Off to the bus gate area (gates 28A-E) I went. This was actually right below the New Central Terminal area. After waiting for a few minutes, I thought that I’d have to wait for 45 minutes before the standard transfer bus operated by the airport would arrive. A few other passengers connecting on CO were also not so amused; however, a CO agent (dressed in the standard CO BusinessFirst concierge costume) soon appeared. We were all happy to see that CO had a special bus and that it would be picking us up soon. She had a list of passengers who were allowed to use the bus, as to make non-CO passengers with flights from the other terminal suffer for not traveling on CO.
Right before the bus left, she told ALL of us to stop by the transfer desk regardless. It’s weird because I already had a boarding pass and ticket.
Terminal 1 Transfer Desk
After exiting the bus, I saw a father traveling with his wife and 3-4 teenage children rush out of the bus and walk quickly to the transfer desk. For once, I had an opponent in getting to the CO transfer desk! He beat me to only BusinessFirst agent at the transfer desk; however, I was the first to get to the only economy class agent.
All boarding passes for CO transfer pax were already printed and were on top of a table. These generic boarding passes had the word “Economy” with a green background or “Business” with a blue background on the top.
The JAL-contracted agent asked to see my passport, luggage claim tags, and CO ticket. Like BKK, my paper ticket was taken, never to be seen again; I just left with a boarding pass and a map to the various JAL lounges. I looked at my bus opponent next to me and saw the agent handing him 2 business class boarding passes and the rest were economy. I can’t ever see myself traveling in separate cabins as my traveling companions . . . other than my boss.
Just to gloat, I left the transfer desk ahead of this guy even though he was serviced first.
Off the NRT Dayroom/Shower facility.
Security
Routine. If you’ve made it this far and noticed, this is my second time clearing security in NRT. I think this was just a result poor planning when the second terminal was built.
Shower
I still can’t believe that all the day rooms were taken!!! I think I can give it up and won’t expect to use a dayroom ever when I’m transiting through NRT. I was surprised that this place took credit cards, especially for just a miserable $2.58 charge. This place is such a steal for a nice shower. This facility is much better than the one in terminal 1. The shower rooms are roomier and brighter.
Outside the shower rooms were massage chairs and tables and chairs right by the windows. No food though. However, this is quite a nice place to escape to while waiting for your flight, especially if you don’t have access to a lounge.
Lounge
I decided to check out the JAL Sakura lounge in the main terminal, as opposed to the satellite terminal, where the CO flight would be departing from, as I used the satellite lounge last year. However, compared to last year, there were cutbacks. Last year there were 3 choices of prepackaged Japanese trail mix; this year there was just a clear plastic box with a scooper. :-( So, I gulped some Apple juice, a few scoops of trail mix, and some, literally, cheese balls. I was still hungry afterwards! I still find these (literal) cheese balls are strange item.
Afterwards, I went to the business area and took the only computer in the lounge. There were a bunch of (idiotic) business travelers dialing up to their ISPs to check their e-mail or surf the net. Since the computer that I took had an ethernet internet connection already, I just disconnected the ethernet cable and attached it to my laptop! I spent some time checking my e-mail and using AOL Instant Messenger to talk to my friends, both in the US and Asia. (My friends are such night owls.) At the end, I went to CO’s website (which was actually working
) and verified the departure time of my flight and the gate. Why didn’t I just check the monitors? Just because I didn’t have to.
I also left quite early because I just couldn’t sit here and keep still. Once I again, I felt like being with the crowd.
Boarding Area & Boarding
After taking the tram to the satellite terminal, I was impressed to see that complimentary carts were provided for hand-carry and duty free items. Quite nice! (Okay, those were provided by the duty free shops. But they didn’t get my business that day.) Since I was quite hungry after the buffet from the JAL lounge, I found a nice self-service noodle/dessert shop. In the front were mock-ups of the food that was being served, along with the price. Most of the tables were occupied and were being shared amongst strangers.
I ordered some soup with udon noodles and vegetables. Decent but nothing to write home about. After finishing it, my hunger ended. Nothing better else to do than to head to the gate.
The area was just simply crowded by people even from other departing flights! I paced around the area, including adjoining gates, in an attempt to get a good view of the plane and take a photograph for
www.airliners.net. No view at all! The person who designed this terminal was a bad architect. Since this is a big international hub, one would expect a nice design like HKG or . . . NW’s DTW terminal!
By the time boarding began, all seats in the boarding area were taken and many people were crowded standing around the boarding area for this flight. Right when the boarding agent made the boarding call (for J class only) in both Japanese and English, a college-age Japanese students in Y cut in front of me as I was walking to the agent. After the students handed the agent their boarding passes, she gently chided them in Japanese. I think other people his age attempting to do the same thing then backed away.
Alas, I was on my way! Because of the crowd it seemed like most of the J class pax were struggling to board. Midway down the corridor I noticed only 2 other people walking near me. I made some joke to them about who amongst the 3 of us will get the random search.
Unfortunately, this corridor ends and you have to make a right turn in order to get to the jetway. A security personnel was right at that junction. He didn’t say anything as we were walking towards him; then, tada! After we made the right turn, there were four empty tables with 4 security personnel for all 3 of us! The security personnel then told us that we had to go for the added treatment. So obviously, the sucker after the 3 of us obviously got sent to the last empty remaining table.
After that, the guy standing at the junction repeatedly said “Proceed forward; thank you for flying Continental Airlines” while I was being searched by a security personnel with dragon breath. It was funny that some passengers just stopped right by the random search tables waiting to be search. I would have been more than happy to trade places with them.
