Round The World and other travels

Flight Log 20 : AA651

Miami (MIA) - Bridgetown, Barbados (BGI)

For once, I was one of the last to board, having been slightly baffled by the deserted gate area and the agent making a final call some half an hour before the scheduled departure time! It certainly seemed like they were determined to get this one away on time. Ah, but the best laid plans ...

We were delayed by just under three quarters of an hour, first by missing passengers whose bags had to be located and off-loaded and secondly, by our tug deciding to break down. As one of the FAs commented : "This is not our finest hour." Bit of a shame, really. It was my last AA flight of the trip and, in theory at least, my first flight as a BA Gold. We eventually pushed back at 1734 and, with MIA being such a huge airport, it was 1755 before we were able to take off from Runway 9L.

The 757 had the same beige leather seats as on the SFO-BOS route and I was interested to see just how closely this international Business Class flight would match a US domestic First. Perhaps surprisingly for an international service, once again it was beverages only at the back.

In the event, I thought the two products were very similar indeed, but with some (very) small differences making domestic First the marginally better product (assuming, of course, that my very limited experiences were in any way typical.) I'm thinking of small things like serving the main course separately after the starter, serving butter on a plate, tablecloth beneath the tray ... that sort of thing. Really minor stuff. But back to the important things ... the choices were chicken or fish; I had the fish served with rice and green beans. For dessert, there was initially a choice of cheese & fruit or ice cream sundae, but it turned out that there were only two cheese & fruit plates on board.

Once the meal was cleared away, darkness fell quickly. There was a child in 2A who had no concept of speaking without shouting , but apart from that, the time passed peacefully enough. We touched down at Grantley-Adams International at 2055 and were parked three minutes later. An odd aspect of this flight was that the seat belt signs had remained on for all but a few minutes, yet there had only been 15 or 20 minutes worth of turbulence. The signs were widely ignored without any intervention by the FAs, somewhat devaluing the whole idea.

Date: Mon 05 Apr 2004
Aircraft : Boeing 757
Scheduled dep : 1650
Actual departure : 1734
Scheduled arrival : 2022
Actual arrival : 2058
Cabin : Business
Seat : 5F



Next Flight

Previous Flight

Home | Major Trips | Short Trips | About this site | Index