JFK Immigration
Unfortunately the arrival of our flight coincided with an Iberia arrival and the queue for immigration was massive. I found a BA agent who referred me to a One World agent who kindly escorted us to the front of the line, it seemed to me that the New York attitude was if you don’t ask you don’t get so I am glad I went and asked.
The first border agent we went to found an anomaly with our customs declaration which was pedantry to the maximum, we sorted out a new form and went to another much kinder agent.
After rechecking our bags we took the AirTrain to T8 and I went straight to Flagship check in and got my boarding pass for the AA177 – First Class! The boarding pass said Booking Class A (as expected) and Priority AAccess.
Due to the palaver with immigration and a late arrival of the preceeding flight and another scrum with the security line (I can see why TSA Pre is such a great thing to have) we had about twenty minutes in the lounge. The lounge AAngel was great and sorted us out with showers and vouchers for a drink – great service there.
09/09/14 AA177 JFK-SFO A321T (First)
Scheduled Departure: 1755 (BST)
Actual Departure: 1753 (CET)
Wheels Up: 1836 (CET)
Wheels Down: 2134 (EST)
On Stand: 2140 (EST)
I was really looking forward to this flight and trying the new AA First Class seat and take a ride on the A321. We pre-boarded and I had a nice Coca-Cola and all the passengers boarded very promptly.
The 321T:
Obligatory foot shot:
Take off was delayed as there was congestion on the taxiways, I saw a lot of aircraft depart including an AB flight and thought of Raffles and the cheap redemptions on AB. Took a great photo of the Manhattan skyline.
Now as much as I’d like to tell you about the flight I had planned to stay up and watch a film and enjoy some dinner but the IFE was broken (and it took the crew four hours to fix it) I more or less fell asleep straight away. I woke as we were over Denver and some pretty severe turbulence and the captain had asked the crew to return to their seats. I’d have preferred to be in a wide-bodied aircraft during all the lumps and bumps.
The crew were funny, they’d saved me a steak and some salad which I pecked at, they were saying I was sleeping like a baby and generally having a good laugh and chat. After pecking at the food (the steak was delicious) I went back to sleep!
I woke up with about 70 miles to go and there were great views of the Bay Area, we landed and were relatively quick onto the stand. Crew were funny and wished each passenger in First a good onward journey and thanks for flying American Airlines. They called me Mr High Maintenance that sparked a few laughs again!
Overall Thoughts of the Outbound
It’s a long way to SFO coming from BRU in a day via JFK!! I bow and admire other FTers such as billinghamn who do their mammoth runs. I doubt if I could have managed another sector to HNL!
The service on both BA flights was excellent, Mrs Our_Kid said she preferred BA to AA as it was more attentive. Plus there were issues with the IFE on the AA177 that marred the experience. We both agreed that the AA seat was much better than the BA CW offering but being on separate sides of the cabin on AA on the bulkhead wasn’t very exciting as you couldn’t people watch.
I think I wasted the AA flight though being asleep! There were some gorgeous Californian wines on the wine list and I didn’t have a drop!