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Taken November 2002 from New York JFK to London Heathrow

Once again, another good flight aboard United.

This time it was UA976 from JFK to London Heathrow on a 767 and the crossing was a mere 6 hours - very quick indeed.

We departed JFK on time and arrived 50 minutes early at London Heathrow. It seemed something had to go wrong, to ruin the quick trip. It did.. we parked up at Heathrow and had to wait 30 minutes for an American Airlines aircraft to leave our gate. Us being early and them being late caused some havoc.

About 2 hours before touchdown at Heathrow we had severe turbulence on and off and so we had some fun with the seatbelt sign. In just a few minutes it went from off to on, back to off again, then on, off again, on again and finally.. off. It was crazy. The first time around, the crew had started to serve our dinner and after serving about 4 rows in the economy cabin had to stop and stow their trolleys away for safety. They did not think to seperate the foods before putting it back into their microwave/oven and so, when we eventually got our meals, the butter was liquid and had leaked all over the tray, the Babybel cheese had also turned soft and wasn't edible.

United claim that only their international 767s have seatback TVs. Fortunately, this was one of their international aircraft and the entertainment was great.

One of their audio stations is called "from the flightdeck" or something similar and you can hear air traffic control. During the cruise there is little going on but after takeoff and during descent and landing, it gets interesting. On our outbound flight LHR to JFK, the captain switched it on, on this flight it had been turned off.

What I particularly like about United is that they don't go for the young, twenty-something female on their flights, those particularly liked by the male passengers. Their crew on both my flights were a mixture of men and women and none had great looks, nor were they skinny. It's good to see something like this.