This is a Trip Report from the Upper Class cabin
Ground Staff
Food & Drink
Entertainment
Seat
Cabin Crew
Hotel Giraffe
Some of what we did;
High Line Park
Tenement Museum
Helicopter flight
Chelsea Market
Some of where we drank;
Chelsea Brewing Company
Rattle'n'Hum
Ginger Man (top marks, even serving Adnams)
City Winery
We also took the Staten Island Ferry, took the train out to see friends in New Jersey (what a house...), saw an indifferent Macbeth, visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and finally, after all our visits, got to wander through Central Park on a sunny,82F, day.
It felt very odd actually having to get out of bed to do OLCI at T-24. I'm so used to having to break off mid afternoon to find somewhere with a pc or wifi to try and fail for a low SEQ number.
Not as odd, mind you, as getting up at 3.30 am on the day of departure as a work colleague decided it was an apt time to give me a call. I really should use a tone for my alarm that is different from my ring tone ("Telephone & Rubber Band" by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, since you ask). As MrsPJH also uses the same tone, in led to us both blundering around the room trying to find where we'd left our phones to charge.
It was, in fact, only half an hour before we had planned to rise anyway. That said, it was a terrible shock to the system, and we both gave thanks that we'd say "no, better not" when discussing whether to head back to the Ginger Man after coming in from the Rickie Lee Jones concert the evening before.
At 4.30am we were in the car arranged by the hotel - nice black Towncar, all in price a few dollars more that the cab + tip + toll - and on the way through the (relatively deserted) streets to JFK. At 5.00am bags were dropped and we had been given instructions on how to find "our new Clubhouse". At 5.30am we were through security.
I'm afraid "shambles" barely does justice to the security "experience". At fourth position in the queue we were instructed to go to another line, which was then used as the priority line for all the airport workers and aircrew that were coming on shift, leaving us progressing not one inch. The chap in front of us in the original queue had obviously played this game before, as he had studiously ignored the instruction. Once past the boarding card / passport check, it was then "use the body scanner", "no, don't use the scanner", and finally "hey, you, why are you not using the scanner?".
My rather gloomy countenance after these shenanigans was transformed when greeted by one of the world's most cheerful individuals at the Clubhouse reception. I shall have whatever he is having thought I. Unfortunately that was to be neither champagne (not available until after 8am all days other than Sunday, when available only after midday) nor decent coffee nor spa treatments. There were, however, pens of the silver with red fin variety. Given the absence of the usual CH "comforts" I guess we could have stayed in bed a bit longer, but I presume there's a formula that says an extra minute in bed adds at least a further minute to the travel time to the airport.(For the record, I wouldn't have swapped an evening in Manhattan for an evening at an airport hotel, even given the body shock of a 3.30 am start.)
Only having visited the old JFK CH the once, I'm not in the best position to do a compare and contrast, but the service was good and it seemed far quieter with less of the general airport noise intruding. Being able to see the aircraft and boarding gate was fun too, but it did lead to a certain amount of nervousness when we could see people getting on to the aircraft. Had they forgotten us? Would somebody pinch our seats and refuse to move, a la East Coast Main Line? Eventually our nerve broke and we started to head out, where we were intercepted by the staff and assured that we did not need to board yet and should sit back down and relax for a while.Oh well, time for another champ...oh, perhaps not.
Anyway, the time did come for the hop, skip and jump to the gate and onto our first 330. OK, ok, looks quite cool, the whole angled bar thing, the lighting....but it does feel cramped, both in terms of the number of seats in the space and the seats (3K / 4K) themselves. Seated, the length and general comfort is fine, but I can't help but keep banging my left elbow on the partition. I presume the semi opaque glass in the partition is there to prevent it feeling too gloomy, though as MrsPJH points out it bears a strong resemblance to the kind of glass you stare up into when being lit at the dentist.
Cleanliness of the suites is fine, but they do seem to be falling apart a little early in their lifecycle. My table didn't work at all, and the whole inner trim to my right was detaching itself.Nor it seems was the aircraft itself in the best shape, as one of the exit doors was unserviceable. They took great pains to explain that the aircraft was still safe, the air rules and regulations permitted them to fly with it in that state, the Captain had ok 'd it, the safety briefing would be adjusted accordingly and the alternative would have been long delay or cancellation. I don't think anyone decided to disembark.
