I sensed a presence as I woke up. It was Nicole checking an update on flight loads. United to Newark had previously seemed a lock on Polaris business. A change of plane caused a change of odds (not in our favor). Lufthansa direct to LAX had plenty of seats, but we can only get economy on them. And not that this is really the point, but it would have cost over $570 for both of us to go standby on them. While $290 per person for a ticket all the way to Los Angeles from Germany would be a pretty solid deal for a normal person, we are most definitely not normal people. My mom often quotes my quoting of another pilot who said of standby travel, “Any seat on the plane is better than one back in the terminal.” True, but any seat up in business class is better than the other seats on the plane. Lufthansa has notoriously bad seat pitch when someone reclines on you. While we lucked out on the A380 coming over, Lufthansa economy can be rather claustrophobic — especially for a 12 hour flight.
While we’ve done Munich and Frankfurt all the way back to L.A. in the past, it just seemed like a lot this time. I found a way we could break it up and get business, but we had to fly to Detroit. For some reason, Delta operates this flight. As Delta has no partnership with Frankfurt-based Lufthansa, it’s an odd flight route, and the flight loads reflected this. 17 open business class seats for the taking. After an okay breakfast at the Hilton, we took a Bolt to the airport and made a brief stop at a Priority Pass lounge where I grabbed a quick wurst and potato salad. They were pumping announcements into the club and we were summoned to go to the gate. Being a destination in the U.S., we had separate security at the gate. Shortly thereafter we were cleared into row 6. It’s an older Delta A330, so the Delta One suite isn’t quite as posh as some, but as they say — business is business.
The flight to Detroit was blocked for around nine hours. Having departed around 1:30pm, it wasn’t really a sleeping hour, but I tried to close my eyes for a bit nonetheless. The food was not very good. I found myself burping it back up for hours. Delta is usually a little bit better with their inflight food, but this was on par with United. To their credit, they did serve relevant for time of day meals like a burger or pizza just before arrival into Detroit. I never understood why many airlines insist on serving weird breakfast things right before touching down at 5pm.
This Delta flight to Detroit was delayed and therefore limited some of our transit options. Global Entry was quick, but the agent did ask us what we were bringing in from abroad. Nicole simply said, “Magnets.” We were allowed to proceed as they did not total more than $10,000 in value. The next Delta flight to Los Angeles was also delayed, so we briefly contemplated going on . . . Spirit. The Detroit airport is not built for such transfers. It is made for Delta. If you’re not doing Delta out of Detroit, you’ve gone wrong. We would have had to exit, wait for a bus to drive us to the other terminal, go through another security checkpoint, and then fly . . . Spirit. We elected to wait the extra 45 minutes for Delta.
This would have given me time to grab Potbelly’s, but they were out of chicken salad!!! Unacceptable. We walked all the way down to gate A72 which is probably a solid mile promenade in Detroit’s McNamara terminal. We got row 15 to ourselves in Delta’s Comfort+, probably better than whatever Spirit would have given us. And with that, we had seats together (and usually pretty decent ones too) on every single flight this trip. Not too shabby. It is still over four hours to Los Angeles from Detroit and our bodies were confused.
The approach over Los Angeles was as it always is. I realize we are on the news lately because Trump manufactured a crisis so he could send in troops, but no; the city isn’t on fire. I didn’t even see any sirens or flares. Is there rioting somewhere? Maybe. It’s a big city and there are always a few who take advantage of the situation. There are bigger riots when the Dodgers or Lakers win and/or lose. All in all, seemed like a pretty boring night for the LAPD, but let’s mobilize the Marines just for fun. It’s demoralizing to live in a time of such idiocy, but welcome back. Reflections to follow.
passports & pepto bismol 