On my recent trip to Saint Martin, I flew London to Madrid, spent a night at the airport Crowne Plaza and then flew to Miami with Iberia.
The flights to and from St Martin were with American on one of their Boeing 737 aircraft.
We were booked into what they call the “First Class” cabin, although it is only a 2-class service and was marked on the boarding pass as business. This also means that it offers 40 tier points as opposed to 60 that First used to get.
Conscious that we had cabin bags only and were in the front row so couldn’t put things in the seat in front, we made sure that we boarded early and were able to stow our things overhead.
Once boarding was complete we were offered pre-departure beverages, so I had a coke. After take off, meal and drinks orders were taken, and I was pleased that the cabin crew were aware that we had pre-ordered vegetarian meals.
Nuts and drinks were brought round, followed by the main meal. I enjoyed the salad and the cheese lasagne was nice, although very dense so I only ate half. I really love the pretzel rolls that they serve.
The flight was uneventful and despite a little looping around in approach we were soon on the ground. It was dark so we couldn’t see anything.
The return flight was pretty much the reverse, with the same issue on boarding with people standing in the way of the gate.
We were in 3A/C on the other side of the plane and took off towards Maho beach as we were ‘heavy’ according to the Captain.
We were anxious about the connection as the plane was an hour late in take off because of the difficulty in air traffic control finding a slot for us to go against the flow. The beautiful sunset out of the window made it somewhat better!
Dinner was exactly the same, so I only ate half again as I knew that I would be getting fed on our plane back to London.
The rest was uneventful but we were ready to be first off the plane to make our connection. More to come!
Mister Airmiles 
[…] really smooth as I reported here, and I was glad that we had a practice run through. Flying home, our plane was late in departing so a short connection became a tight one which was not helped by the lack of Flight […]
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