After the lav, you enter the super cool guy lounge. If this were on the ground, I’d probably be denied at the door since my name clearly wouldn’t be on the list. Ok, maybe it’s not that cool, but this is probably the best that’s been on a commercial jet since the 747 upper deck lounge days many years ago. There’s a fully stocked bar in the middle along with couches and a big screen lining the walls.

Keep moving and you walk into the business class cabin. This has a 1-2-1 configuration, and it seems like these seats take up a huge amount of space. It’s interesting how they’re set up. On the sides, one row’s seat will be right on the window while the one behind it will have the seat more on the inside. You’ll have to take a look at this video with my friend, Paul Tomasiello from Expedia, explaining the pros and cons of the cabin layout to get a better idea.

Ok, enough about business class. Let’s head to the big show . . . First Class and the suites. There’s no doubt these are really nice from the moment you walk in. How do they stack up to the Qantas and Singapore suites? Good question, and I’m not sure I can answer it. I didn’t have enough time to play with them all, and they’re all really nice so it’s tough to pick a winner without actually taking a flight in each. That probably won’t happen anytime soon, so let’s just leave it by saying that I’d gladly fly in any of them. I do have to give Emirates a pat on the back for the personal minibar. That’s completely excessive but kind of fun. No matter what, you’ll have plenty of privacy and a lot of luxury. Take a look at the video for a tour of the cabin.

The one thing that Emirates First Class passengers have that nobody else will is the onboard spa. There was a question about this when I talked about it last week, and I’ve confirmed that the water does stay stored in a tank after it’s used. It’s not expelled during flight, so they carry all that extra weight around. It’s clearly not an environmentally friendly option in any way, but it is definitely an impressive differentiator.

The two spas are located way up front on the upper deck on either side of the front stairway. These areas couldn’t be used for seating because of the stairs, so it’s a smart use of otherwise wasted space. The shower water didn’t turn on when we were there, but we were assured that you get full, “five-star hotel” quality water pressure. The attention to detail is unreal. They even have heated floors. Take a tour for yourself.

And that was about it. As you might have heard in the video, we were the last tour and we had to return to our seats for landing. I won’t bother embedding these last two videos, but you can see us turning toward the west with my home in Long Beach in the distance and then finally landing if you’re interested.

And that was it. After we got off the plane, I dropped Paul off at the airport for him to fly on a seemingly tiny 737 back to his home up north, and I headed on my way back to work. Emirates has really put together a great product here. If I get the chance to fly it one day, it will probably be in the back of the bus, but I wouldn’t mind. Even in the back, it’s a very nice experience.

Once onboard, the first things that caught my eye were the gigantic seatback televisions. They are truly massive for a coach seat. Emirates has set this up so that the entire bottom deck is a sea of coach, so seeing all the screens flicker in unison was an interesting sight. I walked for a few miles before finally reaching my seat over the wing. (They need water stations every mile or two on that thing.) The aircraft is set up in a 3-4-3 configuration, and I had the middle seat on the left side. Shortly after sitting down, the guy in the window somehow self-upgraded himself and I never saw him again. So, we had a nice empty middle seat.

The economy seat itself proved to be comfortable. There is a good amount of legroom on board, to the point where my knees didn’t get very close to the seatback. I was surprised to see that the seatbacks were stuffed full of inflight magazines and catalogs, so clearly they haven’t gone paperless just yet. Once they do, there will be even more room.

The seats have a nice recline. It’s the style of recline that brings the front of your seat forward so you don’t disturb the person behind you as much. That can be a pain when there isn’t much legroom, but in this case it worked out well.

Let’s talk about connectivity. This thing is seriously connected. There’s a universal power outlet in each armrest and a USB port in the back of each seat. There’s also a place to hang a coat on your seat as well as a cupholder that spins loosely to keep your cup level regardless of the pitch of the airplane.

Then there’s that big pretty screen. You can do all kinds of great stuff with this system. There are something like 1,000 movies, tv shows, games, music, etc. They also have the ability to share screens - which I believe means that you and your seatmate can watch the same thing at the same time on your own screens.

