Flying to North America

Flying to Medellin

Having slept with the aid of half a pill last night around 2030, I was up at 0230 but tried to sleep again.  After 0330 I gave up and did things on my phone until the alarm went off at 0430.  It was time for us to leave South America for North America as part of our journey back to New Zealand.

We set off for the Medellin’s plateau-top airport around 0510 getting there in about 30 mins in the absence of traffic.  We were airside rather quickly to use the lounge.  We had plenty to work on using the internet, as flights from Los Angeles to Auckland are very full and some are getting cancelled due to high staff sickness.  About 100,000 seats are being taken out from the schedule in the next few weeks and the crunch is expected to last till the end of the year.

We had previously had hotel bookings in Las Vegas which we’ve cancelled and today we cancelled a nightstop in Victorville.  For flexibility with standby travel from Los Angeles to Auckland, we’re putting up entirely in LA instead.

At the gate some 40 mins prior to departure, the flight was boarding already.  The Avianca A320 departed a little earlier than the scheduled 0745 with a good number of empty seats.   Unlike our previous fight with the same airline, this plane had new seats which were thin and didn’t recline in the rear half of economy class.

Stressful standby to Los Angeles

It was a quick flight and we landed in Bogota ahead of schedule, some 4h30 before our next flight, to Los Angeles.  The domestic section of the airport was quite large and our bags were waiting for us at the carousel.

At the check-in desks, there were no queues but it didn’t mean it was a quick process.  Perhaps it was an inexperienced staff, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with standby.  Then the document checks (ESTA, visa, onward flight tickets, vaccination) took a while.  Then I asked about having our resident tax refunded.  With some help from another staff member, this was given to us in COP99000 cash per person.  A reprint of our boarding passes was stamped and the refunded noted there.  This was then repeated in our passport against our immigration entry stamp.

We finished our check-in about 3h30 prior to departure and headed airside with no queues at immigration.  What a contrast to our long wait at arrival.

The large, spacious and beautiful COPA Airlines lounge was a joke when it came to catering.  They only had packaged nuts, junk snack and biscuits.  Only three varieties in total.  Soft drinks and alcohol were available though.

Kim went to check out the El Dorado lounge next door but it was similar, except that one could upgrade the experience by paying USD11 for a meal from the menu.  That kind of money can buy a good feed at the airport so we didn’t bother.

About 90 mins prior to departure, we moved to the gate in case we would be give our boarding passes.  Unfortunately, today we had to wait till an hour before departure.

When the hour came, they said to wait another 10 mins to be called but they gave us an assurance that we would be OK.  With that positive note we changed all our Colombian pesos into USD and continued our wait.  Boarding commenced and they finally gave us our boarding passes 20 mins before departure.

People who think that staff standby is really cool probably haven’t experienced the stress of it.  Nowadays, good economical accommodation at one’s destination is hard to find and also non-refundable.  One can’t simply travel without booking ahead.  And with standby, it is too risky to make onward connections that are firm.  One has to budget in extra hours and days.  Sometimes it becomes uneconomic compared to commercial airfares.  But today, we are on standby because our better options got cancelled.

The Avianca experience

The Boeing 787-8 was quite pleasant and came equipped with air vents, a perk now done away with by even the best airlines.  We were seated down the back in A & B seats but managed to move to two aisle seats as the doors closed.

Catering on the 7h55 flight was very light with just a filled sandwich roll, bag of chips and cookies.  Drinks were limited to coffee, tea and a small bottle of water.  Some airlines that are light on catering are generous with drinks but this wasn’t the case.  Fortunately, our flight time was short today at only 6h30.

We saw the economy meal carts disappear into the business class cabin for the service and the collecting-in, suggesting that business class had the same “meals”.

Kim felt a little cold in short sleeves (but with a vest) but blankets weren’t carried on board.

The newish aircraft didn’t appear to stand up to the wear and tear.  My seat wouldn’t stay reclined and kept popping back up.  The toilet door soft-closing was broken and kept slamming, to the annoyance of people near the toilet.  Both the toilet seat and lid soft-closing mechanism were also broken.

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Avianca was a good reminder that not all Star Alliance carriers behave like full service airlines.

While it wasn’t the airline’s fault but the airplane manufacturer’s … the toilets must have been designed by someone who has never peed standing up.  The seat and the lid doesn’t stay up inflight (due to the angle of the plane) because the vertical wall is too close behind.  On the ground it seems to be fine.

Arriving at LAX

We landed at 1800, some 50 mins ahead of schedule.  It took a little over an hour to get to the immigration counter.  We were lucky as the queue doubled soon after we joined.

Once at the counter, I took 20 mins to get through.  The officer was puzzled by the lack of a surname vs first name in my passport and went through it a couple of times before taking his sweet time to enter it into the system, then check with me once more.  Then he enquired about my travel history, having seen the stamps in my current passport and the old one which contained my visa.

Once kerbside, we waited for a Hertz bus to take us to the Skyways Hotel.  Numerous Avis and Enterprise buses came and went but not a Hertz one.  Eventually one turned up and everyone who had been waiting piled on, sardine-style.  Stuck in traffic on the airport’s horseshoe-shaped road, we eventually reached Hertz before 2100 and walked across the road to our hotel.

I was prepared to skip dinner and just have crackers before bed.  Kim wanted to go to In-n-Out burger some 10 mins walk away.  I didn’t need much convincing and the burgers were awesome.  The sight of planes, including an A380, descending low over us to land at the airport was a real treat.