As before, this flight was also non-eventful. As on every previous flight, the flight attendants had asked if we wanted to be woken up for the pre-landing meal. K and I had said "yes," whereas Anna didn't answer, which meant "no" to the folks on Air China.
We had lunch shortly after takeoff, then each took our sleeping pill and nodded off. We all slept, but then K and I were being roused for the second meal. I was disoriented when they woke me up, but very pleased, as I thought this meant that we'd be landing in a couple of hours. For reasons I still cannot explain, however, the second meal was served a little more than halfway through the flight, five hours before we landed. I still imagine it was a mistake. In my sleepy stupor, it took me a while to calculate timezones and remaining flight time, before I realized that we still had a lot of time left. We ate, and Anna slept peacefully. K dozed on and off for the remainder of the flight. I never made my seat back into a bed, and instead watched several forgettable movies. The odd timing, however, meant that this flight felt long. This was the first time that really happened on this trip.
While we had left Beijing early, we still managed to arrive in Newark about 20 minutes late. If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now, but I do not like Newark Airport, and I particularly do not like transiting there. Our connecting flight to Dulles was on a separate ticket, so we had not been able to check through all the way from Auckland. Even if we had been able, we would have still had to claim our bags in Newark, clear Customs, and then re-check the bags. In every other U.S. airport where I have connected from an international to a domestic flight, including in Chicago only a few weeks earlier, it is very easy to collect your things at baggage claim, and then find a connecting-flight area directly on the other side of Customs. Not so in Newark. While Global Entry had sped us right through Immigration, our bags took a while to come. Everything made it, and then we cleared Customs, but as we exited on the other side, I could see no connecting-flight desk, or place to drop bags again. We wandered a bit, and then saw green and blue arrows painted on the floor, along with a sign saying "follow the blue or green arrow for connecting flights, depending on your terminal." No further explanation. I didn't even know in which terminal we were. I found someone wearing a vest saying, "Ask Me for Help," so I did. I asked which color arrow to follow for United, and that we needed to check-in and drop our bags. His answer, "That's a good question. I don't know." While it makes for a better story if I wrote that he then walked away, he did not. Instead he followed the blue arrows, returned about 30 seconds later, and said, "It doesn't matter. You pick one." I chose Blue, which was wrong. After waiting a few minutes, I realized that everyone in line already had their bags tagged for their final destination. We did not. We got out of line, followed the green arrow, and then found a United counter, where we checked in. They gave us boarding passes, confirmed that we'd been upgraded to First Class (for a 45-minute flight...but still nice), tagged our bags, and then told us to get back into the blue line, and drop the bags.
It was quite the scene as we approached the bag-drop area. People were handing over bags going every possible place on every conceivable airline. One man grabbed the bag, read the tag, and passed it to another man, who scanned the bag, yelled out the destination and airline, and then passed the bag to another man, who put it on a conveyor belt. Interestingly enough, all the bags went on the same single conveyor belt, so I'm not sure what all the show was for, aside from scanning the bag in. All four of our bags were taken, but then a man standing on the side (himself a traveler), said to the first bag handler, "hey man, you missed that bag there" -- and he pointed to Anna's suitcase. The traveler repeated, "you scanned all the bags but that one." The handler looked annoyed but then scanned Anna's bag (again), and repeated this process of passing and announcing the bag's destination. I thought nothing more of it, until we got to Dulles.
I was tired and annoyed at this point, and then we had to go upstairs and ride the AirTrain to the United terminal. The trains at Newark are very small, and we had to wait for one to arrive with sufficient space. Once at the United terminal, we had to go through Security again, but it was painless, as we all now have TSA PreCheck and CLEAR. Once through, though, we could see how busy the airport was. We tried to get into the United lounge, but they would not let us in, as our inbound flight was on a separate ticket. Rather than argue, we killed the last 30 minutes are so at the gate.
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