This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
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We’ve all done it, haven’t we? Woken up late, still in the early throes of retirement, been tempted by a sub £1,000 UC fare to the USA and thought “New Orleans for Mardi Gras! Why the hell not?” I know I have.
Once in the booking process it turned out it was only one leg in UC, and the rest on Delta. We’d liked our Delta experience to NYC and back last January so decided that this was no impediment to clicking that final “Confirm” button.
On later reflection we did wonder what we were going to do in New Orleans for two weeks, and so set about planning an itinerary that include a return trip to Nashville, as the last time we’d visited our ability to hit the bars and listen to music was stymied by having #1 Daughter with us and her being under 21. At this point we secured hotels in New Orleans and Nashville (the latter on a cancellable basis) and then went off do to other stuff, including planning a Norwegian cruise to chase the Northern Lights.
Returning to planning later in the year, a road trip was settled upon. Thanks to TimCrawley for the suggestion to useautoeurope.co.uk as they kept emailing me offers that reduced the price of the car. Our itinerary settled on a night in a New Orleans airport hotel, pick up the car the next day and then up to Nashville via the Natchez Trace, back via Memphis, Clarksdale and Vicksburg to take in points of musical and US Civil War interest. For those interested I’ll tag a short section onto the return TR to describe both the highlights and lowlights of our decisions….
Monday 18th February rolled round, and having both checked in and loaded my phone with a suitable soundtrack for the USA we set out for the Hilton at T4, leaving behind the dust and disruption of a house undergoing extension work. After a couple of nerve shredding experiences stuck either on the M25 or the roads of Surrey we had decided to overnight at the Hilton at T4 (the last gasp of my HHonors points) and take full advantage of my Diamond For Life status.
As we had the time, we opted to save a few quid (oldies railcard!) and explore the delights of public transport as a means to getting down to LHR. I briefly considered the Heathrow Express, but then opted for a single change to the Piccadilly Line at St Pancras rather than the two changes involved in the HEX. This worked well, despite a couple of tactical errors – one where we got out of the lift at the wrong level and one where we should have got the Northfields service that was in the station and then switched back to the LHR service there. The service to Northfield service had no passengers for LHR, and the service from Northfield would have had only passengers for LHR – so less crowding on both.
We passed a quiet evening at the Hilton, first in the Executive Lounge and then back to our room to consume our traditional M&S sourced picnic. (Why is T4 the only terminal not to have an M&S Food store?). And yes, the next morning we could have schlepped to T3 on the free rail service and use normal mortal check in, but that was never going to happen. At 6:15 on the dot our pre-booked London Heathrow Cars Mercedes picked us up to take us on the 14 minute drive to the UC Wing.
Unlike the previous two occasions we flew with VS, the barrier at the foot of the ramp did rise for us. Check in was as efficient as it could be, but I do miss the days of them having the documents already printed for you
. Boarding passes for both flights (LHR-ATL, ATL-MSY) were handed over, and placed securely in passports with barely a glance on our part. Security took just as much time as putting our stuff in trays and then walking through a scanner does, and then it was eyes front to the Clubhouse for just after 06:35, where we found a bunch of American Airlines passengers being shooed back down the stairs.Quite a few folk were already settled in as we took up our “usual” seats. MrsPJH went off to book a treatment of some form. I used to book myself in for a run over by the barber’s electric clippers (can’t call it a haircut), but as this now costs more than my local purveyor of such services I opted to remain untreated. Service was good, breakfast consumed and my resolution to remain unchampagned until settling into my seat on the aircraft broken with barely a tinge of regret. Not so for what I always imagine to be the Delta elites who look on an offer sparkling water or caffeinated coffee as akin to supping Beelzebub’s own hellish broth. Or perhaps they are just sensible.
Then began that “I’m sure they should have called us by now” fret that I always have. Every announcement listened to carefully in case it’s in code, and numerous trips to look at the departure board, with me eventually giving when “Boarding” appears. I know it’s uncool not to wait for the second call, but there’s something in me that can’t help it.
As we amble down the corridors to some not too far flung gate, we do our mutual “Passport? Boarding Pass?” check where I notice something. We both have the same row number – 17. And one of us has A, and one of us has K. Now I know – and have evidence from many emails – that until a few days before I checked in that I had chosen 14A and 15A the moment I made the booking. There had been a booking change since then – bringing the time forward from 11:00 to 9:30 – and I had confirmed the seat assignment after that but I have to admit I didn’t double check at OLCI.
A clenched teeth conversation with the cabin crew revealed “there’s nothing we can do, though 16G is empty” which frankly p*ssed me off more than a little. However, realising that there are more things on earth to get irritated over I sat down (well, slumped in a sullen Kevin The Teenager fashion) only to have the lady in 16A say that she’d be more than happy to swap to 17K. Profuse thanks followed, naturally. The kicker to this? 15A remained empty throughout the flight, so whoever was in 14A was clearly more important to VS than us.
