A swing through South America

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I had about two hours connection at BOG so headed to the AV lounge. The entrance looked quite nice and so did the lounge as I approached the desk. Oh, that’s for AV Diamond members, keep going to the Star Gold lounge…

This one looked nice.


But ultimately it was into this lounge.


BOG airport is quite spacious and I got to walk almost to the far end for the departure gate for the next flight.


BOG-GUA AV742
A320-200 J
N538AV
On time

Operated by Avianca Guatemala (Aviateca). Basic eurobusiness style seating with the centre seat blocked by a small arm rest/table. 2.5 hr sector.

This was the aircraft (on the left), parked beside an AA Max8 being pushed back.


Departure had us passing the Wamos jet now relocated from the arrival gate to the cargo ramp.


More to come, on next flight and about to depart.

 

[Scarlett]

On departure from BOG (had seen the same on arrival) there are hundreds of greenhouses on the outskirts of the city. Googling reveals that these are likely growing cut flowers for the international market.


I guess the year round tropical conditions and fertile land helps!

On the A320 flight there were three rows of effectively 2-2 seating with all the middle seats blocked. It has the effect of giving additional width to the seat but the pitch is Y+ rather than J. When the person in front reclined the ability to use a laptop on the tray table was a little constrained.

Again they handed out the card with the pax name and room for comments on one side and the drinks list on the other side. Drinks were offered after take off and the choice of two hot meals. I chose the spinach and cheese ravioli which tasted more pesto than spinach. It tasted pretty good despite the look.



The flight was an uneventful two hours then descent into Guatemala City. Due to the terrain there were a couple of turns on the approach to line up with the runway. Impression of Guatemala was even more green than Bogotá with hills and ravines defining the urban landscape.



The cloud was also very low in some places and one area looked like it was basically on the ground.



GUA airport is very close to the city, much like AEP was in Buenos Aires. The terminal seemed overly large (long) with only our aircraft pulling up to a gate.



GUA even has an Indonesian style welcome…


The ground staff in the terminal were a little confused that I was in transit but it was actually very easy, go up one set of stairs to a bored group of security staff at the transit point and all done.

The afternoon Copa flight had departed an hour earlier so there was no *A lounge available, so I walked the length of the terminal to get some steps up and check it out.

Gate for onward flight confirmed.


There was a food court with a mix of international chains and local shops. The terminal is effectively one long building with about 20 gates and all modern conveniences you’d expect in an airport. What was good to see were lots of small local concessionaires between gates. It definitely wasn’t busy although in the two hours I had there, there were maybe three or four departures. Seemed like a cluster of departures to the US in the evening with UA, AA and DL gates set up for connections to various cities (IAH, LAX, MIA). They were all around the same gate location as the onward AV flight I’d be taking to IAD, yet there were no special or additional USA related screening / questions.

 

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GUA-IAD AV654
A320-200neo J
N937AV
Arrived 20 minutes early

This flight was operated by Avianca Costa Rica (also formerly part of Aviateca), with the aircraft having come in from San Jose the capital of Costa Rica as the same flight number.

Same seats, same two hot options for a meal (although different choices: the pasta had mushrooms in it so I went for the chicken) and same drinks available.

There was a girl (lady?) just randomly coughing in the aisle seat beside me, with no covering her mouth… and who didn’t put her bag under the seat but left it in front of the blocked middle. Crew seemed fine with that.
She took the hint after the fifth or sixth cough when I directed both mine and middle air vent in her direction. Fortunately she slept most of the flight and that stopped the coughing.

AV do provide a pillow and blanket pack at each J seat. Amenity kits were also handed out for this flight, which was four hours duration and planned to arrive at Dulles at 0200. No pics, as it was dark all flight. Mind you, heading up the eastern seaboard of the US was just constant towns and cities of lights.

Entertainment is wifi to own device so I watched the recent Matrix release: quite forgettable even though it tries to ‘resurrect’ the first movie which is one of my favourite films.

Dulles arrival in the early AM was okay. No advantage on being first off the plane as we were all directed to one of their inter-terminal shuttles to be delivered to CBP for immigration. Got given the third degree by the agent which was significantly more than I’ve ever been asked arriving into the US; single traveller arriving from Central America - yeah that checks out.

