Auckland, New Zealand to JFK, New York, USA

The flight from Auckland to Los Angeles was uneventful. The plane wasn’t too crowded, and there was a good choice of movies.

Los Angeles Airport (LAX) was a zoo. It was like arriving in to an airport of another era, an airport that had been organised on an ad hoc basis.

We landed on time and I had two hours to make my connection on American Airlines to JFK, New York. Plenty of time…. Think again…..

Problem 1: There was no ‘bay’ for the aircraft. At one point they were talking about steps. Finally a ‘bay’ with walkway was found, however, this just unloaded us on to the middle of the airport and meant we needed a bus to get to the terminal. Time was lost getting off the plane and onto the buses, and then by driving around the airport to the terminal

Problem 2: As I arrived in the immigration hall all the computers crashed. It took the immigration services around 20 minutes to get them back up and running.

Problem 3: I had to collect my bags and go through customs, fine, however, I had ticked a box on the customs form saying that my hiking boots may have soil on them from my stay in New Zealand. This resulted in questioning and the bags being x-rayed (I was unsure how that was supposed to help). I then dropped the bags off at the ‘baggage transfer’ where they were x-rayed again.

Problem 4: LAX was a very very crowded. Queues for security were very, very long.

Bottom line… just made it to the flight.

Flight from LAX to JFK was crowded, and there was no food…. fantastic…