The drive from San Jose up to SFO was hassle free, other than my hire car to refusing to register as full, despite definitely having filled it up. I had booked a Hertz “manager’s special” for an unbelievably low rate, and ended up with a Hyundai Elantra which was a surprisingly pleasant ride.
The JAL check in desks weren’t very busy, but despite being the only person waiting at the First check in counters, I wasn’t invited forward when an empty Business desk came available, or an Economy one. The person at the First desk was obviously having some issues, so eventually the supervisor walked over and took to me the management desk.
Above you can see loads of bags piling up. Apparently there was an issue with the belt, and all the bags had to me manually loaded onto carts and brought to other desks to be fed into the system.
My bag was tagged, and my carry on were also given some First tags. After my covid docs were checked, I was given my boarding pass, and given directions to the JAL lounge.
There was no fast track security, but the terminal was very empty and I was airside in minutes. The departures area in the Harvey Milk terminal were really lovely – far nicer than I was expecting. Bright and airy, very nice! Note the 12 hour time difference between the clock at the top of the board, and the one just below it!
There were three lounges on offer today, the JAL lounge, AA Admirals Club, and the relatively newly renovated BA lounge. As it was the opposite direction, I headed for the AA lounge first. After a funny interaction at the desk where a JAL First class bp apparently wasn’t enough to get me in (I had to show my BAEC card), the lounge experience was very pleasant. Good views across the tarmac, and a made-to-order guacamole stand, as well as a basic but acceptable range of snacks/food from the buffet.
The guac
A rum and coke, with a view. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that this was going to be the pinnacle of today’s lounge experiences.
The NRT 787 goes 2 hours before the HND 777 service.
With a few hours of lounging, plus an 11 hour flight in First class, I was conscious not to overindulge in each lounge, so I just had one drink with American.
Next up was the JAL lounge. Oh dear me. There were some nice retro JAL posters in the corridor
There were two smallish rooms, crammed with chairs, and packed with people. JAL let premium economy passengers in, so on a full 777, that’s 97 lounge eligible seats, plus status holders. The lounge sported windows over the tarmac, but the sun was shining in directly, so the blinds were drawn. The result was that there was no view, but it was still uncomfortably bright and hot.
The catering was poor. There was a very small selection of hot items – I just got the chicken karage. Drinks also very limited, with a few spirits and beer. I got a (giant) vodka and coke.
All the F&B was behind a manned counter, so anything you wanted to had to request. Given the quality of the JAL international lounges in Japan, I was expecting so much more. There wasn’t even a token little roped off First section.
I was counting down the time until the BA lounge would be opening as the JAL lounge was really not worth visiting, and wasn’t a relaxing place to be.
Ten minutes before the BA lounge was due to open, I left the JAL lounge and headed through the terminal. When I got there, the door was shut. I pushed it, and it opened. I headed downstairs to find a very surprised lady. “No no, we’re closed”. Argh. The earlier BA flight had been cancelled, so they decided to open the lounge later as a result. How annoying, as it looked very nice inside.
With half an hour to go before boarding, I thought about heading back to the AA lounge, but decided in the end to just mooch around the area, then hang around near the gate. There was minimal seating available to there was a large crowd of people hovering around.
With a bit of a delay they started boarding, but it was a free for all. There was some half hearted call from the ground staff for “business class”, but glancing around at people’s boarding passes, everyone was in the line, and the ground staff made no attempt to enforce priority boarding.
There was only one jet bridge attached, so everyone was funnelled aboard via door 2. Thankfully after the very lacklustre ground experience, things were going to improve significantly.