 

[Scarlett]

Baggage took maybe 40 minutes to appear at IAD which seems ridiculous given how few other movements there were. Due to the early AM arrival I’d booked a Dulles hotel (Hampton Inn) for the night before, so gave them a call after baggage claim and their shuttle was there to collect me in 15 minutes. Hampton claim they have good beds and after a shower I collapsed into it about 0400 and slept soundly through to my alarm at 1120 for a 1200 check out. Excellent.

Wasn’t going to bother with their complementary breakfast which finished at 10am as most chain hotels like that just have a poor collection of processed food and terrible coffee. Instead I took their shuttle back to Dulles, grabbed a latte and a bite there and then headed to the IAD Metro station.

The transfer between Washington area airports IAD-DCA is pretty simple: USD75-95 in a cab (Washington Flyer) or maybe a bit less via Uber, or about USD8 via Metro. The silver line runs from IAD into the city and to get to DCA you make one connection at Rosslyn just north of Arlington Cemetery, to the Blue line for DCA.

Unfortunately Rosslyn and a couple of other adjacent stations were closed due to trackwork over the weekend. This meant getting off a couple of stops earlier and catching a replacement bus to the Pentagon Metro stop. It was all signposted and easy, even with luggage. Then it was a couple of stops to the DCA Metro stop and another shuttle bus to my DCA hotel for the night. This was again booked due to a morning departure from DCA picking up the return leg of my UA ticket.

Walked up to Arlington (a good 2.5Km leg stretch) but didn’t realise they closed the site at 1700, so didn’t have time to get to any of the memorials. Three headed to the river briefly and back to the hotel just as it was getting dark and quite cool. Dinner was a burger at the hotel ‘pub’ and early to bed before a 0600 shuttle to DCA.

 

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DCA-ORD UA1061
A319-100 F
N850UA
Arrived 30 minutes early, which meant a gate wasn’t available so we sat and waited on an ORD taxiway for 20 minutes.


The shuttle to DCA took all of about 7 minutes; UA check in took all of about 2 minutes; but then TSA stopped the dream run with a 40 minute stupidathon to get airside. Then it’s about a five minute walk to the small UA gate area and to the very nice United Club… which was ‘temporarily closed’.

…for a month apparently. Oh well, coffee from Zeke’s opposite the gate it is then. UA has been sending some of its Premier Access members a $25 voucher during the closure. Guess I should have asked at check-in, if I’d known.


UA A319 still sleeping.

After grabbing a coffee I walked down to the other end of the airport. Where UA uses only about 4 gates at DCA, due to having its hub at IAD, AA is the opposite. They must’ve had 25 gates worth of aircraft, all bustling with activity on a Monday morning. The lines at Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks in that part of the terminal were better described as scrums.


Back to the quieter UA end and still nothing doing.



Eventually got away on time. UA F is nothing special to describe, but they did offer a drink and the snack basket during the flight.

 

[Scarlett]

ORD was busy. (when is it not?)


We had arrived at the C gates concourse which was useful as it was the location of the UA Polaris lounge. There are four other standard United Club locations across concourses B and C, but travelling in international J on UA and select (non-Americas) *A partners grants access. Polaris is UAs match to the AA Flagship lounges and compares well with the best J lounges and probably some F lounges.

There is plenty of space, it was quiet and features a separate dining room (in addition to the broad buffet area) and bar. Dining room menu at the doorway.


A separate copy on sturdy card was given when shown to a table. Nice setup.


I had a greek yoghurt*

omelette and a cup of tea, then headed out into the main seating area to a more comfortable lounge chair for coffee and, trying it on spec, a pumpkin cheesecake cookie. It was orange sure, but didn’t taste like pumpkin, just overwhelming nutmeg and cinnamon. Of course it is the time of the year for ‘pumpkin spice’ everything in the US, coinciding with ‘fall’ and Halloween . I’m pretty sure there’s 1% or less actual pumpkin, but corn-fed Jed can eat a bunch more food and convince himself it’s vegetables and therefore healthy…

My flight to NRT was departing from a B concourse gate so that meant taking the tunnel between B and C.

It’s very well done and is exactly the kind of thing SYD should build linking T1 with the domestic terminals. A couple of hundred metres of walkways makes a much faster transit than buses, especially as it all remains airside.

 

[SYD]

View attachment 527503
It’s very well done and is exactly the kind of thing SYD should build linking T1 with the domestic terminals. A couple of hundred metres of walkways makes a much faster transit than buses, especially as it all remains airside.

