Lewis and Clark had nothing on me. Those guys had an entire team at their back, plus hot female Indian guides (assuming that the movie Night at the Museum did not lie to me). I had navigated to the ends of the Earth, or at least London Heathrow’s Terminal 1, using nothing but airport signage. Without a word of a lie, I have used the Google Maps Pedometer to work out I had to walk nearly one and a half kilometers, gate to gate.
My next flight was with US Airways, who I think can accurately be summed up as the worst of the North American Star Alliance carriers. That’s OK with me, though, as it meant my fare was cheap. I like cheap. I’d flown with US Airways before, and had not particularly enjoyed the experience. I guess I got what I paid for (except that, of course, I was flying in the summer so my fare was hella expensive, dawg).
This photo, from Flickr user BBC World Service Bangladesh Boat adequately sums up how it feels to be a passenger in economy on one of US Airways’ transatlantic Boeing 752s. Moo.
So my last trip had been, well, dreadful. It had gotten me there, eventually (though I can’t fault US Airways for how they looked after me during the dreadful weather), but had not exactly done so in comfort. Such is the fate of choosing to fly transatlantic in one of US Airways’ rather decrepit old Boeing 752s. This time things would be better. This time I’d be flying on one of US Airways newest aeroplanes, the Airbus A330-200, a type I’d flown before with KLM. This means I have two points of comparison; different plane types within US Airways and different airlines versions of the A332. So, with that bit of background out of the way, let’s move on.
I’d walked non-stop from my Glasgow plane for what must have been half an hour or so, and finally made it to the gate area. Situated amongst quite a few United Air Lines planes loading up for their various American hubs, I found the rather quieter US Airways gate. Ahead of me was a crowd of around 20, 25 people queueing for access to the gate waiting area. Obviously as my plane was heading to The United States of Paranoia, there was extra security screening before the holding pen. It wasn’t too long before I was at the head of the queue, and showing the lady my boarding pass. She pointed me to a desk when she saw that I’d transferred at Heathrow, and I bypassed the bag-checks entirely (a handy tip there, terrorists!).
The desk lady checked my boarding pass against my passport, and then waved me through to the holding pen. I wasn’t entirely convinced that my frequent flyer number had been forwarded correctly from BMI’s stellar on-line check-in systems, since it appeared on my domestic boarding pass, but not on t’other two. Figuring that talking to somebody about it then would probably be easier than e-mailing stubs later, I went and spoke to one of the gate agents at the podium, to ask if she could add the number in. Not only had BMI not passed on the FF number, they had not actually passed on the APIS data that they’d collected from me earlier, so my heading to the desk was fortuitous. Having added everything, the agent handed me back my boarding pass and told me I could board with Zone 3.
The route the flight took (transatlantic and British airspace aren’t shown on flightaware, I’m afraid)
Boarding was announced shortly, and I had to stifle laughs as I heard Americans around me mangling the word envoy as the business class cabin were boarding. It wasn’t too long until Zone 3 were called. Actually, it was just after Zone 2, which came after Zone 1. It’s amazing how that works. I’d chosen a window seat in the rear economy cabin because unlike last year, I didn’t have a tight connection in Philadelphia, and the on-line seat selector on the US Airways website had indicated that row 25 was the exit row. As it turns out, the on-line seat selector was full of crap. For future reference, row 23 on the US 332 is the exit row, but the 2 seats at the exit doors on each side are blocked for crew rest, so you can’t sit there.
I’m not tall, but comfortable enough with the legroom for me.
I’ve found the video of the exact boarding music on YouTube. To understand how it feels to board a US Airways 332, play this video about twelve times straight. The same user seems to have several other videos that I recognise from boarding this aeroplane.
Not long after I’d boarded and made myself comfortable, my seatmate joined me. He was a rather large gentleman. Not particularly fat, just large. Hagrid-like proportions, perhaps. I have no idea if his mother was a giant, that would purely be speculation. I’m sure he’s a lovely fellow, but when he sat down he had to raise the armrest between us, and that’s just not going to endear anyone to me.
Fortunately the rear cabin did not fill very much. In fact, it was more than half empty. My seatmate took advantage of this, and without so much as a by your leave, he’d vacated his seat in favour of one of the bulkhead seats in the centre section. Good man.
It took a while longer for the ground crew to finish loading us up with cargo. It was a cold day outside with frost on the ground and despite some of the fetching headgear they were wearing, I wasn’t jealous of them. Made me even happier to be safely ensconced aboard the aeroplane. Eventually the doors were closed, the cargo bay shut, and we pulled back to begin our bus tour of Heathrow Airport. It was pretty exciting. As a plane geek, I did have rather a nice time going “Oooh, a BA 747, ahh, an Emirates 380, gasp, a BMI 320″ and so on. Eventually we were allowed on an actual runway, the engines got louder and we were in the air. A quick 180 so we were facing the right direction, and we were heading for America!
