Saturday, June 6, 2009

openskies Experience

The service and experience of flying openskies, a British Airways subsidiary, was so satisfying that we forgot to take pictures during the flight. I had been looking forward to this flight to Paris ever since reading about it in Wendy Perrin's column in Conde Naste.

Our first experience was at JFK where we skipped over to the BA business and first class check-in counters instead of having to stand in the lines with the other BA passengers. The agent checking us in asked if we had flown openskies before and when we said it was our first time, she asked how we heard about the service (obviously for tracking purposes). She then told us we had the best seats on the plane.

Upon boarding, we were greeted by large seats in a bulkhead section so there was no one sitting in front of us. Lots of room! It wasn't a full flight, but I imagine the attentiveness of the flight attendants wouldn't have changed. We had great service and our flight attendant for our section gave us tips on where to go and what to eat in Paris.

The seats were comfortable, the food was fantastic and the inflight entertainment systems were so good, we didn't get enough sleep.

Return trip was about the same except we had access to the executive lounge in Orly, which was nice not to have to sit around in the main terminal. The one small downside on the return flight was that we were in a "yet-to-be-converted" cabin of an L'Avion plane (openskies merged with L'Avion earlier in the year). The seats weren't as comfortable and we lost our great bulkhead seats we had reserved.

But I'd fly them again if I'm flying out of NYC. I hope they're able to weather the economy and emerge without shutting down as it would be a shame to lose such a great airline.

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