New York: Flying Continental from YVR to EWR

This is the first time I flew with Continental. I must fess up regarding the $110 flight ticket … there are no direct flights from Vancouver to New York. The connection is in Houston. Thaaaaat’s right … instead of just fly east-west directly, I fly way south and then up north.

But I must say I am most pleasantly surprise with Continental. Like I said, never flew with them before. I had always thought that United and Delta was the best but Continental is better to me. I will tell you why further down the blog.

My destination is the Newark airport in New Jersey. Despite that Newark is in NJ, it is basically a New York area airport. As a matter of fact, Newark is closer to NYC than JFK.

The stopover in Houston was good with just an hour wait before the connecting flight. My “Plan B” in case I don’t get on to New York was to stay a night in Houston and visit the city. It was not necessary because both Houston and Newark are Continental hubs and there are hourly flights between them … lots of empty seats on my connection flight.

It is on flights that I try drinks that I had never tried before. This is not overly exciting I know … Seagram’s Ginger Ale? Well, heard of it but never tried it. How does it taste … well, all pop tastes the same to me.

This is what I like about Continental the best … they provide food … for FREE! It was nothing to shout about but considering that all other American airlines who provides free peanut packs or sells snack boxes, this is simply awesome. The box includes a surprisingly nice moist & soft muffin, some Cheerios (with milk!) and a small pack of raisins. I am happy.

Continental does come by quite often asking if anyone wanted more drinks … three times during each sector. Most airlines will just come by twice … maybe once. I get dehydrated quite a bit on flights and I do make it a point to drink a lot (before and during the flight). BTW, the coffee was pretty good, I must say.

They even provide free packs of peanuts on their drink rounds despite them already also provided the meals. Can’t beat that can you? For international flights, this is pretty standard but for US domestics, it’s mighty impressive.

I like Sudoku and have purchase a computer version of it for my notebook. I even have one of those books with hundreds of Sudoku’s which you find so commonly in bookstores. Sudoku is a great time killer … that kills about 30 mins of my time.

On the following sector, there are more food. This time it’s over lunch time and therefore they serve a more “lunchy” meal … burgers and greens, with a small bar of choc snack.

I am impartial to burgers but the cheese burger was pretty good. It came warm (see condensation on the wrappings above?). Moist and juicy too … it was not great-great but I enjoyed it.

The greens too was cold, fresh and crunchy. Fresh … that’s very important for salads huh?

You guys have seen this many, many times before. My favorite inflight drink. I must have blogged about this drink on EVERY flight report I had made on this blog. LOL!

Another thing I like about Continental is that their planes are new. I think they are the one that claim they have the youngest fleet in North America. So, how do you know if the plane is new? Well, a dead give-away is that they have flat screen TVs. You just can’t believe how many other airlines still have the ancient CRT TVs which is way past their date.

One of the shows I caught on flight was Harry Porter Potter — I don’t know which episode. Maybe it was the one that had “phoenix” in it. Dead boring for me but I know Arkensen and Nanzaro would love this show. Something about Harry Porter Potter I don’t quite understand … my boys can watch this show a hundred million times and they won’t get bored with it.

I spent the rest of the time planning for the trip. That’s right. Being a procrastinator that I am, I had hardly planned for the trip. I managed to complete the plan 30 minutes before landing.

I’ll blog about Manhattan tomorrow … stay tuned.