Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 10 - Royally Jordanian


Yes, This Is Real Life- Preview

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 1- Location, Location, Location

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 2- Brits In Beantown

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 3 - Shades On, Wheels Up

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 4 - Welcome to Ghost Port

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 5 - When You Layover During Ramadan

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 6 - Birds In Doha

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 7 - Dealing With Dragons

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 8 - A Place Most Exceedingly Rare

Yes, This Is Real Life Part 9- I Still Can't Believe This Is Real Life

This is not a post about flying Royal Jordanian.  I have, to date, not flown Royal Jordanian.  It is, however, a post about transiting their home airport of Amman, Jordan in all of 90 minutes, and I thought it a rather snappy title. 

Even for me, this day of flying pushed the ridiculous.  Now that I'd been re-routed, my layover was shorter and I literally flew the same plane in and out of Jordan right back to Doha.  It was about a three hour flight each way.  I had the same cabin crew, and even the same seat.  You've just got to laugh sometimes.  My flight attendant sure did.

So, here's how it went-

I left the lounge, and boarded on time for AMM.  They fly a a330 between these cities, which is still definitely a widebody plane, but not as big as the 777 or the 350.  The seats are lie flat, but not nearly as spacious as the 777 seats, or the 350 seats.  It's still fantastically comfortable for this length of flight, and would be fine for an overnight as well.  The cabin is laid out in a 2-2-2 configuration, so the window seats don't have aisle access.  Once again, I had no one next to me.



Instead of a pre departure beverage, since it was Ramadan and they weren't serving alcohol on any planes flying soley between middle eastern destinations, the cabin crew came around to offer coffee and dates while the rest of the flight boarded.  They did serve a meal on the flight, but also offered a boxed meal to go to passengers observing the holy month.



Regional amenity kit
I ordered the ful medames (quickly becoming my local go-to, the same way I always grab a bowl of congee in Asia) and pita as a snack, and kicked back to watch the IFE and doze a bit.  The flight went quickly, and we arrived on time to AMM.  Here's where the fun started.

Now,  I've done several transfers between itineraries like this, where you can't check in for your onward flight until you get on the ground at the destination, and so you don't have a boarding pass to clear transfer immigration.  The most hair raising example of this was definitely going through Jakarta, an experience I'd prefer not to repeat...but if I'm honest...I probably will at some point.

I had asked if I could get my AMM-DOH boarding pass on leaving DOH, but since the itinerary was technically a separate one way ticket AMM-DOH-IAH, they couldn't print it.  They did, however, print me the read out of the booking details so I had that to hand over in AMM.


Waaaaiiiittting to get my passport back
The transfer desk/area doesn't have a Qatar agent at it, and so I had to hand over my passport to an airport employee who then left to go down to the ticketing desks to procure my boarding pass.  This is simply never a good feeling, but is unfortunately how it's done many places.  I had to wait 30+ minutes for him to return, all the while staring out the window at the plane I arrived on, and was scheduled to depart on shortly.


Finally made it back upstairs- AMM Airport
The total transfer time I had available was only 90 minutes, so by the time I cleared security and was sent back to the departures level, I just headed back to the plane and boarded a few minutes later.  This was quite entertaining to my flight crew, especially as I was in the exact same seat as before. 

It went something like this:

FA: Welcome, boarding pa... Oh, it's you again!

Me: Um, yep. Again.

FA: Seat?

Me: 4F, again, apparently.

FA: (Laughs)  You missed us?

Me: It's a long story...

On arrival back at DOH, I took a few minutes to check out the arrivals lounge, simply because I hadn't been before and I'd gotten in earlier than the prior two days.  It's reserved for business and first class arriving passengers, and is located past security.  There's a made to order menu, not as extensive as the airside lounges, but plenty of options, as well as drinks, places to relax, and showers.  I didn't spend too long, just enough to get a look around.


Arrivals lounge seating


Menu
Since I also had the 'stopover package' for this night, I'd stopped and been given my hotel and meal voucher, as well as my info for the free shuttle before clearing immigration.  As seemed to be the most common set up, I'd been given a night at the Oryx Rotana hotel, which while not the Ritz, is still quite a nice hotel to have for free.  It's not in the main part of town, or up by the Pearl, but since it caters to one night stopovers that's no big issue.

After a short shuttle ride, I was checking in to my third and final hotel of the weekend.  How the last night went, is coming up.
 
~CruisingAltitude
 


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