Tiramisu or ice cream.
We spent the rest of the flight sleeping (which was easy - remember, we spent the previous night on a red-eye flight). As a result, we skipped the breakfast which would have been bacon and scrambled eggs.
The next morning we landed to Helsinki airport, roughly an hour late. Tired but happy.
Overall, nice trip. I would fly Virgin America again, although I would go for a day flight. And Jetblue sure beats Ted or American. Also, I think my son's transatlantic J flights were fairly good value at 80,000 Finnair Plus points.
HEL-JFK (Finnair)
JFK-LAS (Jetblue)
LAS-LAX (American)
LAX-JFK (Virgin America)
JFK-HEL (Finnair)
The trip did include some nice hotel stays and car rentals (including a H2 and a Shelby GT-H) but I'm going to focus on the flights only.
Flight 1: Helsinki - New York (JFK) on Finnair in business class
Finnair has lots of regular long-haul routes but only one of them flies west from Helsinki; the daily HEL-JFK flight which is being operated by one of their MD-11s. I understand this route will be operated by a new A340 in a few months.
We arrived to the Helsinki airport around 13:00 for our 14:20 departure. We checked in at the queueless Finnair Platinum desk (thanks to my BA Gold card) and then queued for security (fast track security sure would be nice in Helsinki). After proceeding airside we walked towards the non-schengen area and went through the passport check. We then passed time by playing the nice Playstation 3 in the long-haul lounge.
Our flight was called and we proceeded to enter the plane. This happened through probably the longest airbridge in the world as some of the Finnair long-haul planes are parked outside of the construction site of a new terminal and they've built a temporary tube to get to these planes. We were greeted at the door by flight attendants and we proceeded to our seats 1A and 1B.
My son was in Finnair business class for the first time and he was definitely happy with the seat and the space around us. The middle seats in row 1 have even more legroom on these planes, but I don't like those seats as storage space is limited and the seat pocket located in the bulkhead is too far away to reach while being seated.
Flight had a good service and the flight attendants took extra nice care of my son. We asked for a Playstation Portable which was duly delivered - but I was disappointed to find out Finnair has replaced the business-class-only game selection with new games, and this meant that my favourite game was no longer available (PSP World Series of Poker). Bummer. I ended up playing some random car game on the console while my son was playing with his laptop.
The seats on this MD-11 had screens but no on-demand movies. We later asked for a portable DVD player which was duly delivered with a binder of maybe 30 movies and 10 audio CDs. Much later in the flight we also asked for a power converter to be able to use a laptop with the in-flight power system. After troubleshooting for the right power connector for a Fujitsu laptop, the power worked flawlessly.
As a dinner, we ate shrimp salad as a starter (excellent) and reindeer stew for my son (he liked it) and salmon for me (which was ok).
The plane landed on schedule and the immigration at JFK took maybe 20 minutes. We proceeded to get our luggage and boarded the free Airtrain all-terminals-loop to get from T8 to Jetblue terminal T6.
Flight 2: New York (JFK) to Las Vegas on Jetblue
As I had already checked in online for this flight on the previous day, we only needed to get rid of our luggage at the Jetblue check-in to able to proceed through security.
The current Jetblue terminal at JFK is a mess, but the construction of the new T5 dedicated Jetblue terminal seemed to be almost completed and it looked quite impressive!
The whole process from the landing of the Finnair flight to getting airside in Jetblue took little over an hour. We had another hour and a half to burn, so we proceeded to the Deep Blue Sushi restaurant to enjoy some quality sushis - heartily recommended!
Once our boarding time got closer, we started searching for our gate. Turns out we had to board a bus to get to a remote, apparently temporary terminal building where our flight to Las Vegas eventually boarded around 7pm.
I had booked us seats from the front of the plane with extra legroom ($30 extra) and indeed the seats and the legroom was fine - especially compared to previous JFK-LAS flights which I had taken on TED (never again). The crew announced that some of the seats had the DirectTV satellite TV system broken and people would be able to get some sort of a refund for that. Fortunately our seats worked fine, and we passed the time onboard watching live TV, including Comedy Central, ESPN and CNN.
I assumed a budget airline like Jetblue would not be offering free food onboard but I had expected I would have been able to purchase food. This turned out to be incorrect. However, they were serving sodas, chips, cookies and candy for free. The crew was great and definitely had a great sense of humor.
We landed to Las Vegas little before 10pm. While taxiing, I pointed out three completely white commercial jets to my son. They had no markings (except fin numbers) and were powered up at this late hour. I told him that these are used by the commuters who work at Area 51. Whether that really was the case or not, I don't know.
We proceeded to pick up our luggage and were met at the carousel with our limo driver from LVTrans who I had prebooked online ($59). The driver took our luggage to a nice 10-seater black limo and proceeded to drop us off to our hotel (Caesar's Palace). Good service and cheap too - especially with the current exchange rate of the US dollar…
Flight 3: Las Vegas - Los Angeles on American Airlines in economy class
Two days later, we continued our journey from Las Vegas to LAX. I had booked cheap tickets (33 euros) on American Airlines for this 1-hour flight. At the check-in, we had to pay $15 extra (in cash) for both of our checked pieces of luggage - thanks AA.
