The process of getting to the flight was, quite frankly, a debacle. The AirTrain at JFK was out and I misread the announcement of such so I was off by a day in my expectations of it operating. Also, the bus service was woefully insufficient, adding about an hour to the total transit time between the AirTrain station and the terminal. I even tried ordering up a car through Uber; the driver couldn’t figure out where the Federal Circle station was despite it being correctly identified via GPS on the app. And so rather than a calm 90 minutes of relaxing in one of my favorite airport terminals in the country we were sprinting to get to the gate in time to catch the flight.
We ran past the Brooklyn Brewery free tasting being hosted in the atrium at JFK T5, sad to miss out on free beer. And we had to skip plans to pick up sushi to go for dinner en route. But we did get to the gate in time to catch the flight. And that’s the most important bit. With just a few minutes to spare we walked on to JetBlue flight 89 from JFK to San Diego, the evening departure chasing the sun westward across the country.
And we truly did chase the sunset. We finally caught up with it just as we landed in San Diego. It was spectacular.
As for the rest of the flight, well, that was pretty darn good, too. Helps there were light loads so we had three seats for the two of us. And the flight crew was more than generous with the snacks. At one point about half-way through the flight I was considering picking up a snack box to make something of a dinner from. I headed to the rear galley and was distracted by the chocolate chip cookies as I often am. Next thing I knew, one of the FAs was piling more snacks into my arms to make sure I was well fed. I never did manage to grab that snack box; turns out it wasn’t necessary.
Apparently I appear malnourished. Tonight's @JetBlue crew is making sure I'm well fed. #paxex pic.twitter.com/pg9dsdsGnf
— Seth Miller (@WandrMe) June 6, 2015
I would have preferred to buy one of the fresh food options but JetBlue still doesn’t have them on all the transcon flights. I know why and I’m led to believe that will change later this year as more catering stations are added in to the mix. But for a 6 hour flight at dinnertime not having real meal options, even to buy, was not so great. Especially because of the AirTrain SNAFU.
The FlyFi in-flight internet service worked great throughout the trip and, of course, it is still free on JetBlue. That certainly helped the time go by more quickly. Power outlets would be nice to have, though. And the DirecTV screens are definitely showing their age. The one in the middle of our three seats didn’t work at all and my screen had all sorts of color issues. Not a huge deal for me as I don’t really watch TV and now I can get the moving map via FlyFi, but I definitely heard the FAs offering up credits to other passengers for the broken systems. That will get better next year when the interior retrofit happens and the new seats are installed. But that’s a long time to wait for things to improve, especially when that’s one of JetBlue’s main marketing points.
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That is an awesome carb overload.
At least the snack boxes have some protein and fat in them