There’s a great map (which may be the same one that Air New Zealand uses?) and it even shows you the registration number of your airplane. That gets the official seal of airline dork approval. There are also three different camera views. One is taken from the nose pointing forward, one is taken from the tail pointing forward, and another looks straight down. I saw this on a South African A340 once before, but that didn’t prevent me from being entertained by it for a long time.

After making myself comfortable, it was time to get airborne. Check out this massive wing. Believe it or not, that’s a wingtip in the distance.

Before you walk away cursing this fairly complex-looking map, let me give you a little positioning help. You can see the terminals in the middle at the top of each diagram. Where it says C6 - that’s the ramp between United Terminals 7 and 8. The next one over is Terminal 6 where Continental, Virgin America, and others fly. Then Terminal 5 is Delta’s, Terminal 4 is American’s, and you can see half the Bradley terminal. This map is positioned so that North is straight up and the ocean is to the left.

Now, take a look at the runways. Previously, there was nothing separating them in the middle. Planes usually depart on the top runway and land on the bottom one. So, it would be typical for an airplane to land from the right and take a high speed exit on taxiway J, K, M, or T. It’s rare but not unheard of for an unfamiliar pilot to just keep rolling right on through the departure runway on his/her way to his gate. LAX has one of the worst near-miss rates and this is one of the reasons.

Now look at the new one. There are still some high speed exits that go straight through but not as many. Also, the new procedure will require that the aircraft exit on to the center taxiway before proceeding. So you might hear an aircraft directed to exit on AN and then turn on to AC. At that point, the pilot will have to wait before being cleared across the departure runway.

Hopefully that helps explain why this is good. It will help improve safety, and it’s a good investment. Unfortunately, the northern runways remain close together, and there is an active community protest to prevent the northernmost runway from moving a bit north to make room for a center taxiway. As you can imagine, I support the airport on this one in the name of safety, but then again, I don’t live in the neighborhood.

UPDATE on 6/25 @ 4p: Ian Gregor, FAA Spokesperson tells me that while my explanation is correct, the current NACO map is actually not so current. Apparently the new center taxiway now extends all the way west to where taxiway U lies. So, this is even better. NACO just hasn’t updated the file. This one says it’s good until July 3, so I assume we’ll see a new one next week.

Many businesses, including big ones, have come forward to guarantee the necessary capital for a completely Italian team which, once it knows the accounts of Alitalia, will be able to present a bid.

Um, no. Or, somebody will come forward, but it won’t be even close to being as attractive of a bid as the one from AF/KL. Really, AF/KL is the only true hope for this company to survive, and Berlusconi is beating his chest, acting proud, and sounding like a complete idiot. Of course, he has to cave, but not until he can save some face. Just yesterday, he said:

As concerns the Air France hypothesis, if we went back to the initial project for Alitalia which gave the same weight to Alitalia as the other two airlines as well as being Italian orientated, I would be happy to discuss the possibility and once I take office I will speak about this subject with President Sarkozy.

See, he’s starting to change his tune. You know what’ll happen next. He’ll get a couple of concessions and then he’ll let AF/KL buy the airline. Then he’ll try and look like a hero even though he’s doing nothing good.

I guess I should be happy about this. When AF/KL is allowed to take them over, it’ll probably mean I’ll have to find another “Worst Airline Ever” to pick on. I’m just going to enjoy this for now.

• If Burbank enacts this curfew, don’t book a flight arriving there near the curfew for fear you may not get there in time
• If you’re flying to Sao Paulo from LA, congrats. You now have a nonstop option.
• Regionalization isn’t as easy as you (or the Mayor) might think

Just about everyone is used to the stepped approach that has been the standard for some time (and I’ll guess nobody has experienced the drunken pilot approach). You know the feeling. The pilot reduces thrust, you start to descend, then he increases it and you start to flatten out. This goes on for quite some time until you end up on the ground. It’s like going down stairs, whereas the CDA is like going down a ramp. When the aircraft gets ready to descend, the pilot cuts power and the plane maintains a constant rate of descent all the way until touchdown.

