We dropped our hire car off and headed to check in at LAX only to find our flight was delayed 2 1/2 hours, despite the outbound flight leaving and being due to arrive on time
. It turned out that the inbound from Stockholm (scheduled to be the same as the LGW flight) was delayed and they were swapping 787's, rather like VS do in MCO so they can maintain and rest them. Luckily we were still able to check in early (we had reserved seats at the time of booking, as part of the £35 per flight plus package which also included meals and a 20kg bag). The very friendly check in agent also informed us we were entitled to vouchers worth $13 each to spend on food & drink so we treated ourselves to a half price meal in the three forks restaurant in departures.Security was very good for a US airport, with the TSA staff joking about passport pictures and talking to us about the Orange County Fair (my Mum was wearing a souvenir hoodie from there!). However the usual slow and frustrating process was still there (belts off, shoes off, separating bags from gadgets, nothing in pockets, not even a tissue...). To top this off we ended up going through a full scanner which should surely render half those rules useless?
Anyway once we were through we had our meal, bought a couple of magazines at a shop and did our best to kill the 2 1/2 hour wait before boarding. The plane finally arrived at 21:30 and boarding started at 22:40, hats off to the ground staff for turning a basically full 787 round in 70 mins! We ended up taking off just after 23:10 and the crew served the meals soon after ('beef in peppercorn sauce' or some sort of chicken dish, both with mash & veg). In reality it was more like 'soggy beef casserole' and lower down on the edible scale than the outbound meal, the caterers at this end were not as good it seems...
After watching some family guy on my kindle about 3 hours in I put on my old VS eyemask and flight socks (I don't think they noticed
) along with my hoodie (it was rather cold although row 7 only had one row between it and the door) and managed a record 4 hours sleep. Maybe the 787 does live up the some of the hype after all! I woke as we were passing Iceland, and the remaining 3 hours of the flight went pretty quickly, before we landed in LGW at ~17:20 (15:00 scheduled). Back in Britain immigration was quick and friendly, even for US passengers it seemed (America take note) and our bags were delivered fairly quickly, and among the first out of the carousel, despite being among the earliest to check in! One thing I did note is on arriving at LGW the crew forgot to let the Premium passengers our first, we ended up all going at once, this did not happen at LAX though.In conclusion I found Norwegian to be a very good airline, especially when you consider they are a 'low cost carrier' and I believe once they get their 787 fleet working more reliably, deal with severely delayed passengers better (after our outbound flight arrived the plane went tech and the return passengers were stuck in the airport for 2 days!) and gain some more experience flying long haul routes they will be a very good alternative to established carriers like BA/Virgin/Thomson. Just bring some of your own food so you don't go hungry between meals (the meals we had would be fine for a 7 hour flight to JFK and probably just about FLL, but there was not really enough for 10/11 hours to LAX).
What I find most surprising is that despite being 'low cost' in terms of space Norwegian match what BA/VS do/will have on their 787's, in fact they beat BA since the pitch is quoted as 31/32 inches, as opposed to 30/31 inches. The seats themselves are only a little narrower than those on a 747, but what makes the most difference is that they are much closer to each other, there is little gap between them on the sides, and armrest space is poor. However as I have already mentioned legroom is adequate (I'm about 6 ft tall) and the seats were very comfortable and well padded, and the winged headrests worked well. Also, it sure was weird sitting next to this huge RR trent engine and not being able to hear it for most of the flight!
