Decided to finally talk about this trip, This was before I was taking photos of my flights, so I’ll go into as great detail as I can.

This itinerary was the first one I flew without my parents (I was 17 at the time), me and my best friend who lives in Boston decided to make a trip out west and spend sometime out there with our families for her birthday (they left a day before us), she would fly in on from BOS on an A320 and I would fly in from DTW on jetBlue’s E190, and she was in for a treat on our flight out to LAX.


Flight #1: DTW-JFK

JBU1420
Embraer E190ER
N334JB


Being a Detroit native, I have an embarrassing confession to make, I had never flown out of what now is Evans terminal until that day.

I got there as early as I could, since DTW had an ops meltdown a few days prior, and I didn’t want to take any chances. Thankfully, there wasn’t much in terms of lines to check in. I decided not to check a bag, since I was only bringing my suitcase.

So, After checking in, I had 2 and a half hours to kill. As always, jetBlue is notorious for not having lounges, and not having agreements with other airlines/alliances, so I couldn’t access any lounges. Oh well.

I decided to kill my time walking around looking at planes, nothing really interesting other than a somewhat rare Frontier A320Ceo. Granted, it was 7 AM on a sunday.


Boarding on THIS flight was in a word, hellish. Several people were being yelled at by the gate agent saying to pull their masks up (this was when the mandate was still a thing). The agent was just plain rude, I almost nearly reported her after when she questioned my age and if I should be sitting by myself, like, what are you on? B/c I certainly don’t want any of it. There was also no crowd management, what.so.ever.


I then got on the jet, I was shocked how dated the E-jets looked in person compared to the photos. At least the IFE worked. I was then surprised to see one of my friends from school sitting a row ahead across the aisle with his girlfriend, they were flying down to Miami after connecting at JFK.

We pushed about 15 minutes late. No big deal since me and my friend had a 4 hour layover at JFK. For some reason, ATC sent us to the east side of the airport, and departed from 21R. It was definitely an interesting departure.

The F/A’s were some of the nicest I’ve ever come across, I passed on snacks and food since I had gotten some grub at the airport.


Coming into Kennedy was unusually exciting, I was listening to liveATC, and heard N90 (New York Approach) telling our pilots that we’d be flying the RNAV-Z 13L approach. This approach gives me kai-tak vibes, no matter if I fly it on the sim or fly it as a passenger.

The landing was very smooth, and my best friend met me at the gate, it was very emotional since she and I hadn’t seen each other in close to 5 years which is when she and her family moved away. If this is relevant, she and I have known each other for literally our entire lives.

The only problem with her is that she isn’t an avgeek, I decided to teach her a few things with the planes sitting at the gates. Such as different engine types, aircraft types, etc.

We walked around for a couple of hours with me geeking out about every plane. I arrived at the gate only to run into a family friend of mine who’s a 321Neo captain (he’d be the captain on our flight), since they get on board before everyone else, I asked him if he and the flight attendants could write a little happy birthday note that they could leave on the seat.

Flight #2: JFK-LAX (in the mint studio)
JBU2223
Airbus A321NeoLR
N4022J

This time, boarding was WAAAAAYYY better, no harrassment, etc.

She still didn’t know about what cabin we were sitting in (I honestly thought she thought the plane was all economy), She was kinda shocked that me and my family shelled out the money for her and I to sit in the mint studios. The F/A’s and my family friend left a very nice note on her seat. She sat in 2B while I sat in 1A.

My first impression: Wow. Just wow. I really wish more airlines used the studio design, it’s just so spacious, it almost reminded me of the qsuite I flew on a few years prior on the Qatar A350-900 from PHL, but much bigger.

Of course, JFK decided to have a moment and the departure bank we were on fell apart, we pushed back an hour late, nothing wrong with 60 more minutes in a classy seat like this.

We took off an hour late behind a Singapore A380 heading for frankfurt. The moment the fasten seatbelt sign turned off, Belle (my best friend, I’ll call her by her name for the rest of this, she won’t mind), joined me in my suite, yes, you heard me right, someone else can join you in the suite, it’s that big.

Belle is vegan, so she got a really good looking, and according to her, really good salad. I got the pork shoulder, a salad and ice cream. As Jeb Brooks said about mint’s food choices, they aren’t my first choices, but they’re really good.

The F/A’s, again, were very nice.

jetBlue allows you to pair up bluetooth headphones with the IFE, so Belle and I decided to watch our favorite show, The Office. We got some snacks from the snack bar to enjoy while watching Michael Scott yelling that he was declaring bankruptcy.

I did then discover a bit of a quirk with this seat, the seat controls are in a bit of a goofy spot, so goofy in fact that I kept hitting in flight. Oh well.

Belle and I just straight binged the show. Before we knew it, we were starting our descent on the ANJLL4 arrival into LAX, so she had to go back to her seat. I then plugged into liveATC and heard socal talking to all of the planes going for 24R, including an Aeroflot 777-300ER, which I don’t think I’ll probably ever see again (we saw it after landing at LAX).


Unfortunately, my family friend kinda blew the opportunity for a smooth landing, oh well.


All in all, it was a great flight, we spent a week out there, I took amtrak’s southwest chief back to Chicago and then the wolverine to Detroit.

I’ll try to make more of these, WITH photos.