6 legs, 6 airlines (7 if you count Jetstar and Qantas as different)

[Verde]

Hi.

Thought I'd post a trip report since I have legs with a variety of cariers and it will be interesting to compare.

Leg 1: Qantas Y SYD-WLG
Leg 2: Qantas J WLG-SYD-LAX followed by AA LAX-DFW-GRI (YUPP, only Y on the DFW-GRI flight).
Leg 3: Great Lakes EAR-DEN and then UA DEN-SFO in Y
Leg 4: Alaska Y OAK-KOA
Leg 5: Hawaiian Y KOA-HNL
Leg 6: Jetstar Y HNL-MEL-NTL

I'm in the midst of Leg 2 now.

Leg 1 went well, with priority boarding and luggage both functioning perfectly. I had a spare seat beside me in row 4, so that was nice too. Since I only had the two nights in WLG I stayed at the Airport Motor Lodge which was a pleasant stroll from the airport (good for a midnight arrival and then the 6am departure). Wellington is one of my favourite cities, so I enjoyed the detour there in order to take advantage for the JASA of Leg 2. I guess I'm not enough of a food snob, but I felt the dinner was quite adequate for the flight over, though I had also enjoyed the Sydney lounge prior to departure too, just in case things were light on.

Leg 2 WLG-SYD has gone well (I am in the Syd J lounge atm). Only hitch was the staff at Wellington wouldn't check my luggage or issue tickets for the seperate AA flight (just said it couldn't be done, wouldn't even look at the booking). Not sure why this happened, but I have 5 hours in LA, so that is tons of time to check in with AA unless something substantially goes wrong. The lounge in Wellington is nice and only had about 15 people there, so plenty of space. Only downside is the warm food was marginally warm (bacon and some kind of pastry).

Annita (I think her name) was the nicest FA I think I've ever had in any cabin, very friendly and I also had a spare seat beside me (I was 1A) on the way over this morning, as if J isn't pleasant enough as it is.

The flight to LA has been delayed 20 minutes apparently, so we'll see how everything works out in a future post.

 

[Verde]

Leg 2 continued...

The flight to LAX (QF 747 in J) had boarding delayed about half an hour and then seemed to be delayed about another half an hour waiting for everyone to get settled and then sitting around waiting in queue to take off.

I'd taken 5B thanks to AFF / Seatguru info which was an odd seat, having a storage bin beside the seat. Seemed a wide variety of FAs, with the one specifically assigned to our area (from what I could tell) a bit hit and miss, but the ones passing through always keen to help. The food and wine were satisfactory but nothing to write home about. I didn't notice any queues for the bathroom and the PJs seemed nice enough. At one stage the cabin went to this horrific pink-purple (sunset?) lighting, but it was only for about fifteen minutes or so.

"Turn down service" seemed to be non-existant, so I applied the sheep skin base which had the negative side effect of making things a bit warm so I had to settle for the blanket being mostly off rather than over me. I think they should have dropped the temp a bit more during the sleep segment since I'm normally fairly middle of the road as far as thinking it is cold or hot.

Having "pre-order" sheets for breakfast filled in upon departure made breakfast a bit of an improvement, with it all brought ready (for me it was about 90 minutes before arrival, but it was nice in that it gave people a bit longer to sleep who wanted it).

I enjoyed watching the Saphires but otherwise finished a book I was reading. The ammenities pack was nothing to write home about, though I do see that it is suitable to re-use as a pencil case.

Despite taking off about an hour late, we arrived pretty much on time. The customs and immigration probably took about an hour to get through which had a few people starting to stress around me but I think most should have been right.

Amusingly, I just realised I went to the trouble of transfering the tiny toothpaste tube to my checked luggage so I wouldn't have to worry about US liquids/gels rules, but the pack of the moisturiser etc went through security screening without trouble.

Check-in for the AA flights went kind-of smoothly. I ended up using the self service section which promptly crashed (apparently AA bookings/ticketing in the entire airport has been offline for half an hour now and they didn't seem optimistic about it being ready for at least another 30 minutes). Fortunately my luggage tickets were the last that came out, so then I could head through screening and to the Admirals Lounge. Sometimes PriorityAAccess makes little difference, but it made a huge difference at this stage since there was no one else around at all in the priority screening area but quite a queue in the regular.

I remember a conference speaker (in Australia from the USA) being a bit critical of self-checkin where you need not speak to a person at all, but IMO it is far superior to a clumsy system of going through a computer, then waiting for a person to put the tags on/take payment (happened to the person in front of me). The good thing about flying in the USA is it is a good reminder that we have it fairly good flying in Aus.

 

[Verde]

So I got caught in the AA computer meltdown. Took about 2 hours before they cancelled the flights.

As I was in the LAX Admirals club, they had 2 qantas terminals they were using to book people on to alternative airlines. I spent about 2hours in a queue and they got their system partially restored, so by the time I got served they were trying tomputbpeople on AA flights again. They were nice enough to try and get me a Frontier Airlines flight to EAR but frontier weren't answering their phones. Consequently I ended up on a flight to DFW and arrived just in time to see the flight to GRI cancelled.

They put me up in the Hyatt Place Arlington (near 6 flags -they have plenty of roller coasters) and on standby for the first flight today to GRI. Arriving this morning that was confirmed... Theoretically my luggage will show up in GRI with me, but I'll believe that when I see it. Leg 2 hopefully to be completed in a few hours....

 

[Inver]

Thanks for the report glad you made it to the admirals lounge. I hope things have improved for you.

 

[Verde]

To my amazement my luggage did show up in GRI. AA seems to do well with their luggage (I remember once having to run through an airport to make the next flight and being sure my luggage couldn't possibly make it, yet it turned up at the other end on that trip too).

I was briefly worried when they wanted at least 4 people to switch flights (there are only two flights a day each way to GRI) to lighten the weight. They started off with a $400 voucher on offer then went up to $500. I was tempted, but had already lost a day due to the AA computer melt down so held off. Nobody seemed very interested, so in the end they called a few names out, so I think they were IDBs, it delayed our take off by about 20 minutes though going through this process.

Overnight the weather did drop, bringing snow so that I can see a light fluttering of snow right now on this fine spring morning and there are a few inches covering the ground. If I'm keen I get to clear the snow from the driveway later (I still find snow enough of a novelty that it seems like an interesting activity... ah well, a week and I'll be in Hawaii and then another week and back to Australia).

I got an e-mail this morning saying that I'll get 1500 AA miles credited to my account due to the disruption, but I doubt it'll happen since I had my flights attached to my QFF account. I ended up with a pile of boarding passes from all the changed flights, but will have to contact Qantas for original routing credit since they only gave me Y for the LAX-DFW leg rather than J (I boarded in Y but then they brought me a new boarding pass back to J just prior to take off, thus giving me the YUP service afterall).

 

[Inver]

I'm amazed there were no volunteers for the $500 switch flights offer.