That means no more powering up along the way and no more ear-busting changes in pitch of the aircraft. As you can imagine, that helps reduce noise (since the engines don’t spool up) and it helps reduce fuel usage. Good news for everyone, right? Why wouldn’t they have done this before?

Well, it’s not like there’s unlimited room to pull something like this off. You need to make sure that during your continuous descent, you don’t happen to get in the way of, oh, say, airplanes coming from Ontario or one of the other many airports in Southern California.

That’s why this can only be implemented for landings from the East. If you come from the North and West, you usually have to make that turn around downtown LA to come in. There just isn’t enough room to make this work out there. The good news, however, is that half of the arrivals at the airport come from the East. Although only half of those are using CDA right now, the other half will be soon enough.

This procedure was first tested in Louisville, and there was a “34 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions below 3,000 feet, and a 30 percent reduction in aircraft noise within 15 miles of the airport. UPS aircraft flying this approach also save between 250 and 465 pounds of fuel per flight.” Sounds good to me. Maybe this will get some of those testy airport neighbors to stop whining so much.

They’re also rolling this out in other airports, so next time you come in for landing, see if you notice any difference.

Table Edited 2/13 @ 105p to reflect changes confirmed by JetBlue PR that conflict with information received at the press conference. There will now be only one Dulles flight cut from Long Beach. Instead of cutting the second one, they will cut one of the two O’Hare flights instead. The remaining flight will become a smaller Embraer 190. It is undecided what they will do with the now-unused O’Hare slot.

Table Reverted 2/13 @ 309p because it was apparently correct in the first place. O’Hare will not be changing. Hopefully the PR story won’t change again, but watch this space.

So, you see LAX gets flights to JFK and Boston, but those are taken away from other airports. That’s probably important at JFK where there isn’t much room to expand these days, but it’s most important at Long Beach. Remember, the airport is maxed out and JetBlue can’t start any new flights unless they get rid of some other ones. Before we get into that, let’s talk about LAX.

Like I said, the airport will get flights to JFK and Boston. They can’t have many more than that, because they only have one gate in terminal 6. That’s gate 69, to be precise. Hmm, they should try a Southwest-style “love” message with that gate number.

Anyway, this is nothing but bad news for Virgin America since they’re targeting the same travelers and offering similar amenities. Virgin America may have one more flight per day, but JetBlue has better times, most significantly on the westbound. Virgin has no flight leaving JFK between 930a and 510p. JetBlue has a midday trip at 11a.

Down in Long Beach, most of the changes they’re making appear to be so they can introduce the smaller Embraer 190 into the market. Austin starts (the only one to begin May 1) probably because it’s the best way to get the plane from the east coast to the west coast, but San Jose and Seattle are interesting moves. Seattle is in direct competition with Alaska. They must think there’s enough room for two players in this market, because they’re going to be at a frequency and loyalty disadvantage. The odds aren’t stacked against them nearly as much as they are for Virgin America going against Alaska at LAX, however. They’re also doing Seattle to San Diego. Meanwhile, Burbank gets a couple Dulles flights, which is a nice addition.

I thought it was funny that at the press conference, the theme was all about the regionalization of airports in LAX, but that’s far from the case here. Sure, they added a couple flights at Burbank, but the restrictions on flying at Long Beach means they didn’t add anything, they just moved the flights around. It’s kind of hard to regionalize when the desirable regional airports don’t have any room.

Really, the big announcement is that they added LAX flying which goes against LA’s effort to move away from LAX. I thought it was pretty funny to see JetBlue CEO Dave Barger pressured to start more Ontario and even Palmdale flying. He laughed uncomfortably, but until Ontario lowers its fees, I can’t imagine they’re going to see much more traffic. And Palmdale? That’s way too far out there today.

So, good news for LA travelers in that you can now fly JetBlue out of LAX. It’s nice for LGB travelers to have more destinations, even if it is at the expense of some east coast flights. There are still plenty of options in those markets. I’m just happy to see JetBlue finally taking their eyes away from Northeast to Florida flying and giving us some love out here on the West Coast.

Click to see all my photos from JetBlue’s press conference.