The parents dropped me off at Terminal 3 and I took the Heathrow Express across to Terminal 4, which was busy but not unduly so. As my connecting flight had been retimed since booking, leaving me with a 5 hour wait at Newark, I headed over to the Customer Service desk to see if there were any earlier connecting flights. Unfortunately, they were all full but the agent did put me as standby so there would still be a chance. He also checked me in which meant that I inadvertently bypassed the lengthening queue for the bag drop – a stroke of good fortune.
The security queue did look quite long, but it moved quickly and I was airside in under 10 minutes, the longest part being the time taken to put everything (e.g. laptop, shoes, etc...) back into place. Sat down for breakfast at Bridge where service was quick and efficient and found that I still had about 2 hours before the flight left. A little bit of window shopping revealed HMV selling the Wii with Wii Fit Plus for £195, when I had just paid £220 earlier in the week, although to be honest, I wouldn’t have taken it with me all the way to the US and back. By the time I made it to Gate 1c, from where we were departing, there was still a good 90 minutes before our departure. It is laid out such that the gate and communal terminal area are one and the same which led to some confusion as a lot of people kept going up to the desk to have their boarding passes and passports checked but were turned away as boarding hadn’t begun. Boarding actually begun at 10.30, 45 minutes prior to departure and as usual BusinessFirst, Elite and passengers requiring assistance were called, but as usual what seemed like the entire plane got up and started to form a queue – something I’ve never quite worked out.
Once on the plane, it became evident that there were a lot of parties who were not seated together so began a game of musical chairs with staff shuffling passengers up and down and in the case of the gentleman next to me, all the way up to BussinessFirst. All this coupled with the fact that two passengers made their way to the wrong gate meant that we took off 40 minutes late but the captain promised that we’d be able to make it up. As soon as we were airborne, the meal service began which consisted of a salad (all lettuce with 1 slice of tomato), chicken or beef and then an apple custard. I went for the chicken which turned out to be a chicken breast with boiled to death asparagus (the second time in a week for me) and penne in a tomato sauce – incidentally, exactly the same chicken meal that I had had when I last flew Continental in 2006.
One thing that had definitely changed in those 4 years was the addition of seat back TVs and AVOD. It was a touch-screen without a remote which was slightly weird although the user interface was easy to use and there was a largish selection of movies, music and games – there were also TV programmes loaded into the menu but you couldn’t access them, I presume due to this being a B757 and not a 777. I didn’t really fancy any of the new movies so ended up watching the last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies punctuated by regular juice rounds and some pretzels half way and then a snack box about an hour out of Newark with a microwaved chicken and cheese sandwich and crisps. Not much else to report except for a bumpy descent and a guy using his e-reader (Kindle I think) all the way throughout – is there a setting where you can power it off but still have text on the screen? However, we did manage to make up the time we had lost at Heathrow and touched down 5 minutes early and although I managed to whizz through security, I was once again held up waiting for my bags for a good 25 minutes.
All in all a good flight with decent seats, food and entertainment with the service being helpful if not a little curt. As someone who is still a student (albeit graduating in 10 days time), Continental provide a reasonable alternative to Virgin and BA when significantly cheaper. Only disappointment was not being able to work out exactly what happened next after Kindle boy gave his number to one of the cabin crew!
Onwards to Chicago to follow...
Jonathan
