Qantas A380 Jet Taking Off

We’re now at the Admirals Club Lounge at LAX. Our A380 departure was delayed nearly 1 hour due to late receipt of security clearance for loading.

Not much time was picked up on the flight. We travelled in exit row seats in coach class, but this was certainly not as ideal as premium economy in these aircraft.

The seats are narrow and not overly comfortable, with little room for accessing video controls, etc.

Another issue with these exit row seats is that the arm rests are fixed (and very narrow). With another passenger beside us, it was extremely difficult to avoid getting elbows, etc in the way of my neighbour.

We both noted upon arrival in LA that the process of customs and baggage services is still somewhat chaotic, and that they really don’t have a workable system for processing the large numbers of passengers that occur when an aircraft like an A380 arrives with a full load into LAX.

The number of officers who were tasked with speeding progress through customs and passport clearance were certainly sufficient to handle the passenger numbers, however there was a high level of confusion about how many people should be in each of the queues. We found ourselves being transferred into three different queues before we were able to present ourselves to a customs official.

Once there, the welcome was extremely efficient and friendly however.

Customs and baggage clearance took about 60 minutes after the arrival of the aircraft, but there was a significant further delay involved in re checking our luggage for the next sector.

One message to be gained from this is that you should allow a bare minimum of at least 2 hours transit time at LAX, since you need to check any luggage through customs and quarantine here prior to re-checking it for a domestic or other international service, and then take yourself back through security.

We had hoped to attempt to wait-list onto an earlier flight for our sector to Miami, but it turns out that a fire at MIA has severely impacted American Airline’s flight refuelling capacities, and as a result many flights in and out of Miami International airport.

A consequence of this is that all flights are full, and wait-listing isn’t a real option. Had we known this, we would probably have ticketed all the way to Miami from check-in at Melbourne airport, but of course hindsight is always a wonderful thing!

We have about a 5 hour transit at LAX, although with the time to go through formalities, this has reduced to a little over 3 hours in the Admirals Club Lounge.

Even here, things aren’t going completely to plan. The complimentary wireless internet service is currently down, and in this lounge food and drinks must all be paid for.

At last we now have seat allocation for the LAX-MIA flight. Row 41 seats E and G. We have to hope that we’re not boxed in.