I’m not sure which specific A346 we were on (and the only historical feed that goes back to our flight date has a blank where the reg should be) but it had the now expected collection of red nail polish marks, dings, nicks and scratches and fuzzy IFE. As ill prepared as I was for the seat swap, I was prepared for the A346 and assembled an entertainment kit including book, music and podcasts. Pushed back pretty much on time, with expectations of an arrival about half an hour ahead of schedule.
Service was good throughout, sparkling stuff before take off, Woodford bourbon soon after, addressed by name and so forth and we dined together. Starter was soup, dessert was chocolate something, wine was red and the beef really poor. What was that orange stuff on top of it? Coffee? Bear in mind I hate the beef every time I have it and had still preselected this the day before – what is the supposed quote about insanity? The small burger I had later was much more to my taste.
After service we parted, taking my brandy with me to watch “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Though fuzzy, and though maybe the film may be more myth than fact, it was just right and I stayed awake through most of it, which saved the rest of the cabin from my usual snores. MrsPJH reneged on a promise to meet at the bar, not least as a talkative you man was having his eyes stared into by one of the cabin crew, though I did sneak in a Woodford and was anyway trying to keep consumption (relatively) light as we had in theory increased our 2.5 hour layover in ATL to 3.0 hours if we arrived early, and recent TRs had painted portraits of a swift passage through ATL passport and security so we would likely have a couple of hours in a SkyLounge. I’d also been told the blue customs forms were no longer needed, which supported the impression that this might be a slightly slicker experience that entering via JFK.
And so it was that about half an hour earlier than expected they started to close everything down as we went into our descent. Watching this on the Skymap we went down to about 10,000 feet…and stayed there will that regular spooling of the engines as you sit in a holding pattern. After a good few minutes of this it was announced we were “holding because of bad weather at ATL”, and a few minutes later this changed to “ATL is shut, we are heading to Charlotte to refuel and wait out the weather”.
Which we did, finally leaving Charlotte 3 hours after landing there, almost the minute as predicted by the flight crew in an announcement. Seemingly endless forms to be shuttled back and forth between the aircrew, ground crew and airport management, fuel to be loaded (and presumably paid for). No food or drink (save orange juice and water) could be served as the plane was set for landing so it was a bit tedious. On the upside, the crew did make their best efforts to keep us informed and reassure those of us with connecting flights that arrangements had been made.
Luckily, we seemed to be the first diverted international flight to make it to Charlotte, with others lining up next to us, so we were first away. Now this bit was impressive. We’d been told that we’d have to be de-iced, but instead of them wheeling the de-icer to the plane, the equipment is lined up on a taxiway with pairs of de-icing trucks, one either side of the taxiway, to serve a queue of planes about 4 or 5 at a time.
Our flight back to Atlanta took about 40 bone juddering minutes, during which my brain cells divided into two camps – “chill, it’ll get sorted” vs “fret mightily, what about hotel bookings! Car hire!”. Once on the ground and off the plane the “Mr Fretful” side won and spun me into a grim powerwalk to immigration with MrsPJH wondering what the fuss was.
That became evident when we arrived into the passport area. Now, if you were expecting many international flights that in normal circumstances would arrive in a staggered fashion to arrive basically all at once what would you do? Would you;
a. Push the processing to capacity to get as many people through, deploying all the tricks at your disposal including opening all lanes and all machines, separating first time and repeat ESTAs, thereby giving stressed foreign visitors the best welcome possible to your Promised Land.
b. Reach into the Bumper Book Of Procedures, look up the historical example of “British Post Office at Lunchtime On The Day When Car Tax Is Due For Renewal”, shut down all automation, opened 4 manual lanes for all non US nationals, no distinction between new and returning ESTA and shout at them relentlessly?
If you answered (b), collect a lolly on the way past. Further, they opted to have a “number of parties per queue” rule once you started to line up for a specific officer. What they didn’t do was distinguish between the number in the party. So as third in the queue we had 10 people in front of us; in the queue adjacent the third had 2 people in front of them.
Mr Fretful had calmed down a bit by now though, as the young man at the bar the crew member had been swooning at told us that there were another three flights to New Orleans that night, so odds were good that we’d make one of those.
Once we got through passport (after about an hour) we headed to collect our bags (neatly stacked up) and head to find out our fate in the flight transfer area. I thought I’d head to the Delta desk to see what’s what, only to be shouted at to take our luggage “over there and move out of the area”. Weakly protesting that we had no idea what the hell was going on – and being largely ignored – somebody overheard our plight and took us to a table where a whole raft of boarding passes were laid out. We found we had been moved to the next flight, to depart in just over an hour, with no indication of class and a slightly worrying “seats assigned at gate note”.
We set off at a trot as clearly our arrival gate was at one end of the airport and our departure gate the other, only to run smack into another queue at security. Again, funnelled (aka “loudly shouted out to get”) into a queue consisting of large groups, including families with small, tired children who don’t really understand what they are being asked to do. At this point Mr Fretful made another appearance, whispering “you might not even get the next flight…” in my ear.
For the next instalment, if you still have the energy it's here
Last edited by pjh on 20 Mar 2019, 11:13, edited 1 time in total.
We can get better, because we're not dead yet