It’s a good ~2kms between SYD T1 and T2/3 as the crow flies.

Yes, a shame they didn’t put something in at the same time as the heavy rail but I guess it would have been eye watering expensive.

 

[Scarlett]

It’s a good ~2kms between SYD T1 and T2/3 as the crow flies.

Yes, a shame they didn’t put something in at the same time as the heavy rail but I guess it would have been eye watering expensive.

Measure it with Google maps and get back to me. I’ve posted that exact picture on another thread on here somewhere before and IIRC it was 1.1Km which should be easily manageable with moving walkways.

 

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I forgot the * I’d put next to the greek yoghurt pic above. It was there because I took the picture thinking I’d comment on how full it was. It’s something I’ve seen in cafes where you get something that is so full that putting a spoon into it will cause the food to fall off onto the table. Which is exactly what happened to multiple chunks of the granola from this. It’s nice that they filled it up but just not really sensible.

 

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ORD-NRT NH11
B777-300 J
JA795A
On time

Excellent, it was another B773 with the Suite J product the same as I had on the outbound leg. Large (wide) seating area but still a fairly narrow cubby for the feet to go in. I did end up sleeping diagonally to make most use of the available length. Was facing backwards once again so that I had a true window window-seat.


As I said above, ORD was busy. It took about 35 minutes between push back and actually getting onto the runway for departure.




The NH cabin crews are almost all female and are clearly trained to make a fuss over people: they are very active welcoming pax in the J cabin, especially during preparation for departure. The issue is that it is very formulaic when it comes to the actual flight. Things happen at a set time and their processes are very deliberate and it must be said, slow. First the white cloth on the table, then taking the order for what you’d like to eat and drink, then the drinks cart, then amuse-bouche, then appetiser, then finally the main about an hour after the process starts. They are all very nice about it and thank everyone for waiting during the steps, but as a process it seems overly formulaic and overly drawn out when compared to how other airlines seem to manage the same process.

This has been common across four long haul flights taken on NH wide bodies during this trip.

From ORD the flight follows the great circle route to Japan over the arctic and heads north west up over Canada and ultimately Alaska before heading south skirting Russia and into Japanese territory.

The chains of lakes in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan are a really different landform.

There was some company for a period flying a parallel track, but we never got close enough to identify who or what.


Also, the inflight wifi could not enable www connection so I couldn’t bring up FR24 to see. NH use a scratch card free for J (and F) pax to access inflight wifi (paid in other cabins), but it’s not given out complimentary, you do have to ask for it. The signal was good for about the first hour of flight but became useless in the higher latitudes north of about Winnipeg.

I then got 6 hours of sleep and woke heading south along the Kuril Islands and the flight continues to enter Japanese territory over Hokkaido.


Every time at NRT in the past two years I come across the orange NH A380 with the turtle livery. Sure enough as we’re on approach there it is flying a parallel track to the other runway.


Braking.


I guess all the NH wide body gates are in the same area at NRT so of course we were assigned here.

 

[Scarlett]

There was two and a bit hours at NRT before the onward connection to CGK. I’d used the NH lounge a month ago and found it overly busy and more a mass production canteen than a lounge. Even though our arrival gate meant that the ANA Lounge was almost directly in front of me, I set off to walk down to the UA lounge in one of the other Terminal 1 satellites. It was also very busy, so continued on to another satellite and the TK lounge.

NRT T1 has all of the *A airlines clustered together. NH dominates one end of the terminal and UA effectively has a hub there as well in the more central parts. The TK lounge is out at a far point and when I arrived there was really only accomodating pax from an AC flight. NZ had just boarded. There were a few with UA boarding passes as well; let’s consider them the smarter ones.


Lighter blue is the NH lounge and close to where their gates are.
Dark blue is UA central to their gates.
Red is the TK lounge where two AC and one NZ gates were located.

No issues accessing the TK lounge using a boarding pass for an NH onward flight, printed on UA paper! (but with my TK *G status printed on - likely so small the Japanese contract staff there wouldn’t have even noticed)


A much more relaxed space. The windows aren’t tinted that blue, just my colour balance being thrown out.


View from the TK lounge of some of the UA aircraft (there were others parked opposite those) as well as across to the NH satellite. Also note the well aligned GSE in the foreground which of course you expect at a Japanese airport.


One of the two AC aircraft being readied for departure.