The economy seating on the US A332 is actually pretty good. In comparison to the B752 anyway, it was much more comfortable. I think KLM have a slight edge on the seat because they have an adjustable headrest with wings that pop out to support your neck. Those make sleeping upright much more comfortable, I found. In terms of Inflight Entertainment,both KLM and US had AVOD systems but KLM had a remote control in the arm rest while US went with a touchscreen system. Personally, I prefered the remote control but I do remember seeing people struggle to understand the remote, and also remember accidentally leaning on the stop button several times while adjusting my position. The touch-screen that US were using wasn’t the most responsive, and left several large thumbprints on the screen but was much more intuitive than the remote control. Where US definitely wins is that each seat in economy has a built in USB port to power mp3 players or mobile telephones, and it uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so people don’t need to pay the $3 or however much US charges for their headphones.
US Airways aren’t flying, they’re falling with style!
Meals were served not too long after take-off, with the trolleys starting at the front of the main cabin and working their way back. The first trolley offered you a choice of meals, while a following trolley was dealing with drink orders. Due to light loads, it didn’t take long for the meal cart to reach me. I know that FlyerTalkers love them their menus to be posted, so for posterity here is the menu from my flight.
Pasta
or
Chicken
I like to think of myself as pretty much the opposite of a vegetarian. If an animal didn’t die in the production of my meal, I am not very interested. As such I went with the chicken offering, and I wasn’t disappointed. Certainly something died, though I’m inclined to believe it was the chef’s spirit when he realised he went through 4 years of catering school to prepare this.
The cake was nice, at least. And I did get a full can of cranapple with it. A whole can, all for me!
After the meal I decided to vegetate for a while, and ended up watching Toy Story on the AVOD which was even better than I remembered it being. US had quite a decent selection of films ranging from classic to modern. Toy Story, The Informant, My Life In Ruins, The Blind Side, plus your usual selection of random episodes of a few HBO shows, Flight of the Conchords, Big Love, and some discovery channel programmes on building things, a bit of comedy with How I Met Your Mother. A decent selection of different musical styles as well. All I can remember listening to is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America while reading American Gods on the plane to America. What a random, crazy happenstance.
About halfway through the flight we were offered some pretzels and juice. No can for me this time. This extra meal service wasn’t offered on the shorter Glasgow-Philadelphia flight.
After the mid-flight snack I decided to take a little nap knowing how long my day was going to be. Even after I landed, there’d still be nine and a half hours until I was able to be tucked up safely in bed. Luckily with the half empty aeroplane, I had a row to myself. Admittedly the 2-4-2 seating made my economy bed just a bit too short to be lie-flat (though if I’d moved to the centre section, it would have been perfect). Still, I kicked my shoes off, raised the middle arm-rest, wrapped the blanket around myself and fell asleep with my head on the window curled up like a little ball. After a couple of hours of fitful sleep, I made myself another mid-flight snack. I’d bought a can of Relentless in Glasgow Airport that morning, so chugged that down to wake myself up and ate a packet of beef jerky I’d bought the evening before from Tesco, just because it is delicious. Mmmm, beef.
There’s really not much more to write about an economy class flight of eight hours. Eventually we made it across the Atlantic, hitting shore at Newfoundland. Below us was much in the way of snow, it was pretty. We were given a pre-landing snack, a warm turkey and cheese roll, which was pretty darned nice. It wasn’t long before we were heading down the shore of New Jersey, turning inland around Atlantic City, a city with continually annoys me because everytime I type Atlanta into airfare search engines they suggest I go there instead.
Canada, somewhere.
Surprisingly tasty.
Almost makes me want to visit New Jersey. Almost.
I think US might want to wash the windows on their planes. Bit spotty there. Not much forehead grease though.
The flight was nearly over. We passed over Philadelphia’s numerous suburbs with their many pools while the cabin crew member sitting near me whittered on to one of the passengers about her daughter who’s in medical school. I enjoy landing at Philadelphia, more-so now that I’ve been there and can actually recognise some of the places you can see from the window. One of the coolest parts of the landing was flying over a ship-yard where a brand new ship was sitting in the dry-dock. After looking it up on-line, that ship launched the following day. I’m sad enough to find that information interesting.
The mighty River Delaware, presumably.
The city of brotherly love, or someting.
A ship in the womb
The landing was smooth and it didn’t take too long to dock with a gate. We were tied up in Terminal A-West and that’s where I’m going to leave you for this segment. Until Part Five then, gentlemen!
5 Responses to “Springtime in Georgia: Part Four, Back in the US Airways”
By Ken on Aug 25, 2010
Great report! Love your style of writing, quite funny, keep it coming!