LCY-JFK

London City (LCY) is a small east end airport that mainly serves short-hop flights around europe. Very short runway. Makes it pretty fun with short takeoff rolls and fairly steep approaches. BA recently added a transatlantic route from LCY. It's a version of an A318 with a modification for steep approach capability and with the 100 econo-seats in its normal regional jet configuration replaced by 32 business class seats (which are not the same as the normal business class seats on BA's widebody jets).

Normally when I fly to New York I go from Heathrow, but I got lucky this time as the LCY route when I booked the trip was the same price as to/from LHR. Cab to LCY from my house: 19 minutes. Last time I went to LHR, cab was approximately 1hr19 minutes. BA recommends arriving at LCY 20 minutes before the flight if you've got luggage, 15 minutes with nothing to check in. That's arriving at the airport. I couldn't bring myself to test that out, so ended up breezing through checkin and security within moments of getting to the airport. Unlike the US, where security personnel tend to be shouty, aggressive, and posturing, screeners here in the UK tend to be calm, polite, and professional. That's good, no? As stupid as air travel security screening is, let's at least be polite and professional about it. Why this is not possible in the US, I don't know.

Anyway, I was through security and left wondering why I'd gotten to the airport so early. I had an hour to kill, so went to the lounge/gate. There is no dedicated BA business class lounge at LCY, but this "special" flight has its own dedicated gate which doubles as the lounge. It was pleasant enough and comfortable. The plane boarded quickly, as you'd expect with only 32 passengers, each with a giant seat and lots of floor space. The crew were very warm and enthusiastic. I like BA flight crews, almost invariably getting really good service no matter what class of travel or what route, but this crew seemed in especially good spirits. If I were paying attention, and I might not have been, I'd say there were two pilots up front and three flight attendants.

The single runway at LCY is less than a mile long, at just under 5000 feet [don't geek out on commercial aviation? that's very short]. The flight to JFK has a refueling stop as the A318 could not takeoff under a full fuel load from LCY. There is no refueling stop on the return route from JFK. It refuels in Shannon, which also provides pre-clearence for US immigration and customs. This worked out well. Those of us with checked baggage had to wait a few minutes before going through pre-clearance, those with only carryons could proceed right away. When we were called, it was an additional security scan of the checked bags, then a combined passport control/customs check. At this check, the baggage claim ticket was scanned and a video still of the corresponding bag from the hold was displayed. I was asked to confirm that was my bag, which indeed it was. Cool. From there it was straight to the gate and just as the last person was through the US clearance it was time to reboard.

The flight attendants were the same, but we had a new pair of pilots for the long leg from Shannon to JFK. The short hop over from LCY was about an hour, during which they served drinks and starters (a very nice chilled prawn dish). Once the long hop got under way, they broke out the media players and started prepping the full meals, which we ordered on the short hop. I assumed this meant they loaded the specific meal choices during the stopover, but forgot to ask if that was the case. The seats have media player mounts and plugs but no built-in screens and no plane-wide onboard entertainment system. Each person received a media player that slotted into the mount and plugged into the power outlets. The screens were small but relatively sharp and were pre-loaded with a variety of movies and tv shows and such (wmv files). They worked fine, unlike the normal BA onboard entertainment systems, which have required embarrassing system-wide reboots with 20-30 minutes downtime on at least one out of every three longhaul flights I've been on. The real downside was the absence of the moving map. The crew kept a paper map taped to the outside of one of the lavatories up front and would periodically update a green sticker showing our location. Very cute.

My dinner was quite good. I didn't have the "afternoon tea" later in the flight. Apparently sitting in a stupor for a couple hours watching movies was not enough to make me hungry again.

We were making decent time, originally scheduled to touch down more than thirty minutes ahead of schedule, but the weather was bad at JFK -- very windy, and some rain. We had to park in a holding pattern for quite a while, then were going to land but had to go back to a holding pattern. Apparently some planes had to divert. Strong winds and very gusty. We eventually did land at JFK instead of diverting, fortunately, but the ride down was quite interesting -- bouncing and yawing our way through the gusts. I get motion sick very easily. Fortunately I was dramamined to the gills so I didn't paint the cabin with gut contents. I was fine. Landings like that always make me nervous -- wind gusts trying to yank control away from the pilots and the nose coming down skew to the runway. But they know what they're doing and they wouldn't be landing if conditions weren't with tolerances for the plane. I did wonder, though, if it would have been noticeably less bumpy on a bigger airplane, or if it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Someone asked me later if I regretted not taking my usual 747 on that route. Heh. I'll answer that after the return trip.