First trip report time! It’s not that glamorous, but I hope those of you used to traveling up front can get a little reminder of what life is like in the back—and keep you motivated to stay up front! This trip report is getting written at the behest, cajoling, and demand of a couple friends, including FTer ywlke, so thanks to them for making sure I actually do this.
A little context for the trip. I’m a college student in the Boston area, while my mom works for an American organization in Japan. Her organization has a program where if the person has a dependent who’s full-time in college, and the person is working overseas, the organization will pay for one round-trip ticket a year from the college to the person’s place of work. This year it worked out such that my sister and I would go over to Japan on this program for Christmas, since our mom won’t be able to make it back to the states over the holidays.
The organization has a contract for the BOS-NRT route with AA, with the contract requiring (I think?) taking the nonstop flight if it’s available. The nonstop flight, of course, is AA’s codeshare with JL on the 787. I had known that I would probably be flying the 787 a month ago or so, but it wasn’t until the end of November that the tickets were booked. Tragically, I’m coming back on AA via DFW, so I only get the 787 experience one-way.
So I struggled through the end of semester project, paper, and final dreaming of the day of the flight. I’m pretty sure I posted enough Facebook and chat statuses about flying the 787 in the days leading up to departure.
As luck would have it, a friend who goes to the same school was flying to Tokyo on the same day as me (their parent is in the same organization, different location). Unfortunately, he was on crutches. Because of this, we worked out a plan where I would get a taxi from my dorm, go to his place, pick him up, and then go to the airport together. This part of the trip went just fine, getting us to the airport at about 0920 for an 1150 departure.
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Last edited by cmn.jcs; Jan 5, 13 at 2:17 pm..
Reason: Got my friend's username wrong :P
Once there we headed over to check-in, greeted by a small but festive tree. Check-in was almost deserted—only half a dozen passengers were there when we arrived. This was good, because instead of having to walk through the zig-zag Y line, we were able to walk through the J line, which was a straight shot to the desks. Once at the desks, there was discussion on what the best seating option for my friend. Originally, he was in 23D, which is the first bulkhead aisle, left side, of the center column in the first Y cabin, and I was in 24C—just back and to the left of him. However, we got moved over to 22H/K, the bulkhead seats on the right side. I’m almost starting to feel bad about getting all these benefits just because my friend is the one in crutches.
Merry Christmas!
Fairly quiet check-in
So long USA! See you again soon!
Having checked in, we waited for a wheelchair which showed up after about 10 minutes. A quick trip through security (with my routine opt out, thankfully pretty quick), and we headed over to gate E8. At this point, we have about 2 hours until departure. My friend took a nap while I found an outlet and browsed the interwebs. I was hoping to grab a picture of the plane as it came in, but I wasn’t paying attention and missed it. At about an hour prior to departure, I checked with the GA about when preboards would board, to which she replied at about 1115.
At about that time, one of the GAs waved my friend over, and we loaded up and headed out. We were halted prior to actually boarding the aircraft by one of the ground staff; I assume the plane needed just another minute or two for prep. We finally got on the actual aircraft and headed back. We boarded through 2L, so it was a fairly quick journey back to our seats. Bags were stowed, and the crutches placed behind the last row of J. I took the time to snap some photos as I was able:
Rear J cabin
Front Y cabin
Window tinting--probably about 30%-40% tinted
Raked wingtip
Legroom at 22H/K
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Boarding was a fairly smooth process. I kept getting struck by how open the space seemed—looks like Boeing got that right. Had some fun playing with the window dimmers, though we did realize that they can take a rather long while to respond. Finally loaded up (looked like a completely full load in Y) and pushed back. The engine start-up sounded a little unusual—there was some extra vibrations that I wasn’t used to; given that it was so quiet it might have been a different system. Finally got to runway 33L after what must have been close to 10 minutes of taxiing, after cutting in front of a UA Airbus, and immediately took off.
That's right, you wait there you puny little A319
To quote Joker: "And here, we, go..."
Oh yeah, gimme some of that wing flex
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A climbing departure to the northwest took us up over Vermont, New York, and on to Canada. The seatbelt light stay lit for a rather long time; it had been announced that we were expecting some turbulence en route. We did hit a few little bumps, but nothing too terrible. It was awesome watching the wing flex up and down as we hit the rough air. I tried to get a video of it flexing, but missed. After maybe 30 minutes the sign went off and the crew started the first beverage service along with some rice crackers. I led off with the JAL Sky Time drink. Some airborne photos:
Nothing particularly special about this, but hey, we’re FLYING ON THE 787 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A couple of shots of the rear J cabin. It looks very open, and I got the same feeling back in Y.
