Buster CT1K

Feb 20, 2003
SQ 23 EWR-AMS
sched dep 2120 (on time)
sched arr 1010 (on time)
B747-400

I arrived on NJ Transit to the EWR airport station and took Newark Crawltrain to Terminal 2. NJ Transit was running 30 minutes late, and I managed to get to the airport at about 2015. I walked past a long line of people waiting to check in on El Al to Israel, and at the end of Terminal 2's check in area, found the SQ check in counter. Turns out I need not have worried about being rejected for check in: over a dozen people were still in line in Y. I used the Business Class desk because of my *G status, and was helped within 2 minutes of showing up at the counter. SQ-liveried senior staff were at the business class counter, while generic EWR workers staffed the Y counters. No one was at the F counter - perhaps F had checked in full or no one was flying F tonight.

I asked the check-in agent (from Singapore) how full the flight was. 80%. I asked nicely whether I could have an empty seat next to me. He nodded, tapped a bit into the computer, and presented the boarding pass and passport back to me: "60H, and J and K are blocked for you." Nice! I went through security - no other airline is boarding at this hour from the third pier, so security took only five minutes.

I went to the SAS/LH lounge. The LH side was for first class passengers but was closed. The SAS side was open for *G and Raffles Class passengers. Some insipid snacks (cheese and crackers) were available, along with a selection of drinks. The lounge stank to high heaven of smoke - there is no adequate screening of the smoker's zone from the rest of the lounge. Then there was a single passenger hogging the sole remaining working internet terminal, so I could not check my email before boarding. Plus side for lounge: spaciousness.

Boarding was relatively easy: boarding was called for First, Business and *G passengers at the time I showed up at the gate. Although my *G status did not show up on my boarding pass, and I did not show my card, I was welcomed aboard anyway.

I made my way to the back to the plane: 60 HKJ are more squished together and have less room (60J has a much-reduced right armrest width) so definitely don't take these seats unless you get at least one empty seat.

Aircraft took off to the south and I got a good view of the airport.

Real hot towels were available at several points during the flight, including soon after take off. Ametiny kits were very basic: socks and toothbrush (I think) - no eyeshades, but I had my own very comfortable Raffles Class ones from a previous encounter with SQ. Dinner was served 1h after take off. Printed menues were available:

Dinner

Appetiser
Chef's Salad
with cheese, turkey, chicken and lettuce

Main Courses
Roasted chicken with hot potato salad, baked vegetables and gravy
or
Wok fried beef in oriental black peppercorn sauce, leafy greens, carrots, mushrooms and fried rice

Cheese
Cheese and crackers

Dessert
Ice cream (Snicker's ice cream bars)

From the bakery
Roll and butter

Hot beverages
Coffee - Tea

I had the beef with fried rice, which was delicious. Portion size was too small for my healthy appetite, but the steward was happy to give me a second helping. I passed on the ice cream (long story, but you can presume a certain slightly-traumatic childhood snickers binge has something to do with it; had it been Haagen-Dazs Chocolate, I would not have passed). The salad was fresh. Overall, for an economy meal, this was very satisfactory. During dinner, I watched "Being John Malkovich."

Dinner: 5/5

I tried to go to sleep as soon as possible after dinner. I got in about 2h with the help of eyeshades and melatonin, then watched some more of Being John Malkovich (no Wisemen video-on-demand on this flight), then I watched the sun rise. During the film, I rang my call button and a stewardess was at my seat within a few seconds. She was happy to bring me three glasses of water. I really have to say that the training these SQ stewardesses get must be really good.

Entertainment: 4.5/5. This is probably just about the best Y class entertainment in the sky. 5/5 is reserved for Wisemen video-on-demand or for unusually rich programming.

Refreshment

Light Bites
Smoked turkey sandwich
or
Sandwich with egg, cheese and shaved ham

Dessert
Fruit salad

Hot beverages
Coffee - Tea

Refreshment really served as breakfast, and I really liked it better than a continental breakfast, even though it was simpler.

It was good enough that I will leave the meal rating at 5/5.

We arrived in Schiphol at G pier, and lo and behold, Schiphol has long-reach jetways! The jetway comes over the wing to dock at door 4 on a 747, so I was off much earlier than I would normally have, considering I was seated at the back of the plane. Marvellous.

Thurs, overall, a very enjoyable flight, excepting the subpar lounge:

Ground services: 3.5/5
Meals: 5/5
Service: 5/5
Seat comfort: 5/5 (given that I had 3 seats to myself; otherwise 4/5 with headrests, footrests and good recline).
Entertainment: 4.5/5

Total: 23/25

This is a superlative ranking for Economy class, no doubt helped by my *G status. I will certainly fly SQ again, for business as well as pleasure. And, as the principle goes, I give my business travel to the airline that treats me well when I travel for leisure.

