After a lovely week in Ireland, it's time to head home.
For those looking for another fabulous First Class experience on our return, I'm sorry to say that this will sorely disappoint. For a combination of reasons, I opted to buy a Business Class ticket on American Airlines. Say what??? Yeah, I know. It seemed like a good idea some 4 months ago when it became apparent that we were moving from Denver to Orange County. We had Dublin-London-Denver BA First award tickets using pre-devaluation AA miles, only 62,500 miles per person plus the BA surcharges. Unfortunately, that wouldn't help us get home now. And, there were no other mileage options to LAX at that time.
But there was an attractive $2,200 Dublin-LAX-Rome Business Class fare. With BA fees running nearly $1,000 per person and a DEN-SAN F ticket running $300+, I rationalized that for net $900 per person I would save at least 250,000 miles and earn another 25,000 miles. Plus we could leave DUB at a more civilized 9am. Most importantly, once we survived DUB-JFK the rest of the itinerary was in First Class as I had used AA Systemwide Upgrades to upgrade both JFK-LAX (A32B) and LAX-LHR (77W) in December to three class First Class.
At least that was the plan. With only a short 25 minute car ride to the airport, we were at Dublin's Terminal 2 by 6:45am.
Since I had checked in online at the hotel, we went straight to Fast Track security where we were the only passengers.
We were thru security in a couple of minutes and in the pleasant shopping are of the Terminal 2.
Dublin is one of a number of airports with US customs Pre Clearance facilities allowing you to clear customs at your departure airport. This lets one arrive in the US as a domestic flight and afford better and smoother connections... at least that's the plan.
A few minutes later, we were at the end of the US departures wing and in the new US PreClearance Lounge, a common airline lounge reserved for Business Class passeners from AA, US, DL and EI.
As a Business Class lounge, it's quite attractive and comfortable, although the lack of 110V outlets seems to be a rather large omission.
But the best feature of the lounge is the proximity to active taxiways and runways. I don't recall a lounge that is this close to the action. Very cool plane watching.
Another Flyertalker?? LOL.
For a Business Class lounge not in NZ, Asia or the Gulf, a nice selection of food offerings.
The lounge dragon announced that our flight was available for boarding. Unfortunately we believed her headed next door to wait for another 10 minutes.
