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Greetings from the good ol' U.S. of A! This week, we fly across the pond from London to New York to catch a Yankees game, then head home to California to attend a Twitter Conference and spend some quality time with my dad -- including going to a Dodgers game! We also have my sister GeorgieJet's article about her trip to Cody, Wyoming where she gives us a fascinating glimpse of the Wild West!

BRITISH AIRWAYS
From London I flew on a British Airways 747 to New York in their World Traveler Plus class (premium economy). The seating configuration in this cabin (which is situated between economy and business class) is 2-4-2 and seats come with a leg rest. Coach (World Traveler) class cabins are configured 3-4-3 so what's attractive about premium economy is that it's much more comfortable than coach and much less expensive than business class.



SEATMATES
I scored a bulkhead window seat (row 28) and the configuration in this row was just 1-4-1 so I was really chillin' until the four seats across from me were taken by an English couple who had not two but four kids. I know: how do six people sit in four seats? I was wondering the same thing. Well, they had their just-months-old twin girls on their laps (they didn't stop screaming the whole flight, I might add) and their other two monsters (about four and five years old) in the other two seats – these two didn't stop fighting or playing on the jump seat in front of me the whole flight, either. I felt like popping open the emergency exit door and scooting them out but my noise canceling headsets saved them. FYI: The flight attendants couldn't have been nicer to these tyrants ... to the point where I wanted to pop them out the door, too. I don't think I'm cut out to have kids, do you agree?

LONDON TO JFK
Flight time across the Atlantic was a smooth seven hours and 10 minutes and the seat belt sign didn't go on once.

BRITISH AIRWAYS LUNCH
The meals came out with the covers still on them, which is cool because you can see what you're eating and check out the nutritional information but my chicken with pasta was pretty nasty. I thought for sure the Italians behind me, who had ordered the same thing as me, were going to go postal when they opened theirs.

ADVANTAGES OF PREMIUM ECONOMY
Other advantages of being in WorldTraveler Plus: Besides the added comfort, passengers are served their meals first (though it's the same food and service as coach) and they get a head start on the walk to customs. Always important.

CUSTOMS AT JFK
Terminal 7's immigration plant at JFK is so depressing that I was embarrassed for our country. The ceilings are low, the room is dark with no windows and the line for visitors was over 100 yards long and I was at the front of the plane; that's how few agents they have working. Nice welcome, America!

WHO CARES ABOUT VISITORS?
To make matters worse, I told the agent I felt bad for the visitors and he said, "Who cares about them?" -- and he wasn't kidding. To me, that is such a serious problem and it's not the first time I've encountered it. I cleared in a respectable 20 minutes and my checked bag came out five minutes later. But the visitors … not so lucky. Even crazier is that the flight attendants, who usually breeze through, had a longer line at their special booth than we did. I beat the ones who were ahead of me so they waited well over 20 minutes. And they're all on short layovers. Something needs to be fixed.

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