Quik Thinking

The checkin staff were leery of letting me fly to the US with a Canadian passport but their boss overruled them and let me board. The flight was fine until we began our descent, which was the roughest one I've ever experienced and made more disorienting by the remarkable absence of urban light pollution. It was so bad that the baby behind me puked, tainting the air with a foul odour. We landed late and had to go through security again so I rushed to make my connecting flight but it too had been delayed so I hadn't missed the flight. There were 8 wheelchair users on the flight, which is more than I've ever seen before! And El Salvador actually has a potable water supply so I could drink from a fountain instead of having to buy yet another bottle of water. Once aboard I traded seats twice to end up with an aisle seat. As we took off, one of the overhead bins popped open and the passenger beneath had to briefly undo her seatbelt to shut it.

Upon arrival in SFO I had to go through secondary inspection at Immigration, although they didn't give me much trouble and granted me a 6-month visit. After that, however, I was "randomly" selected for a thorough inspection by Customs, which I've not had to undergo in the US before. The officer looked through all my stuff and grilled me for what seemed like nearly half an hour, frequently asking me the same questions to see if I'd slip up and give him different answers. Eventually he cleared me and I was free to enter the country. By that time it was about 1am and I had no cell service so capitulated on my plans of taking public transit and just paid for a cab home.

While most of my experiences with US airlines (Virgin and Horizon excepted) have been pretty lousy, I've been fortunate to have had great experiences flying on foreign airlines like Cathay Pacific and Japan AirLines. I'm pleased to report that British Airways continued that trend with exceptionally friendly flight staff. Their sole departure from perfection involved making their way down the lone aisle at a snail's pace hawking merch on the flight from Istanbul to London. [And even that proved to be an opportunity to chat up an attractive British woman.]

 Although I stuck with British Airways for most flights on this trip, we did take EasyJet from London to Budapest. Given the budget nature of that airline, I'd been expecting a pretty spartan experience but was pleasantly surprised to discover that it wasn't at all unpleasant. Furthermore, because they don't have a first-class cabin, we got to sit in the very front of the plane! The staff were pretty chill and even crowdsourced their translation by asking for a volunteer from amongst the passengers.

 When I arrived at Hheathrow the 2nd time, I decided to try a little experiment. Instead of listing my port of departure as Istanbul I put down Constantinople instead to see if anybody would catch it. Nobody did. I also managed to accidentally get several bottles of liquids through security despite having my carry-on baggage randomly inspected in Istanbul. Pretty incredible!

I was supposed to show up at Narita airport an hour before my flight's scheduled departure on the 18th but didn't make it there until about 55 minutes prior. When I tried to check-in, I discovered that I could no longer do so. A JAL staffperson informed me that I had arrived too late and would have to catch the next flight. She then discovered that all flights for the next 2 days were fully booked. Moved by my wild-eyed desperation, she called the gate and tried to see if she could get me on the flight anyway. By the time she explained things to the gate, there were only 20 minutes left before boarding was to commence and I it was unlikely that I'd make it through security in time. That's when they pulled a rabbit out of their hat. After sticking a red aeroplane-shaped sticker on me, one of the JAL staff lead me to the crew security area, where there was no line-up, and got me through.

So far, so good. But I still needed to return my $200 rental keitei (cell phone) and there was no way for me to do that. That's when JAL really came through for me. They contacted the phone rental company and arranged to get the phone back to them on my behalf. Best airline service I've ever had :-)