Maybe the state of the suites points to a failing on the part of the designers and manufacturer. They should simply have let a nine year old boy, ignored by his mother, loose on them. He would have attempted to bend the light into an unnatural shape, kick seven shades of sh*t out of the ottoman, convert the seat into a bed by brute force and get the monitor out of its housing without releasing the catch. Now you might say "PJH, why did you not simply help the young fellow-me-lad with the operation of his suite?" Well, for two reasons. (a) As a bonus activity, he was sharing great and fruitsome flabby woof-woofs with the rest of the cabin and I didn't fancy getting any closer than I needed to and (b) I'm not sure that I particularly wanted to act in loco parentis when his parent was just across a partition. Now, granted, for some reason they were in the G and H seats, so he wasn't in her direct line of sight, but there were plenty of spare seats in G and H so they could have moved together. .
And now...ta da....for the good stuff.
Primarily and absolutely, the service from the crew. Utterly, utterly wonderful from the off. Champagne refills offered - "is there time?" I asked, "oh, there's always time" came the answer, so for the first (and probably only) time the Lisonopril was washed down with Lanson Black. Always eye contact, and lots of chat. All it took was a quizzical raise of an eyebrow (sometimes at something on the IFE) and someone would be at your side asking was there anything you needed; not sure I really needed the g&t followed by a JD, but we were on the way back from the US after all.
When it came time to dine they offered to set me up in one of the spare suites so I would have a table, but instead I said I'd dine with MrsPJH. This was evidently something of a novelty and treated as an experiment by the crew. Given the size of the table, it really meant keeping something off the table and in the air at any one time. I wimped out of borrowing one of the mugs in which they now serve hot chocolate.
The overall menu was
Cereal
Bakery Snack
Bacon Butty
Mixed Berry Smoothie
Graze
Caesar salad
Selection of savoury nibbles and treats
Fresh seasonal fruit
Roasted tomato and bell pepper soup with toasted croutons
Duck rillette with red onion compote and toasted bread
Flank Steak braised on the bone with Swedish rosti, carrot puree and jus
Pan roasted chicken breast with sauteed spring vegetables, and creamed potatoes
Ricotta and spinach cannelloni with mushroom and shaved Italian hard cheese
Apple crumble cheese cake with caramel sauce
Warm salted caramel lava cake with whipped cream
Smoked cheddar
Danish blue
Mountain Gouda
White wine
Minervois Les Bonnes Blanc, Chateau d'Agel 2012
Villa San Maurice Chardonnay, 2011
Berry's NZ Sauvignon Blanc 2012
Red wine
Pietas Old Vines Selection, 2011
Pulenta Corte Joven, 2012
Carliano Chianti Reserva, 2009
We both had the soup and the steak (Not as good as our local farm shop, but good for a meal at altitude) For dessert I went for the lava cake as I was curious to see what the fuss about salted caramel is. Have to say, not to my taste, effectively a crushed up Payday without the nuttiness..
A couple of chaps yarning away occupied the bar for much of the flight, but once they returned to their seats for "a rest" MrsPJH and I decided to occupy the vacated bar stools. Various crew members were drawn by our winning personalities and sparkling repartee (or perhaps they just needed to get stuff done in that area) joined us to chat about the 330, what to do in Sidney, the fact that we'd lucked into a flight were they were two crew up as they were training and the seat testing effectiveness of nine year old boys. We repaid their socialising by ensuring they didn't have to make trips to throw the wine away. After sneaking a couple of chocolate bars from the bowl for later and returned to try to finish the watching "Django Unchained"...
..which I didn't manage, even with Gate (after-safety-video) to Gate IFE. I had watched "Veep" again, and "Flight" in full. All I found really enjoyable, and thought "Django" owed far more to "Blazing Saddles" than to "Reservoir Dogs". I'm not convinced as to why a touch screen on demand system is any better than one using a control device, and wonder what the relative frequency of failure will be across the two systems.
Into LHR on time, through border control with no queue and into the taxi, where we both promptly fell asleep for most of the way back to East Anglia.
From a jet lag point of view I'm not sure that day flight back made the next couple of days any easier, though I was less bothered than MrsPJH. For me, however, it ticked the boxes as it extended the time of a fun experience and I'd already built in doing b*gger all for the next couple of days anyhow.
Ultimately, as on the outbound, the VS employees made these few hours in the air into something rather special and memorable, and I've dropped VS a note to say what an enjoyable time we had. And claiming the base Economy fare miles and TP was straightforward too. Shame I doubt that being Silver for the next year will benefit me at all..
When feeling somewhat frazzled the next day, I had to remind myself that the next time we fly long haul the 6.5 hr flight will just be the first leg, and approx one third of the total time in the air....more water, I think...
Last edited by pjh on 18 Apr 2013, 08:02, edited 1 time in total.
We can get better, because we're not dead yet
