Tier Point Run to San Francisco in Jan 2022: Day 4 – San Francisco SFO to Los Angeles LAX

I woke just before the alarm at 4am, so another 3.5 hours kip which I was impressed with.  I had a shower and dropped my key in the drop box in the following 20 mins.  I concluded that ordering an Uber to take me to the airport was the best thing to do.  The BART didn’t start until after 5:30am and I felt that that was cutting it a bit fine for my liking.

I reached the airport in around 20-25 mins, at a cost of $34. Not bad value to give me peace of mind.

It wasn’t long before I was checking in at the AA Priority desk.  The lady serving me asked about my long journey, wanted to see that I had completed a UK PLF, evidence of my vaccination and my test result, which she couldn’t really interpret.  She printed off two boarding passes for me – that would get me to JFK.  She said that BA would need to do their checks and provide the remaining boarding passes. That suited me!

I was through TSA Pre security check quickly since there was no one was in the queue.  Then into the AA lounge opposite gate B13.  I had a quick walk up and down the concourse, but there was no Starbucks and nothing else of any interest. As a result, I turned my attention to FOOD!

I prepared myself some toasted English muffins with butter and grape jelly – fabulous. One of my favourite foods for breakfast.

I took another Lateral Flow Test (LFT) just so that I had it ahead of BA checking me in at JFK T7 and it doubled up as my LFT test (within 24 hours of my flight to Amsterdam) for entry into the Netherlands (even though I was only transiting).

After overcoming my printer issues, I headed down to Gate B23 and hung around for 20 mins.  The departure had been delayed by 10 mins for some reason, but boarding commenced about 35 mins before this revised departure.  The flight had a very light load and the first 8 rows of the main cabin had been left empty to balance the plane.

In the end, we pushed back not far in line with the original departure time, but the aircraft had to wait after pushing back for 10 mins before taxiing.  Taxiing didn’t take long so we were soon up into the air heading south towards LAX.

The flight arrived into Terminal 5, Gate 51B.  I only had about an hour before my next flight, although that had expanded a tad due to my early arrival into LAX.  Obviously, I needed to fit in a trip to Starbucks but decided that it would be quicker for me to go to the Starbucks in T6 rather than my normal haunt in the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT).  TBIT is much further and there would be a huge queue.  I hadn’t used the Starbucks at T6 before, but the times when I had been passed it on my travels around the airport in the past, it hadn’t looked that busy.

I made the right choice.  By the time I had walked down to T6, queued up for my coffee and gotten back to T4 Flagship Lounge, it was 10am, leaving me about 20 mins chilling time before heading for my next flight.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Starbucks and the short period I spent relaxing in the lounge.  I was now looking forward to a longer, more relaxed flight to JFK.  Although I knew I would then have another relatively tight connection on to my BA flight back to Blighty.

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