I took advantage of Jetblue's sale in Mint to go from Seattle to Boston and paid a little under $800 for my roundtrip ticket. This was several hundred dollars cheaper than Alaska and Delta, neither of which offer flatbeds on their nonstop to Boston. This was my first trip on Jetblue.
It did not start off well. As I was boarding my shuttle from Whidbey Island to Sea-Tac, I got a notification from TripIt saying my flight was delayed for two hours. A little while later, there was another notification saying that the flight was now delayed four hours. By the time I reached Sea-Tac, the flight was five hours late.
This was the FIDS at Sea-Tac showing my delayed flight (I guess it is codeshared with Are Lingus).
I went to the check in counter to see if they could put me on a different flight but was given a NO! by the manager. The agent at the counter at least tried to look on the computer to see if there were other flights, but the manager loudly said no before he could even finish typing. I asked if they were giving vouchers for meals and was told that they would bring out food at the gate.
So now I get to spend over six hours at the airport. I went to the Centurion Lounge. The Centurion Lounge at Sea-Tac is probably the worst lounge American Express operates. It is always packed, bad food options (the only hot food available are a couple of soups) and a really slow wireless connection. The free wifi offered by the airport is a lot faster than the AT&T service offered in the lounge. Unfortunately the free wifi signal does not reach the Centurion Lounge. The lounge was packed the entire time I was there so I didn't take any photos.
Interesting geeky side note. since I was getting very restless and bored, I set up notifications on several apps (TripIt, App in the Air, TripCase, CheckMyTrip, Mileways and JetBlue) for this flight. TripIt and CheckMyTrip were always the first to notify any changes for the flight followed by TripCase and Jetblue and then App in the Air. Mileways was always the last to send alerts, sometimes by an hour or more.
Finally it was time to go to the gate. It looked like Jetblue handed out chips and cookies at the gate, which is pretty pathetic given the length off the delay.
I was welcomed aboard by the crew and I took my seat 4A, which is one of the Mint Suite seats. First impressions were very good. A single throne seat with two side tables.
A blanket and pillow sealed in plastic were on the seat and an amenity kit was in a cubby. Photos of the amenity kit were taken after the flight.
Our neighbor heading to Beijing.
Boarding was completed quickly. Load in back was pretty light and only 8/16 seats were taken in Mint. The two Mint cabin crew introduced themselves and talked about the service for the flight as well as the various seat functions and headed out menus. We left the gate a little before the rescheduled departure time.
Some of the traffic at Sea-Tac that afternoon.
There is no lack of power plugs at this suite. 3 power plugs and 3 USB chargers.
After take off, the crew took drink and meal orders. The menu had a selection of five items (two cold and three hot) of which you chose three items. I chose pineapple juice, couscous, pork and lobster.
There was a good selection of movies, although there were a few nasty looking scratches on my screen. There was also free wifi, which was quite speedy and worked throughout the flight. One weird thing I found about the seat was that the side table next to the window was quite warm throughout the flight. I'm not sure what is under the side table to be generating that kind of heat. The placement of the headphone jack was at elbow height underneath the single power plug. I managed to unplug my headphones a couple of time during the flight.
While in flight, I received an email from JetBlue apologizing for the delay and that $100 would be credited to my JetBlue travel bank. A few minutes later I get a second email saying the same thing. I still haven't figured out whether I received $100 or $200 compensation for the delay because I haven't been able to log into the travel bank because I get an error message every time I try to log in.
We ended up landing in Boston a little after midnight. Our plane was then supposed to turn around and head to Las Vegas.
