I was pleasantly surprised to see a great deal on a hotel in the #AvGeek paradise of St.
An interesting opportunity to compare two narrowbody workhorses of each fleet would be provided by this trip.
PreCheck proved to be worth the wait with a less than 10 minute wait. I pre-ordered my coffee from Starbucks as soon as I arrived at the airport, and it was delivered as soon as I got to the counter. After years of waiting for coffee, this is perfect. There were long lines in the food court at the airport.
People snaked around the various breakfast vendors, a situation not helped by airport hotel group OTG's menu screens listing far different prices than their tablets.
PA announcements from different gates competing for attention and a gate agent not specifying which flights the announcements were about made the boarding area a bit of a zoo.
We sat for a long time before we pushed back. Even though there were no significant weather or airport issues to blame, the on-time departure was delayed by 45 minutes.
Seven years prior to entering service, this particular JetBlue A321ceo was of the non-Mint type. The aircraft looked worse for it's age.
The lavatories looked very battle worn and the inflight entertainment screens were scratched up.
The aircraft is in need of a refresh, but it won't happen soon. The A321s offer a generous 32” of pitch, making them one of the least dense of the all-economy layout.
I think the LiveTV system should never have left the engineering lab. It is one of the worst IFE systems to ever hit the sky.
The system is slow to respond to touch, has a clunky user interface, and has an armrest mounted controller that can be accidentally pressed by a passenger for hours on end.
There are power andusb outlets available, but they are buried under the seats and not put on the seat to be noticed.
The system did not function on this flight. There are no movies, TV shows, or even moving map content in the menu system after multiple reboots.
There was only one option that worked.
Most of the flight was outside of the coverage map for onboard internet because the A321ceo only had ViaSat-1 satellite- capable inflight equipment.
There was not a lot of entertainment content on the portal. It would have mitigated the seatback screen issue.
The crew working this flight offered a flight credit for the malfunctioning IFE and good conversation in the galley.
After stumbling on my last flight, JetBlue excelled at inflight catering, which is still hit-or-miss in the post- Covid Era. I don't like having a printed menu but here we are.
I chose to pay $13 for a turkey and apple sandwich, which wasn't all that great, but it was definitely better than nothing, and I got a 50% discount when I used the free JetBlue credit card.
There were a lot of free snacks and drinks.
We were able to make up most of our lost time in the air and arrived 22 minutes late.
It was not a good experience with the airline. It is a shame that the airline does not offer free entertainment and wi-fi on all of its flights. The A320 and A321ceos need to be updated. It doesn't seem to have any plans to do that.
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