Tier Point Run to Hawaii/San Juan in Feb 2014: Day 6 – Miami MIA to Los Angeles LAX

I spent about an hour and a half in the Admiral’s Club at Gate D30, before I realised I needed to get all the way back to Gate D4 for my flight. I spent all of that time updating FT and my blog, so nothing exciting to report.

It can’t be that much less than a mile between Gate D30 to Gate D4, so it took me about 20 mins. Didn’t help heading the wrong way of course! I’m normally pretty good with directions, but that’s the second time I’ve made an initial mistake about the direction I needed to go in at Miami.

Anyway, I reached the gate and they hadn’t started boarding, so I loitered around the entrance to the Priority Boarding queue, and was second or third person on. I was booked into 2E but was asked about swapping with another person which I was happy to do.

But based on some recent feedback on FT I made it clear that I was only happy to do that on the basis that it was an aisle for an aisle, and a member of CC was involved as well, so there was no doubt about the conditions of the swap.

Anyway I ended up in 6E which is the last row of First class. First time back there and it will be my last since it’s far too close to the “economy” toilets, and there’s a horrible draft coming through.

Again the crew did a great job ramming oversized suitcases into the overhead lockers (rather than just saying NO to pax and getting them checked in) and getting us ready to leave on time.

That reminded me about the flight from HNL to LAX the other evening when as normal with AA, the gate agent announced that the flight was full, and that every bag would be checked for it fitting in the carry on frame. It was going to be that difficult to fit everyone on board.

I had a guy sat next to me waiting to board that had the largest “carry on” case I have ever seen – it was obscenely big. In fact I actually thought it must either be joke, or a test for the gate agents it was that big. I thought at least he will be forced to check it in as he heads through the gate.

Anyway after most pax had got on board there was a commotion from the back of the aircraft, and it was that same pax – he had got his case stuck trying to force it into the overhead locker.

I couldn’t believe it – you just need an ounce of common sense not to try something that is never going to happen. Anyway, it took a couple of hefty guys to pull the case out, and I assume it ended up being checked in.

The moral of that story was that if you say you are going to do something, for goodness sake, carry it through to the end! There’s no point in hassling reasonable pax for taking their carry-ons from them, when they don’t bother catching out the obvious culprits.

Dinner service was fine, but the mushroom stroganoff that I ordered was horrible. No pictures but take my advice – don’t do it. Managed to handle the ice cream with hot fudge sauce and an oatmeal cookie late on in the flight.

Also got a private message highlighting the ongoing problems with weather on the East coast – I’ll need to keep an eye on that – could quite easily derail my chances of getting home on my desired route.

I logged on to GoGo on the flight which was really slow initially, then stabilised but is going really slowly now. It’s keeping me busy and the time is flying by.

On the way into LAX, there were some stunning views of the North of snow tipped mountains – shame I wasn’t in a window seat to take advantage of the good views.

Landed 20 mins early into Gate 42A and was in the lounge again within 2 mins. I only managed to take one photo on this leg and that was of the plane that delivered me safely to LAX today.

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