For the first time in my life, I took a daytime transatlantic flight, flying from New York to London on JetBlue. It was a very productive and pleasant flight and arriving late in London helped me to go right to bed and get an excellent rest that night.
A Daytime Flight To London On JetBlue
I’m not a fan of the Dunkin’ coffee onboard, so I stopped for a cortado before my flight in Terminal 5 (sadly, the Intelligentsia Coffee in the TWA Hotel has permanently closed).
Walking through the Mint (business class) cabin, we found our seats onboard.
The legroom on JetBlue is excellent…32 inches.
JetBlue offers nice blankets and an amenity kit in “Core” (its name for economy class).
Breakfast was served after takeoff and is now a cold meal, with a choice between a turkey and brie croissant sandwich or overnight oats, both served with watermelon and coconut yogurt topped with citrus fruit.
The sandwich was good…the overnight oats (topped in cinnamon and berries) were excellent…the sort of breakfast I would make at home.
Dessert also came with breakfast…a chocolate ice cream sandwich from Nightingale.
The kids spent the flight watching movies and were very well-behaved. My plan was to spend the entire flight working thanks to free high-speed wi-fi onboard and that was quite successful, with the internet only briefly cutting out at a couple of points during the flight.
Unfortunately, the pre-arrival snack left so much to be desired. Despite arriving after 9:00 pm into London, only a small loaf of banana cake was offered before landing…
However, I came prepared with nuts and apples, which we all enjoyed:
The downside to this flight plan was that I had to take an even shorter redeye from Southern California (we flew out of Ontario instead of Los Angeles International) to get to this flight, so it’s not like I fully avoided an overnight flight.
But I went to bed at midnight in London and woke up refreshed eight hours later…that makes me more likely to travel this way again, at least if I am flying on JetBlue.
I’ll have much more to say about the flight in my full review but wanted to underscore here how pleasant it is to fly across the Atlantic on a daytime flight. JetBlue continues to shine with excellent food (despite only offering cold meals), fast free wi-fi, and extra legroom in economy class.
Curious where in T5 you got the cortado! Starbucks?
Daytime flights to London are one of the reasons why I value having some level of status with AA. T8 is easy to fly out of with the family and extra legroom MCE seats for the whole family at the time of booking are more than sufficient for this ~6 hour daytime flight. I do value the ability to fly on a wide body aircraft (both for perception of space as well as a 10-15 minute savings over the narrow body) but wi-fi on B6 is terrific. Also value having lounge access versus no options at T5.
No, a place called World Bean.
Wish there were more daytime eastbound TA flights…it’s a great way to beat jet lag.
Most love them – but the reality is it’s a terrible utilization of aircraft for the airline and why the daytime flights (in my experience) seem to command a premium in fares.
@Antwerp is correct – the plane sits overnight in London. Not efficient.
British Airways might he able to use their planes for red eye to India.
Jet Blue should see if they could get fifth freedom flights from LHR to TLV Israel. A 11 pm departure might arrive in TLV around 7 am. El Al used to have LHR JFK fifth freedom rights decades ago. So did Pakistan and Air India. Egypt air flew from Paris to JFK.
LY015/016 – I remember it well!
Deeply missing AA 90, the morning departure from ORD-LHR, which was cut last year. Hoping that their ramp-up at ORD and perhaps the introduction of the A321XLR brings that back. We’re so far away from the era when AA’s tagline was “We Mean Business in Chicago.”
I wanted to take my Dad, an 85 year old diabetic to London after my Mom died, but was concerned about the jet lag effect on his body. British Airways had (and still has) an AM flight from BOS to LHR -= what a difference that made! I got him up in Boston around 3:30 Eastern, he was in bed by 8 PM Eastern – no issues at all over the following 10 days. I love the AM departures
LHR – TLV is very well served already and I doubt airlines are looking to start new service there right now
The only reason I don’t fly economy anymore is seat comfort. I can’t afford premium cabin prices too often so I stay home now. Food, entertainment, fancy lighting mean nothing to me squeezed into a seat made for midgets. 32″ pitch may be better than some but it is hardly “excellent”. And there is a big difference between sitting with 2 small children and sitting with 2 more adults. Your seating pictures look like something the airlines would produce to create the illusion of spaciousness.
What’s your new job (the one that takes you to Pittsburgh?)