This is a Trip Report from the Premium Economy cabin
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Seat 28C
My usual Taxi company arrived ontime at 6:45am and this was the first time since March where I have left the house before sun up.
The M4 was a lot busier than usual, and I guessed it could have been due to the school holiday and people heading to the airport.
The M4 spur, was very busy, and I was expecting a busy terminal, however, we found a car had gone into the back of another in the middle lane, although the car it hit had gone, the Micra was left in situ causing massive tailbacks to the M4.[V] It was not that badly damaged.
Terminal 3 looks like it will be finished soon, and the hoardings indicated a Dev 2007 completion date.
I was asked by the security agent if I was travelling Premium Plus, and I overheard this a few times. Although I had checked in online, I wanted to try and get a better seat. The PE line looked like it would move faster than UC, and it did. The checkin agent confirmed the new config aircraft and than a PE seat upstairs was no longer an option, so I was given 28C which is the exit row seat by L2. I did learn that there were 10 available PE seats.
The Fast Track line was moving quickly, although I got the random bleep and had a pretty thorough body search[:?]
I was unable to shimmy past the Shoe scanner, although when a huge crowd arrived they were ushered past, what is the point of a random approach to this ? It does nothing to improve security.
The clubhouse was quiet, and arrived around 7.45am and settled down to a drink and a bacon roll. I had a shave booked at 9am, and shortly after 8am Honey Lamb came over and introduced herself and we had a good chat until a colleague arrived. Hope you had a good flight HL.
I'd not had a treatment at the CH before, and really enjoyed the shave, my skin was very smooth for the rest of the day. Like another TR recently, I though the neck and shoulder massage was part of the treatment, but was not given, and when I asked at the desk, I was told only 1 treatment per passenger.
The flight was called at 10:15, with a fairly long walk to gate 35, I had forgotten that this gate is often busy, and no real way of managing priority boarding once it starts. In future I'll wait until the second call before heading to the gate.
The new PE cabin is much larger than I had imagined, with Economy looking much nicer as a result of only being 2 sections. It took a long time from boarding to being offered a drink.
The push back happened 10 minutes late, and we taxied a further 30 minutes. I did think that once on our run down the runway, the engines sounded particularly good, rather like a good tuned up car after it's been in for a service.
The delay had been due to a baggage system failure in T3, and the captain said that he felt it was appropriate to ensure all the bags are onboard rather than inconvenience anyone.
Visibility was good, and there was very little turbulance.
The drinks and meal service was slow to arrive, despite the fact they start at the exit door. The food menu was the same, so I had the beef again, which was good. Although I am always hungry afterwards.
I watched The Ex, which was OK, and then decided to watch something on the iPhone, to find out that the headphone socket is too deep, so had to resort to dragging out my laptop to watch some DVDs I had ripped to iTunes. I've seen all the movies on V-Port.
There was a long time between lunch and any further drinks, and they did n't offer anything other than water or OJ. They provided a Chicken Curry wrap, which was very tasty, but again too small.
I had a glass of water, which the cabin crew decided to clear up in a rush and spilt it onto my MacBook Pro, fortunately it only slopped onto the mousepad and wrist rest and not into the keyboard. Having seen a club soda destroy a laptop on a flight from Denver to Washington, I was very concerned about turning it off.
I finished the work I needed to do, and the films I wanted to watch and then shut it down and restarted into both Windows and OSX. I then shut it down and removed the battery to check it was dry underneath. Fortunately it was all OK, although I did ask for it to be put into the flight report in case of trouble later in the week with the laptop.
My seat neighbour was also in the Tech business and we had a good conversation about business and the demands of travel and the imapct on our families.
We landed 20 minutes late, and had a good view of SF, Alcatraz and Oakland on the way in. As we were heading to the stand, I saw the BA flight, and my heart sank, long immigration lines were likely. They planned to use the L1 and L2 doors to exit, unfortunately, they must have had a learner driver for the jetway, as it took 15 minutes for the jetway to kangaroo it's way to the door, and then the agent could n't open the door easily. I headed out of L1.
Incidentally, the FSM gave his annoucements without referring to any script, this always sounds so much better in my oppinion, and I said as much once he had completed it. Did not notice any welcome back to any Gold members during the flight.
I got to the immigration hall, and wonder why they don't organise things better, as if you get in there first, you fill up the lines, and those behind you get moved to the US side, this impacts the luggage pickup, as you end up with Economy passengers looking at UC and PE bags, and the UC and PE passengers cannot get to their bags.
In some respects, the Washington line is a fair way to do it, everyone pretty much has the same experience.
The line I was in moved slowly, as the BA flight often has Europeans who do not fill out the forms, and the line I was in, the agent was not sending them off to fill it in.
I was processed quickly, although queue time was around 30 minutes.
The bags were on belt 11, and I saw my bag immediately and headed out via the Customs hall, which did not have a long line. I had a work colleague who had arrived from Boston waiting for me at the Avis facility.
As we had planned to go straight to the office, I did n't have time to change the car, we were given a Black Lincoln Towncar [:0]
So later this week I'l do some airport transfers and earn some $$$$[:p]
Overall, the flight was good. I think the chances of an OP-UP to Premium are now increased as they are offering a one way upgrade at LHR for 169, there were still seats in PE available, although I did n't see any spare Economy ones.
I think the service in the new downstairs PE is much worse, it's slower and harder to attract the attention of the crew, and also when the curtains are drawn I do not like to disturb the crew, whereas upstairs I don't ever recall there was a curtain.
The seat was comfortable, and it's a nice combined look on the 747-400, the economy seats look unchanged as far as I could tell.
I was also given an in-flight survey for about the first time in 15 months.
Mark
