Once we were released from our aircraft into the Terminal, it was a mad dash towards immigration. Anyone who has ever been to LAX before will know what I am talking about. LAX is a NIGHTMARE for transit. The facilities are crap, the staff are as slow as hell. But so many people do it, and I was doing it for some crazy ass reason. I was going to chatise myself at least a dozen times during this stopover for transiting at LAX.
As we got to the escalators down into immigration, we were spread out amongst people coming in off Virgin Atlantic from London. A full 747 load of passengers. Now unfortunately (and I don’t know why) but they don’t offer any sort of express service for priority passengers. This is ludicrous because the scene that was in front of me was like pure and utter bedlam. Crazy++ There was just hundreds of people in line ahead of me. The line was barely moving. I knew this was not going to be pretty.
I was meant to meet some people here in LAX for a bit of Aviation Geekage but I laughed when they said I would be out around 4pm (since I was due to land at 1445. They were not wrong. I was in line for a good hour and then once I got my bag, I still had another 15 minutes to get through customs. Yeah worst hour and 15 of the trip so far. But it was done, and I was clear.
As I dropped off my bag at International connections, and off into the main area I went. Met up with Derek from Cranky Concierge who was picking me up and we were quickly into his car, and off to In n Out. O yes, that’s right, I am already 2 down on the list and its barely even 24 hours into the journey. Now the In n Out near LAX is pretty famous amongst Aviation Geeks as it is directly under the flight path for Arrivals into Runway 24R. This is often the heavy aircraft runway. And I was not going to be disappointed this time.
I had been looking forward to these burgers for months now. I already had my order ready in my head (though I ended up getting fries as well when I got there). Both Derek and I met up with Brett from Cranky Concierge and also www.crankyflyer.com and we all had a great time, chatting about planes, travel and me with Camera in hand taking in heaps of photos. Awesome afternoon. Got some fantastic spotting photos. Some highlights include:
* Hawaiian A330
* Lufthansa 747
* Air China 747
* Singapore Airlines A340-500
* A rare Southwest Aircraft (737-300 with Winglets)
* Horizon Dash 8 – 25th Anniversary
I will throw up photos online at some stage but this was an awesome afternoon. Derek got me back to Terminal 2 and ended up dropping me right infront of Premium Security (o yeah) and I was through into the terminal within 10 mins. Now we had timed this so that I should have just enough time for a shower, quick drink and to the gate. Good timing to. I high tailed it from Security to the NZ Koru Club for a shower, no problems getting in at all. I had what was probably the quickest shower in their lounge history and felt relatively human again.
From the NZ lounge (no photos was to focused on going to the Maple Leaf Lounge) I ran next door to the Maple Leaf Lounge operated by Air Canada to try and keep up my Goal of going Lounge Hopping but mainly to see if they will reissue my boarding pass onto Air Canada stock. Nope, do it at the gate the Lounge Dragon told me. Fine. Walked in, dropped my bag, took a heap of photos, grabbed a can of club soda and then out to the gate I went. Once I got to the gate the flight had just arrived and people were spilling out everywhere. The gate agent wasn’t originally going to reprint my pass, then I asked if there were any other seats available. She said 1D. Aisle Seat, first row. Think Mal, Think. Yep take it.
Gave me a few minutes to sit down, fix some stuff up in my bag, take a photo of the Best Buy vending machine that dispenses gadgets and every other tech nerds dreams and then the flight was called.
Air Canada
AC557
Los Angeles to Vancouver
1915-2257
Embraer – E190 (C-FMZU)
Executive First – Seat 1D
Boarding: 1855 (Gate 24)
Push Back 1915
Take Off Roll: 1922 (Runway 24R)
Top of Descent: 2120
Touch Down: 2143 (Runway 26R)
Shut Down: 2150 (Gate 53)
With Priority Boarding called I was in the first wave onboard behind the families unfortunately. I was greeted onboard with a slight French Canadian Accent and then remembered something I had forgotten about the Embraer. Small overhead lockers… ahhhh crap. Thankfully my bag did fit. So that is always a good feeling. No sign of any headphones anywhere, figured they would hand them out later so grabbed my book and settled in.
Pre departure beverages were offered and I took a water. Back to being good after my indulgent lunch that’s for sure! We were soon all boarded pretty quickly (small aircraft means quicker turn arounds) and we pushed back dead on time. Nice work Air Canada can’t complain there. Now one thing I will mention about Air Canada is that their Transborder (US/Canada flights) out of LAX are all on E190s. This means that the seats are just plain old Cradle Seats, which for a 2 and a bit hour flight is perfectly fine. Anything longer and it would be a bit meh.
The seat was comfortable, adequate space and because I was in Row 1, the Monitor was fitted to the bulkhead so I could use it straight away (had they given out headsets). We were pushed back from the gate and then had a quick 7 minute taxi direct out to the runway to take off from where I had been sitting about an hour before.
The takeoff was quick, and we powered out over the water and turned north, and north we went. Apparently we flew up along the coast line and for some reason the Seat Belt sign stayed on for quite some time. A good 10-15 mins before the chimes sounded to release people from their seats. With that the flight attendants started handing out plain old earbuds. PASS! If I had of known this was going to be the fact to start with, I would of grabbed mine from the start of the flight.
Once that was done, arrival documentation handed out and then drink orders taken. Again I went with a club soda for reasons I am not quite sure in my head and this was served with nuts on the side. It’s a North American thing but all the airlines serve nuts of some sort. These were skin on roasted peanuts and cashews, not warm though but they were good, tasty and a touch salty.
Menus were handed out shortly there after while I started watching about the only movie that looked half decent (Unknown). Dinner choices didn’t look to bad and after having Beef for dinner last night, went for Salmon this time around. It was served with a side salad, Vegies and some sort of Rice thingy. It was good, a touch overcooked but meh can’t complain. The whole dinner was served with a small slice of Strawberry Cheesecake which was the best cheesecake I have eaten in a long long time (even beats the cheesecake shop).
Served with another few cups of coffee and I was a happy content avgeek. I settled in to keep watching Unknown and soon enough we were given a top of descent warning by our Female Co Pilot. We ended up coming into land with still light outside which was kinda trippy for almost 10pm at night. Guess things are not going to be getting dark until late around here. But that is just something I will need to get used to.
We landed with a very nose high attitude on the aircraft and it felt very wierd. But we cleared the runway and then we were off onto a taxiway and there we sat. At this point I had thought we were pulling up to a bus gate. But I was wrong. It was just a hold point on the taxi way. Thank god for that. We pulled into our gate right next to a new colours Continental 737 (sporting united badging). Into the terminal we were released and there is where the endless walk from one of the far international gates to immigration.
Now I got to immigration quickly and there was no one in front of me at this point so I was looking good. However the Staff member just decided to grill the crap out of me. Question after Question after Question. Hell the guys at the US didn’t even ask me much more than “how long are you here for”. It seems he wanted to know every minute detail of my trip, not sure why though. Once through that it was over to get bags then out through customs (not even a stop, he just took the form and said “off you go” before I had even stopped walking) and out into the Terminal. I met up with one of my twitter friends for my evenings entertainment!