I guess I missed the new lounge by one day. IST was annoying -- I went through the left door and avoided the luggage scan lines, but went to the online check-in desks and had to wait in line quite a while for my BP. I guess I should have gone to the *G desks but I missed them. Got lots of stickers and had my passport checked 6 times, I think.

The IST-LAX flight was delayed an hour, I think because of air traffic -- it was hard to understand when the pilot spoke English. The cabin wasn't too hot, but sometime after mid-flight it became so. Maybe someone complained that it was too cold. The food was good, but this time I didn't get as full and had to get a sandwich later on.

TBIT immigration was packed. I chose a line that had been for visitors but changed to US/residents as I arrived. It was shorter than the others, but didn't go very fast because they were asking more questions of the visitors ahead of me. After 10 minutes, one of the agents servicing my line left, then 5 minutes later another, leaving only one agent to service our line, which quickly grew to 60-70 people.

I counted the number of agents working the next line over -- 4. So I called out to several apparent supervisors to complain, and after about 15-20 minutes we were allocated another agent and then 10 minutes later another. It ended up taking about an hour to get through, and then there were lines to get past Customs. I've never experienced anything like this entering the US before -- is this normal for LAX?