Interesting experience at JFK this morning (positive for the premium services team, negative for the gate agents).

Spoke with one of the premium services agents at Chelsea and she said there would be a rep at the gate for the HND flight, and she’d call down to let them know that we’d be coming down from Chelsea. I asked if we wanted to hang here, could we go to the gate during boating and get escorted down the jet bridge (figured worth the ask). She said absolutely no issue board when we want / flag down the rep as Chelsea is better than sitting on the plane. We decided to head down at the 55 minute mark as a windowless room sans any premium champagne is not a recipe for success (might as well look out on the ramp and listen to ATC).

Things got a little chippy at the gate. I asked one the agents working the flight where we should go. Because they had just started with group 1, she said to squeeze through the group 4+ barrier. The agent manning the scanner said we’re only doing group 1 and I said yep and I’m CK / was told to do this by your colleague, to which I was told no, go to the back to the line. The CK rep then got into it with the agent saying that she watched me get instructed to do this and apologized to me by name (only CK on the flight) for the bickering. I said all good on my end. The two of them were still arguing as we walked down the jet bridge. It would have been nice to get a text from the agent to communicate directly with her about the game plan, but worked out fine.

As an aside — it was very nice to have Chelsea access, but we were in the dead zone of likely zero outbound qualifying flights so service was limited and premium champagne consisted of two LPGS bottles found in the back room (apparently the bottles from the offsite warehouse can only be picked up by a manager and typically happens mid-day). I’d be fine if this was the evening where red wine / drinks were an option, but not at 10 am!