After disembarking, I had a long way to walk to the D pier section, since I had to go over to the BA check in desks to buy my Concorde ticket. This took over an hour because my credit card is not issued in the Netherlands, but after much gnashing of teeth on the part of the credit card company (BA staff themselves were helpful, friendly and efficient throughout) the charge got approved and I had my Concorde/WT+ combo ticket.



[This message has been edited by Buster CT1K (edited 02-25-2003).]

Buster CT1K

Feb 23, 2003
BA 435 AMS-LHR
sched dep 1450 (on time)
sched arr 1500 (on time)
A319

The previous day, I had checked in online, and got sequence number 1 on this flight. I had also switched my seat from pre-assigned 19D to 4A, possibly the best seat in Y on this aircraft, since it is the same width as the A seats in Club Europe. Plus it has a window

I took the marvellous train from Amsterdam Centraal to Schiphol Airport for just 3 euros 10 cents! What an advance. Clean, comfortable and double-decked trains run every 20 minutes on Sunday and make the 25 minute ride to the airport a breeze. At the airport, I used BA's self-service check-in machine to issue my boarding passes for this flight and for my connecting flight to JFK. I had no checked baggage. I went through immigration (no line), "Dag" said I to the immigration officer, who then asked me in Dutch where I was going today. I replied that I didn't really know much Dutch, and he repeated the question in English. He flipped through my passport a bit, then returned it to me unstamped.

Then I went through security, which was painless, and then had a last taste of Holland: haring broodje and paling broodje, respectively, sandwiches of raw herring and smoked eel. Delicious. Pricy, but delicious. Then I went to the Rijksmuseum Schiphol: free entry, with some paintings from the Golden Age (17th Century) and more modern glass works. It was a very civilized way to spend some time at the airport. The Rijksmuseum Schiphol is located near F pier and is well marked, but you need to take stairs to reach the art works above the museum shop (no disabled access).

I walked quickly over to D pier to board my flight to LHR. Most people left were on standby. The gate agent gave the couple in front of me a hard time about their four carry-on bags but let them through any way. She saw my larger wheeled carry-on, and asked if she could lift it. Sure, I said, and told her I was also on WT+ to the USA. She lifted it, and muttered, "It's empty." Indeed, it was only half-full. There was secondary screening, which I evaded, but it took a little while for the gate agent to be told that the door to the jetway was closed - she came over quickly to open it. I was among the last group of about 20 people to board the aircraft, and took my seat 4A, which was nearly as wide as a US domestic first class seat, but had economy legroom and slightly better-than-economy recline.

The flight was to take 42 minutes and would take us on a western route after takeoff, then across to England, flying up the Thames estuary into Heathrow.

Soon after pushback, a stewardess saw my maximum-size carry-on (it fits the max dimensions exactly) stored under what would be seat 3B and insisted it had to go in an overhead locker. She was happy to do it herself. A little over-zealous, perhaps, but I was not perturbed.

During the flight, there was no audio entertainment, but none was to be expected. Instead, I had a pleasant conversation with my seat opponent, and ate half of my forgettable sandwich with unmemorable meat.

We landed on time, taxied to Terminal 4, and disembarked.

Ground services: 4/5
Meals: 2/5
Service: 4/5
Short-haul Seat comfort: 4/5

Total: 14/20



[This message has been edited by Buster CT1K (edited 02-25-2003).]

Buster CT1K

Feb 23, 2003
BA 113 AMS-LHR
sched dep 1550 (takeoff ~ 1645)
sched arr 1645 (35 min late)
B747-400

The previous day, I had checked in online, and got sequence number 6 on this flight. I had also switched my seat from pre-assigned 31B to 29K, based on the recommendations on
of FT members on the BA board. Thanks!

Arrival at Heathrow was quite painless... until I had to go through security. Why in heavens? Is it like security in Amstrerdam is subpar or something? In any case, there was only a single line open for security, and it was slower than a tortoise. It took me 20 minutes to get through, and I had been seated near the front of my aircraft.

My next flight was scheduled to depart from Gate 4 at LHR. I went straight to the gate, and waited around 15 minutes for BA to begin boarding. When boarding began, there seemed to be no one left to be able to process seat reselection, and boarding was a mess. No special line for WT+, though there was a F/C priority line (which was also slow). Part of the reason for the slowdown was that each BA employee was paired with a security agent who took time examining passports.