 

[Scarlett]

NRT-CGK NH835
B787-9 J
JA922A
Late departure - on time arrival

Boarding was at the very far end of the NH gates, which in my picture of NRT T1 above is the end of the white roof heading toward the top right of the image.


You know it’s an added-on extension when there’s no shops crammed in anywhere!

There was also quite the backlog of departures here at NRT with about 30 minutes of taxiing before we finally had the chance to line up and depart.


As the arrival time was scheduled for 2355 and I’d booked a room at the Grand Anara at CGK T3 for the night, I wasn’t planning to sleep on this flight. Good thing too, as once again the very nice crew took their very structured time to get everyone fed and watered. Dinner was beef in a red wine and curry sauce. But different but it worked.


Wifi worked quite well and I think I updated a bunch of posts from this trip report and then watched a movie until we got to top of descent. Then went to change out of the pjs I’d put on to slouch in but had to join a bit of a queue. Didn’t help that I was standing outside one of the locked bathrooms for about 10 minutes before a senior cabin crew member (wearing the pink uniform) let me know they’d locked it ‘because it had become too dirty’. The other crew (blue uniforms) hadn’t said anything whilst I was waiting. Maybe they didn’t know?

Arrival at CGK was also at a gate almost at the furthest point possible in the terminal, so got plenty of steps up, even using the moving walkways. Luggage came out fairly swiftly and then it was another walk down to the far end of T3 past the domestic section, to get to the Grand Anara. Contrary to the names, the Anara hotel at the international end of T3 is superior to the Grand Anara, likely because they figure they’re catering to foreign v domestic markets but that’s not what I’ve seen in practice. Grand Anara is fine and clean for a night between flights.

 

[Scarlett]

CGK-SGN VN630
A321-200 J
VN-A612
Slightly late arrival due weather hold at SGN.

Today’s flight journey commenced with an 1100 check out and walk into the terminal to find the Vietnam Airlines counters. They were not listed on the monitors but were in check-in bank D and were easy to spot just walking along.

Security took about 10 minutes and immigration about 10 seconds due to the plentiful e-gates. At least the Rp527,000 eVisa on arrival fee has been used to make transits very quick and simple! Immigration on arrival the night before took less than 10 seconds.


CGK T3 international departure end before heading through security and immigration.

VN uses the GA lounge which was mostly empty and fine for the hour wait before boarding. Not a great alcohol selection as you’d imagine.

At the gate we had a slight delay due to Xiamen also boarding from the same gate.


This choice to head back to Aus via VN flights was simply because they were cheaper for this one-way J fare than both QF (from CGK or DPS) or VA (from DPS), plus lie flat overnight knocking VA 737 J recliners out of the park.

The first leg to SGN is on the A321 with 2-2 recliners in four rows. Fine for a 3 hour sector.


Afternoon refreshment was served.


Spotting whilst waiting for departure:

Batik (ID) A320 with the newer less-detailed tail livery. The smog was certainly visible and thick at CGK.


ID B737-800 with the older, more complex tail livery being followed by a WY B787-9.

Plenty of cloud around as well crossed the. Vietnamese coastline.


Which became darker and darker as we descended toward SGN. Then the heavy rain began. In this image the lines from bottom left was the streaks of water moving across the window.


As we were crossing over this airfield (I assume this must be the new Ho Chi Minh City airport) the engines spooled up significantly and we stopped the descent. Capt. Speaking advised due to a ‘surprise’ thunderstorm over SGN that we’d being holding for up to 40 minutes.

So this is LTH airport which indeed will replace many of the SGN flights. International flights start moving over from December.

Long Thanh International Airport - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Plenty of lightning about during the hold which ended up only being about 10 minutes. I didn’t think it would be too long as we stayed at a few thousand feet rather than climbing back to a better altitude.




Uneventful landing and we taxied toward and parked at SGN T3. The onward flight to MEL was scheduled to depart from T2 so I started looking up how to transfer. As it was, even though we were pulled up to a jetbridge, it never moved and some stairs were rolled up, so we alighted to buses. There was a separate bus for J pax.


Instead of taking us to the adjacent terminal (T3) it actually took us across the airfield to enter T2, so that solved the transfer problem.

After the most token security recheck it was up into the departures hall and a brief walk around, then to the VN Lotus Lounge. I’m in lounge 2 closer to the next boarding gate.


Just noticed something on the departures board:

Alitalia lives!
Guess they don’t get many ITA people in.