This is a Trip Report from the Economy cabin
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Having not slept well the few days before, and only 45 minutes the night before my early morning flight, I dragged myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4AM, stumbled around half asleep getting ready and headed out the door to the subway.
My plan was to take a subway to Penn Station and then a NJ Transit train to Newark, but that failed when the subway countdown clock said 15min until the next train...so I lugged my bag back to the street and took a taxi.
The travel problems didn't end there, though. I bought my ticket for the train and the machine would not give me both my change and a receipt! At least it did give me my ticket... Annoyed, I walked over to the departures board and waited a few minutes until my 5:18AM train was called.
Once I was on the train, it was smooth sailing from there. I arrived at EWR station about 25 min later and hopped on the air train to the terminal. Walked into the PE line and waited about 10min to be seen as there were a number of large groups being checked in ahead of me. The man who saw me apologised for the wait and I was quickly checked in and on my way.
Arriving at security I saw the dreaded body scanners were in use and there was no queue that went through only a metal detector. Too tired to argue over opting out, I went through it and got a pat down because there was something in my back pocket I was told (there wasn't). My bag was also searched, as always, because the special coatings on high end lenses inhibit xrays, and the scanners can't see through them properly. I always allow an extra 10 or 15 minutes for security when travelling because of this.
Finally though security, I was reminded why I hate EWR so much. Two duty free shops with a poor selection, one small pub, and only one grab and go breakfast place. Pretty disappointing if you ask me. I bought an overpriced yogurt parfait and OJ and waited for boarding.
Boarding was very slow, and felt slower than normal for some reason. Boarding was through door 1L, walking all the way back through UC, PE, and to Y. We were advised by the captain there may be a slight delay due to baggage loading issues, and there was, but only 8 minutes. It was a quick taxi out with takeoff at 08:10.
I fell asleep for a bit, waking up as drinks came round. Later falling back asleep and waking up again for breakfast, which was the usual not very good offering of a muffin top and juice. Falling asleep yet again (see the pattern here
) and waking up for lunch. I had the beef and g&t. The beef was very very average, but I did like the GU dessert. I tried watching Flight with Denzel Washington (don't watch it if you have a fear of flying!) , but was too tired to pay much attention, so I turned it off half way though and just listened to music.
There were no amenity kits handed out, annoying, but didn't matter to me much as they no longer include pens to fill out the landing cards!
We began out decent, which was relatively smooth, and got most of the way down until we did a short lap around the south west before heading in for landing. I was able to track it all as they now leave the IFE on from takeoff through landing (finally, Virgin!). We landed at 19:09, making it a 5:59 minute trip, one of the quickest I've had.
Immigration was rammed, and it took about 45min to get through, but my bag was waiting for me when I stepped into the reclaim area, so I grabbed it and got on the tube.
It felt good to fly again - it had been almost 9 months to the day I last flew, one of the longest periods I had in years. Now only a week here then back across the pond
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Thanks for posting the TR, sounds like the flight did the job in very decent time 
