Flight 7 of 10, Oh God can it get worse? #NMCLaborDay

Posted By Jon Nickel-D'Andrea on Sep 4, 2016 | 2 comments

Seventh Flight, AA 767-300, Older than Betty White

After a fantastic and relaxing experience in the Centurion lounge in Miami, we headed out to the SkyTrain to get over to gate D50 for our departing flight to Chicago.

The flight was operated by a 767-300 that had more mechanical problems than my great aunt after her 3rd hip replacement and it was probably just as old as her too. Seriously, why does American even have these planes anymore? It’s just sad. #IMissYouEmirates. And people wonder why we, as a country, want to fly foreign carriers?  The entire plane creaked and made strange noises.  When we took off and landed it sounded like someone dropped us from a three story building and all the panels shook.  Even when the luggage/cargo door opened you could hear the EEEEEEEK all the way in the cabin.

Lets begin, shall we?

First, no individual video monitors in business class. Bring a book!

Really?

Second, the shared monitors they did have didn’t even work! The purser tried for 20 minutes pre takeoff to get them working just so the crew didn’t have to go through a manual safety briefing. And, since they didn’t work pre takeoff, they didn’t work post takeoff. So whatever entertainment they would have had (#AmericanNinjaWarrior) couldn’t be seen. Bring a book!

Everyone’s reading

Third, no WiFi. Yup… you know how American says “we have WiFi on most of our flights?” Well, we found the flight that didn’t have WiFi installed. I’m sure they tried, but this dinosaur of an airplane would have probably just collapsed under the stress of being poked and prodded if they tried to add it.

Varied Musical Genders

Fourth, seat didn’t work. Yup, this seat had two positions. Up, and down. You could either go full seated for take off or full sleep mode. For some reason the seat wouldn’t stop anywhere in between. So as I tried to get the seat to go back, I almost crushed my feet in the cubby hole in the seat in front of me. It wouldn’t stop! What the heck is with my bad luck on these long-haul aircraft and seats not working?

Seat Controls

Not happy face

Fifth, the food. Today’s flight sponsored by mystery! We had preorderd our food beforehand, but turns out that what we ordered didn’t actually get catered. So I got the chicken cobb salad (look familiar?) and Ben got the cheese lasagna. The salad was about the healthiest option I think I could have chosen, considering the special meals we ordered wasn’t available. The saving grace? The warm chocolate chip cookie!

Cobb Salad

Lasagna

Cookie and red wine

Six, the charging ports. Wow. DC power? So make sure to bring your car charger with you when you come onto the plane I suppose. I asked for an adapter if they had one… the response? The purser said “American doesn’t have any to give you, you should have been a smart traveler and brought a charger with you for the plane.” I said, well I do come with chargers, but I don’t expect airplanes to have ancient charging equipment. His response “well, I bought two on my own and I gave them out already, maybe if you’re nice I can get someone to let you use it when they’re done.”

DC Power Charging

Insulting the passengers in business class doesn’t seem like good business practice to me, just like promoting a great business class product on your website and delivering a crap airplane isn’t either.

The seats were old and not lie flat

Old seat, my gosh

The seats when reclined were really narrow…

Narrow Seats

And what the hell is this thing staring at me in the face?

FaceTime anyone?

Once we landed we did some research and found that our plane was supposed to head off to Dusseldorf.  Turns out that as of now, that flight’s delayed over 3 hours

And yesterday’s flight?  Cancelled.  Sounds like we need to get some new 767’s!  And now more than ever I’m grateful that we actually GOT to Chicago.

Our last flight of the day is coming up, and it’s from Chicago to New York.  That’s a pretty competitive route, so I hope that AA will have stepped up their game and at least put a decent aircraft on this route.  We’ll see, stay tuned!