Then we just waited for a long time on the single jet way to the aircraft - partly because a wheelchair was coming off the plane. And then was the waiting for simple getting a fully-booked 747-400 boarded through a single open aircraft door. Ack.

My WT+ seat was pretty comfy. 29K has a window, and 28H infront of it has a small ledge to the side, so 29K (and on the other side, 29A) has a lot of legroom, plus the ledge thingy to put your feet on (don't do this if you're tall - your feet will be very obtrusive for the person in 28H), and a small space for underseat storage. Better yet, you can get in and out without disturbing 29H, if you're nimble and slim like me - just walk between the 28H ledge and 3R door.

Blankets, pillows, headsets and amenity kits; no menues were available. Amenity kits contained eyeshades, socks, and toothbrush. I don't know if these kits were superior to the WT ones.

We waited a long time for boarding to be completed, a longer time for pushback, a yet-longer time for takeoff (Captain kept mentioning something about a hold, but was entirely vague as to reason). A stewardess came around to deploy video monitors at my seat and at 28H for the safety video. Then came an announcement to the crew that it would be a manual demonstration today.

Seat: After takeoff, I found my seat was not functioning entirely properly: the lumbar support would not inflate, and it took several tries before the leg rest would stay up (I refused after this to put the leg rest away, for fear it would not stay up the next time). Because of poor lumbar support, backache became a problem during the flight.

Entertainment: There were 18 channels of TV and maybe a dozen audio channels, but no video games. I watched 007's "Die Another Day" which made for fine entertainment. The screens are touch-screens, so one can adjust brightness, volume and language (though not channel) without having to use one's game-controller remote control.

A cocktail service came around, followed by lunch, but the lunch cart was not accompanied by drinks, so I didn't have a proper drink. The choice was braised beef or chicken casserole. I had the beef, which was no great shakes but was edible. My seat opponent had a Hindu meal, which looked like rice with curry and appeared much yummier than mine.

Speaking of my seat opponent: turns out he had connected from Calcutta earlier in the day, and when his WT+ seat had also been assigned to a women with a babe in arms, he was upgraded to FIRST CLASS. I kid you not. I asked him again to make sure he wasn't talking about Club World, but as an experienced traveller, he knew what he was talking about. Wow.

I slept a bit during the flight, flipped through the channels (Bourne Identity and Frasier were also interesting to watch), did a bit of reading, and walked around the WT and WT+ cabins. As far as I could tell, WT, WT+ and C were all pretty full - only one empty seat in WT+. Juice and water came through the cabin regularly and I tried to stay hydrated. I liked the cup holder feature in the WT+ armrest, which enabled me to have a drink around without deploying the tray table. This was especially useful since deploying the tray table meant I had to push the video screen halfway down and then put it back up.


About 90 minutes before arrival, sandwiches were served - also somewhat forgettable.

One service flaw: we were asked to bring seat backs upright and stow footrests a full 25 minutes before landing! Over-zealous, I though, since I was trying to get a few more minutes of sleep.

Landing was bumpy, with strong gusts coming off a low pressure system that had brought much rain to the east coast that weekend. The skies were clear, but it was windy, and the landing was rough - I thought we must have come close to busting a tyre. There was some applause from the Y cabin after the landing, but the WT+ cabin (jaded travellers?) stayed stone silent.

We landed 1/2 an hour late, and INS processing wait was about 20 minutes for me, though INS and customs were both pleasant. Our delay, however, caused me to be unable to make the train I wanted out of Grand Central, and with the bus to the A subway making weird detours to the overflow lots, I made the next train an hour later with just a minute to spare.

Ground services: 2/5 (general chaos)
Meals: 3.5/5 (edible)
Service: 3/5 (nothing special, but definitely more civilized than most U.S. airlines)
Seat comfort: 4/5 (I had a great seat, but it wasn't working well)
Entertainment: 4/5 (just a shade behind Krisworld because of lack of video games, but nevertheless very good for an economy product)

Total: 16.5/25

Overall, this was a generally good journey, and if I could be guaranteed a good seat, I would definitely pay several hundred dollars more for WT+. However, if I'm stuck in a center seat, or a rear window, it would not be worth it.




[This message has been edited by Buster CT1K (edited 02-25-2003).]

PanAm747

Well done.

Do you have BA lounge access with W/T+?

Buster CT1K

Website is silent about this, so I guess no. I didn't try.

JohnG

No, lounge access is only for club or first, unless of course you have OW saphire status or higher

Buster CT1K

...or Concorde