Tuesday, 9/15

The day to begin my long trip back to NY ~24 hours of flying to go. Woke up to rainy and chilly Cape Town, so it’s nice the weather cooperated while I was there. I had a 12:45 pm flight to JNB, so I just breakfast at the hotel and packed up before heading out to fuel up the car and get back to the airport.

A dreary looking day at CPT



Unfortunately no lounge access in the domestic terminal at CPT, so I had to slum it in the gate area. The Bidvest lounge, which tend to be Priority Pass accessible, was under renovation, which left the SAA (*A) and SLOW (BA) lounges as the only two options.

The flight to JNB was uneventful and a carbon copy of the flight to CPT, so won’t bore you all. My bag came out quickly and I trekked over to Terminal A to check in with Etihad.

Shongololo Lounge

I had a couple hours to kill before my flight, so after going through passport control, headed to the above named difficult to pronounce lounge. It’s kinda dark and at the far end of the terminal but the amenities were good. Tasty food (they even have a panini press for sandwiches!), good bar selection, and decent internet. They also have a power adaptor or two available at the desk if you ask, since their power outlets don’t accept US plugs.





Lunch – beef curry over rice, and chicken with a creamed spinach sauce. It was all pretty good, curry was nice and spicy. Then enjoying some champagne and reading FT.





Best overheard line in a while was while I was sitting there. A man who I’m guessing as a Brit based on his accent said while on his cell phone, “Swaziland is a beautiful country. It’s like Switzerland with black people.”

To board, I had to hike all the back to gate A00. Normally I’d think you’d start with A1 but not here.

EY603, JNB – AUH

As an overnight flight, I slept for much of it after the meal service. Was very similar to the flight down here. I had the chicken biryani with Arabic rice for my meal, which was quite tasty



EY Y amenity kit – includes socks, earplugs, and a pretty slick reversible eye mask. One side is red and says “do not disturb”, while the other side is green and says “wake me to eat”



Better Etihad branded head phones found on the AUH-JNB segments



Transfer at AUH, and the much derided preclearance

I went to kill a couple hours at the Al Dhabi lounge (again) before heading through customs, since from what I could find, there is literally *nothing* to do past US customs.

Unlike some of the blogs/comments about security and customs being a pain and taking a long time, I went through at around 8 AM and there was virtually nobody in security and there wasn’t a single person in line at CBP, though security insanely over does it, by taking pretty much everything electronic out of the bag and putting it in a bin.

Once through CBP, it’s a wasteland of uncomfortable chairs (with a couple of loungers to lid down in) and a coffee cart. We boarded a bit late and eventually left AUH about an hour behind schedule.

The USA preclearance gate area



EY101, AUH – JFK

This flight was the same as the prior one with the Jet Airways attired and outfitted crew. Truthfully I don’t remember the meal, and there was no menu provided. All of these tasty but kinda non descript Indian meals were beginning to run together.

I managed a few hours of sleep and then was awake for about 9 hours. I spent much of that watching movies and writing much of this TR. The economy seats on the 777 have US style power outlets between the seats, so I was able to charge up my electronics.

Craptastic Jet headphones found on the flights to/from JFK