Part 2...
I ordered my usual G&T from Newbie inquiring as to whether AC finally carried limes. Although he had assured me that yes they did indeed have limes, he brought my G&T with a lemon. When I again asked if he had a lime instead of lemon, he responded with “oh, you mean the green one?”
Yes, that would be the one. Sorry, no lime, just lemon (Aka “the yellow one”). Fortunately, I came prepared having remembered AC’s aversion to limes and had brought lime slices from home. I pulled them out telling him “yes, the green ones like these”.
The one nice difference from my last AC J flight is that they’ve stopped the ridiculous use of a drink cart for 3 or 4 rows of J pax. I wonder if they had to get FA union approval for that one?
Now years of AA have conditioned me to good in flight nut service (warm, in a ramekin and with your 1st drink) but no such luck today on AC. After Newbie came by for a second round, I politely inquired about nuts. “Oh. yes we do have some, just a moment”.
Two minutes later, he came by with a tray of Blue Diamond Almonds. Not sure when he was planning on serving them if I hadn’t asked. Perhaps he enjoyed them and was hoping to snack on them himself later on. If that was the case, he was SOL as the J cabin quickly devoured his entire supply.
It was now time to play with the new AC IFE. The good news is that they have one, which is better than the non-existent IFE on AA MD80s and CO 73s. Unfortunately, VX must have cornered the IFE brains with their fabulous i-pod like RED, so AC was apparently relegated to the B design team. Touch screen controls yes, but rather than at my fingertips, the controls were on my screen which was on the bulkhead wall some 4 feet away!
Warning, don’t even think about surfing channels since the same 3 and ½ minutes of commercials run each time you change a channel. After watching the same BDO Dunwoody, CIBC, Ford, XM, enRoute Film Festival and Penfolds commercials 3 times, I finally settled in and started enjoying my (and MegatopLover’s) favorite recent movie “Charlie Wilson’s War”. Primitive pause and rewind feature, although rewind/fast forward seems to have two speeds, “watching grass grow” and “hyper-speed”. But I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was not censored and included all the original T&A and foul language. Yes, I am a pig!
The Audio portion of the IFE was not working today… it was Saturday so perhaps it had the weekend off.
Please try again later… apparently much later, like on another flight?
The map feature worked just as well:
OK, so the fun of the new livery and IFE is beginning the wear off and fray, just like the carpet by my seat:
Meal service began with a (smelly) hot towel and… the J cart! Well, I guess that was the union/management compromise.
No tablecloth, just the tray with a plastic salad bowl. Uh-oh, this is not a good sign. However, wine and warm rolls were immediately offered, with frequent re-fills.
The chicken teriyaki was quite tasty and served in a nice china bowl, directly from the galley and not off of the cart.
Desert was small pre-wrapped commercial cookies… OK especially since my wife didn’t want hers and better than the dopey gelato I remember from last year, but not nearly as good a sundae.
More good news about the new livery is that it included a shear cabin dividing curtain. The bad news on this flight it that it wasn’t used. Why have a cabin-dividing curtain if you’re not going to use it? You just invite the inevitable parade of Y pax to the J lav. And a veritable parade it was with a rookie FA not knowing or wanting to stop anyone. I imagine that this was not a typical phenomenon as on our return, with a more seasoned (and exceptionally good) FA the curtain was closed and there was zero cross-cabin traffic.
We touched down at YUL on time at 8:00P and taxied to gate 72, the best gate in the trans-border concourse (which at its last gate extends nearly to the Ontario border), directly across from C&I. As usual, C&I was virtually empty so we breezed through without me having to complain about my not being able to use NEXUS since I was traveling with the Mrs. We were out in the limo at 8:15P and at our downtown hotel by 8:40P, in plenty of time for our 9:30P dinner reservation.
All in all, a much more pleasant AC experience that in past few years, but certainly not worth the posted $4,400 RT J fare, which I can’t imagine they actually get very often.