Guernsey to London
We had an early wake-up at 0615 with a long day ahead; we are flying from Guernsey to London and onwards to Los Angeles.
David and Sis dropped us off at the airport where we checked in and boarded our Aurigny ATR72 flight to London Gatwick at 0755. I love the joys of departing from a small airport where didn’t have to check-in hours in advance.
The flight was meant to take 1h15 but we landed 25 mins earlier at Gatwick. We had to catch a bus to Heathrow to catch our next flight. The 1h30 ride cost GBP17 which was more than our recent flight to Paris on British Airways!
Approaching Heathrow, we saw a Concorde take off with lots of plane-spotters. It was the penultimate flight of that aircraft type and a grandstand had been set up for the final flight tomorrow.
London to Los Angeles
We got to Heathrow Terminal 3 about 1100, with plenty of time till our Air New Zealand departure at 1615. We killed about an hour at Burger King upstairs to await the opening of the check-in counters.
While we were on standby, we were lucky enough to get boarding passes for Economy Class immediately. Our paid last-minute upgrades to Business Class weren’t available as yet. Once at the gate, no upgrades came through either.
On board, we were pleased to find that we had a row of four seats to share between us. Yep, plenty of space onboard for us and money in the pocket from not having paid for the last-minute upgrade.
Then the ground staff showed up at our seats with Business Class boarding passes. We had been given our paid upgrades after all, at the very last minute. Unfortunately, Kim and I had been separated but it wasn’t a biggie.
During the flight I caught glimpses of the view as we flew over the snowy mountains of Greenland.
Arriving in Los Angeles
Despite our late departure due to slot constraints, we landed at Los Angeles on time at 1930.
Inside the terminal, we had to wait for immigration counters to open up as Air New Zealand is cleared through Terminal 2, a predominantly domestic terminal. They started with only one immigration officer processing foreigners before a second arriving later. After that slow clearance, it was a 45 min wait for the shuttle of the Furama Hotel.
We had managed to snap up a good rate at the Furama this visit. We’re normally in a more modest hotel. Despite the good rate we had a good room overlooking the pool. The room, perhaps any room in the USA, is spacious after the small found in most British/European hotels that have been converted from old buildings.