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SK 945 ARN-ORD in Y+ (A330-300)

I made my way to gate F62. Passport control took a long while once again as there was only one passport agent working - how smart is that when there is a flight with approx. 260 persons leaving in a while? Just when I got to the agent another agent arrived. Security at the gate was a bit of a mess, the queue to security agent took about 20 minutes. The agent looked carefully through my bag, checked my coat and did a thorough pat-down. Check was done very professionally - well done.

After a short while boarding was called, first Business class travelers, then Economy Extra and *Golds. Boarding didn’t then take long, and I quickly settled down at 16A. It’s an ok window seat but it has only one window. For me it didn’t matter but as the forward window is missing my seat mate couldn’t easily look out. Economy Extra has larger seats than regular Economy. Seat pitch is 38’’ which really helps. There are also fewer seats per row, 2-3-2 instead of 2-4-2 in Economy. Even with the person in front of me reclining fully I didn’t have any problems with a lack of space - it was quite comfortable.

Business and Economy Extra have AVOD on SK but screens in Y+ are quite small and the selection very limited in my opinion. I listened to some music and watched a movie and a few series. There were some problems with the system so security demonstration was done live instead of through the entertainment system.

I was positively surprised with the food and beverage selection. SK serves champagne in Y+, standard Nicolas Feuillatte in small bottles. Whisky was only Johnnie Walker Red Label, so no points there. Lunch was quite nice, a small shrimp salad as an appetizer, as a main course I chose salmon tagliatelle (pork stew was the other choice) and a moist sacher chocolate cake was served as dessert.

Later during flight we were also served ice-cream and some chocolates. Water-runs were done quite regularly. About 1,5 hours before landing we were served a small meal, in Y+ it was two open-face sandwiches, one was salmon on white bread and the other roast beef on rye. Very tasty!

Service was generally quite friendly but there were some exceptions. SK has more senior personnel working in C and Y+ and one of the stewardesses seemed to have a bit of a bad day. Let’s see how the flight back home is! We were told that 191 (if I remember correctly) of the passengers had an onward flight from O’Hare so Chicago really is an important destination for SK and its partners.

We landed five minutes before scheduled arrival time, the flight time was 8 hours 42 minutes. I made a quick way to immigration and was through in no time. Bags arrived very quickly, it took only 20 minutes from gate to landside - I was very impressed!

Chicago

I chose to take the subway to downtown Chicago so first I made my way to terminal two on monorail and then found my way to the subway terminal. Unfortunately the trip to State took a long time as we stopped often between stations on our way to Loop. Is that usual? Cars seemed to fly past us on the right side.

More to follow!