More wing flex. The pictures don’t do it justice—it just keeps going up and up and up.
The FAs closed the curtain to the J cabin. How rude.
At some point around here I started poking around the IFE. Nice big screen. I started out watching Total Recall. Was a decent way to pass the time—got a little confused here and there, but overall I enjoyed it. I think lunch came sometime in the middle of the movie. Was decent airline food. Had the options of chicken or pork; I went with the pork with vegetables and rice. Tasted fine, though the pork was a little dry. It came with sides of fruit, noodles, and some sort of bamboo shoot-mushroom-something unknown dish (I enjoyed it), and miso soup. Follow-up runs came by with green tea and coffee. Overall, service seemed a little on the slow side, though it’s possible I had unrealistic expectations. I would guess we had our trays for well over an hour. Unfortunately, that led to a bathroom rush afterwards—I think the lines for the 4 mid-cabin lavs (the only ones in the Y cabin) didn’t finally go away for close to 30 minutes. Obligatory food pictures:
Pre-lunch snack
Nom nom nom
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Sometime after lunch the lights were dimmed and the window dimmers came into play. As we were sitting on the right side of the aircraft, I got a good look at all the dimmed windows on the left side. Their ability to completely darken the cabin was incredible (though a couple people left their undimmed, which got really annoying when we got a faceful of sun :angry:). On that note, though, having a bunch of windows with different dimming levels was slightly disorienting, since it was difficult to know for sure exactly what it was like outside. Blue mood lights on the ceiling came on at some point, though the J cabin had yellow lights on earlier.
The dark cabin—save for the undimmed window on the far side. The man standing in the first picture is blocking the window seen in the second picture.
Dark cabin and mood lighting
Views from the back of the cabin. At this point in time, I think we’re around or just east of Alaska, so the right side of the cabin isn’t getting direct sunlight. You can see the difference in the mood lights between the Y and J cabins.
The mood lights in the J cabin
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The flight continued uneventfully. Snacked often from the tray of snacks left in the midcabin galley. Caught an hourish nap before being woken for a midflight snack of a beverage and custard-filled pastry (which was delicious). Watched Jonny English Reborn—I really enjoyed; it was the first movie I’d seen with this Mr. Bean guy in it. Played around a little on the games and music side of the IFE as well as the airshow mode. The airshow mode is very versatile. It has 7 modes:
total route: display the start and end point on the map, as well as your position
day and night: display the world map, with your position and the boundary between day and night (we actually hit night around Alaska)
autozoom: the traditional airshow, just show your position on the map with various zoom levels
high resolution: same thing, but stay zoomed in
world explorer: scroll around the map and see information about various cities
relative location indicator: one of my favorites, you select two cities and it shows the airplane’s heading along with arrows and distances to the cities
your flight: time and distance remaining, time at destination, and a plane on a line corresponding to the distance traveled
These can be combined through autoplay, which cycles through the first four options. It’s basically the same as the airshow on the main screen, but it only displays in your selected language.
Then I watched The Expendables II. Probably should have seen the first one, but it was still a nice 90 minutes of shooting and stuff exploding. Finally got brave enough to try working on my laptop while plugged into the power outlet under my seat. I’ve had bad luck with power outlets on planes with my computer, which I’m pretty sure is because it’s a 17-inch computer. However, it’s been working fine so far. The power outlet has shut off twice, but I just unplug my adapter, give it a couple minutes to reset, and then plug in again.
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In the middle of the report the second meal service came around (about 3 hours prior to arrival). Pretty much matched the first meal service, but this time we only had one option of a noodle dish with a sort of sausage and vegetable mix on top. Sides were a salad, fruit, and yogurt. I had Sky Time again (I think had at least half a dozen cups on this flight). The meal tasted fine. Service seemed a little quicker than during the first meal. Typed up some more of the trip report afterwards; now about 1.5 hours out from Narita and trying to decide how long I should wait to go to the lav (the downside of taking advantage of Sky Time :P).
