American Airlines

Virgin need to fly to more places

• getting to Irving, Texas required the use of American Airlines for my first time ever.

Things didn’t start out well. American don’t allow online check-in for international flights, so I joined the back of the queue at their desks at Heathrow. The queue moved reasonably quickly, so it was only thirty minutes or so. Once at the desk things improved, as I was allocated (on request) an exit row seat, something that costs extra on Virgin.

The in-flight video service on the 777 to Chicago was pretty poor when compared to Virgin and the food was much the same (read “mostly awful”). The flight attendants were also a little surly, particularly with a Romanian family who spoke little or no English.

The 777 from Chicago to Fort Worth was mostly empty, resulting in the opportunity to stretch out across five seats and get a couple of hours sleep - relative bliss.

Hopefully the return journey will be as uneventful (though it’s snowing in Chicago as I write…).

Update: The snow falling in Chicago was light - no ground covering. The flight back from Chicago to LHR was great - three seats to spread out across meaning that I actually slept for a few hours. That’s not happened in years. Oh, and I noticed today that Virgin will start flying to Chicago O’Hare later in April :-)