For some reason, we didn't get seat numbers at the checking, they were only given to us late during the boarding process by the gate agent when almost everyone else had boarded. We ended up getting seated separately but that really was not a problem for such a short flight. In-flight service during the flight: class of water.
Flight 4: Los Angeles - New York (JFK) on Virgin America in domestic first class
After spending two days in sunny California, it was time to leave for New York.
We arrived to LAX a bit late for our 21:25 red-eye departure. In fact, we had planned to have a dinner at the Sepulveda Blvd In-n-Out Burger and do some plane watching but there was no time for that (we spent too long at the Santa Monica Beach, a 15 minutes drive from LAX).
As a result, we were among the last persons to check-in at T6 VX check-in. We were flying First class - that is, US domestic first class, so it was business class really.
Quite surprisingly, Virgin America has no lounge services available for the premium class travelers. Even in SFO where Virgin Atlantic would have their own Clubhouse lounge, Virgin America customers would have to pay to get it. As a backup, I had planned to visit the Continental President's Club in T6, but now none of this mattered as we were running late. Instead we proceeded to board the plane.
Onboard everything looked new and nice! Nice mood lighting, nice white and clean leather seats. Plenty of legroom. VX First class has only two rows or four seats each, and the second row where we were seated had better legroom than the first row bulkhead seats. We had a male attendant look after us in the first class. I asked for a glass of champagne and he was sorry to inform me that they only had sparkling wine.
We proceeded to play around with the IFE "Red" system. It was nice but we were maybe expecting something even nicer. We managed to crash our systems twice. The DOOM port they had running was nice but slow, and the seat-to-seat online chat had just the two of us in there (this was a night flight). Movie and TV show selection was comprehensive and live TV was available.
I had read about VX food in First class being quite nice, but on this night flight, they had no real food to speak about at all - quite surprising. I only got a cold bread roll. There would have been breakfast available before arrival but we decided to sleep instead. Although the seats were not cradle seats, they do recline quite nicely and we did manage to sleep some hours.
We landed early, around 5:30am to JFK terminal 4. Tired as hell.
So off we went to pick up our luggage and then to locate The Oasis lounge in JFK T4. This was found from the check-in level in the far away left-hand corner. We entered with my Priority Pass. I believe the lounge had just opened for the day as there was only one other customer in addition to us - sleeping on the leather couch in a board-room like room with a fireplace. The lounge was quite huge. They were serving a nice selection of breakfast which we used to the fullest. We also used the available computers to check the news and weather. Then we used the washrooms for freshening up for the day.
Our plan was to leave the lounge, locate a left luggage service and spend the day downtown in New York, then in the evening come back, pick our luggage and go to Terminal 8 for our flight home. As I asked the lounge dragonette for the location of a left luggage service in T4, she told me we could just leave our luggage in the lounge and they would look after it - really nice!
We left JFK via Airtrain to Jamaica station and then took the Long Island railroad (LIRR) to Penn Station. This took maybe 40 minutes total and then we were right in the middle of Manhattan.
We spent the day in Manhattan and one of the locations we visited was the Ground Zero Museum Workshop. This is a small (one room!) museum that covers the recovery effort of the 2001 terrorist attacks. This is a guided tour that needs to be booked beforehand. I can recommend this museum - it's quite impressive and touching.
Flight 5: New York (JFK) - Helsinki on Finnair in business class
We arrived back to JFK with a yellow cab and proceeded back to The Oasis lounge in T4. By this time they were serving dinner (noodles, samosas etc) so we had a bite before picking up our luggage. Very nice lounge.
Then we took Airtrain to get to T8, checked in for our final Finnair flight and proceeded to the American Airlines flagship lounge. I had a quick shower and by this time they were already announcing the 17:45 flight to be boarding.
It was the same plane we had flown six days earlier, and we had the same seats reserved to us. Once we had pulled back, we were halted on the taxiway by some serious traffic jam; there was a thunderstorm in the neighborhood (not visible to us though). As a result, we spent more than an hour on the taxiway, sitting still, engines running. During this time the fasten seatbelt sign stayed on. The flight attendants were moving around the cabin but when asked, they denied the use of lavatories. During this time, they served nothing. I was quite surprised by the lack of service but didn't challenge it further.
Once airborne, drinks were finally served. Then the dinner service started. Out of the starter choices (Clam Soup / Salad / Grilled vegatables, mozzarella and pesto) we went for the last one which was quite decent. For the main course my son went for fillet of beef in red wine sauce (reported to be good) while I unfortunately chose the Swordfish skewer which was dry and small. Desert choice was Tiramisu or ice cream.
We spent the rest of the flight sleeping (which was easy - remember, we spent the previous night on a red-eye flight). As a result, we skipped the breakfast which would have been bacon and scrambled eggs.
The next morning we landed to Helsinki airport, roughly an hour late. Tired but happy.
Overall, nice trip. I would fly Virgin America again, although I would go for a day flight. And Jetblue sure beats Ted or American. Also, I think my son's transatlantic J flights were fairly good value at 80,000 Finnair Plus points.