Wakey wakey, time for food!
More nom nom nom
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The weather was great coming into NRT—probably 3/8 cloudy along our route as we flew south and west to land to the north. Saw a couple outbound flights, but wasn’t able to get pictures of them. My friend and I had been briefed to wait for the other pax to disembark before getting off so that a wheelchair could meet us at the door, so I used this time to grab some cabin shots for a friend. While in the J cabin one of the FAs somehow got the idea that I wanted a picture of me in a J seat and offered to help. I hadn’t intended to get one, but I took her up anyway. Likewise, when I went back to get my friend and our stuff, the FAs somehow thought we wanted a picture together. We took them up on the offer. A JL employee with a wheelchair met us at the door, and we headed to immigrations and customs. It was very quick as we went off to the side through the handicapped aisle, though the rest of immigrations was fairly quiet (I’m sure partially due to having taken so long to get there). Bags were on the carousel when we arrived, got through customs, and then headed to the terminal shuttle bus. The JL employee stayed with us the entire time until we got to the area in terminal 1 that we needed to wait at, which was a great help. My friend and I both had a while until our busses left, and I went to go meet my sister who was arriving on UA.
The rear Y cabin—not much larger (or so it seemed) than the front Y cabin
Turning to the north—beautiful weather!
Land ho!
Queen of the skies!
__________________
We are, we are, we are the engineers!
<-----Tuba player parking only. All others will be blown away.----->
Overall I had a great time on the flight. The newness of the plane was very apparent—none of the scuffs and dings that make an aged interior. The FAs were friendly and attentive, though on some occasions it could be a little while between cabin runs. Food was airline food, a little bit less than on my DFW-NRT flight in March but a little bit tastier (in my opinion). I enjoyed the IFE system—there was a good selection of movies. The TV and music choices were slanted towards a Japanese audience (surprise surprise). I didn’t watch any TV, but did listen to some good jazz and classical playlists. The airshow system was amazing—I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’m currently booked NRT-DFW-BOS on AA returning; after this flight I’m desperate to find a way to get on the NRT-BOS JL flight. Unfortunately, I just found out that the 787 flight back leaves way too early for me to get to the airport to make it. :'(
Before I end, a couple odds and ends about the flight that I found to be worth noting. First, the window dimmers: these worked great, but because every window can now be tinted to different levels, I found myself getting a little disoriented at times about what was actually outside. I particularly noted this as we reached the northernmost part of our track. Yes, I could simply undim my window, but given how long it can take for the window to move between dimming levels this isn’t necessarily a simple solution. The second thing is the lav doors: they don’t pivot about an edge of the door, they pivot about a point towards the center of the door. I’m guessing this was done so that the doors don’t go so far into the aisle, but they were a momentary item of confusion until I finally figured out how to open them correctly.
As Porky the Pig would say, “Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-... That's all, folks!” Hope this was informative, entertaining, or at least scary enough to motivate you to earn those miles. Safe travels, and Merry Christmas!
Goodbye, new friend. Hope to see you again soon!
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<-----Tuba player parking only. All others will be blown away.----->
In one of your night photos, you show both aisles, facing forward. The aisle on the left has a red light and on the right we see a green light. Is this for the mariners on board? "Red, right, return."
In one of your night photos, you show both aisles, facing forward. The aisle on the left has a red light and on the right we see a green light. Is this for the mariners on board? "Red, right, return."
That's actually the front of the front Y cabin looking back towards the rear. Those lights are the lav occupied lights. Because of the angle, you can't see the lights for the other two lavs.
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<-----Tuba player parking only. All others will be blown away.----->
That's actually the front of the front Y cabin looking back towards the rear. Those lights are the lav occupied lights. Because of the angle, you can't see the lights for the other two lavs.
Well that would make more sense if the red was actually on the right (don't know why I mixed that up before). But I guess a mariner could end up in the wrong lav!!
This trip report is getting written at the behest, cajoling, and demand of a couple friends, including FTer ywlke, so thanks to them for making sure I actually do this.
At about an hour prior to departure, I checked with the GA about when preboards would board, to which she replied at about 1115.
). On that note, though, having a bunch of windows with different dimming levels was slightly disorienting, since it was difficult to know for sure exactly what it was like outside. Blue mood lights on the ceiling came on at some point, though the J cabin had yellow lights on earlier.
