My First Inaugural Flight: New York, NY to Hyannis, MA (USA)

I’ve done a good amount of flying up ’til now, but I’ve never had the opportunity to take an airline’s inaugural flight.

Some of you might be thinking, who cares?  Maybe you’re right.  You still have to drag yourself to the airport, strip for the security carnival, fight for space – both in your seat and in the overhead, and hope that the seat-back pouch isn’t filled with delicacies not found at Singaporean airports.

Then again, maybe you’re wrong.

In fact, it’s a combination of the two…

I recently hopped aboard the inaugural jetBlue round-trip between New York and Hyannis/Barnstable (in Cape Cod), Massachusetts.  Expectations did not exist for how jetBlue would celebrate this occasion, though I reckoned that at some point various dignitaries might make jejune speeches about how important “this new destination” is.

After a short nap on the subway to JFK, the home base of jetBlue, I woke up at the wrong Sutphin Blvd. station.  So, thanks to an unfriendly subway station by the name of Briarwood – Van Wyck Boulevard (you can’t make a free transfer between lines), I had to waste some time before finally getting to the noxious JFK AirTrain transfer point.

Enough of that verbiage, let’s get some pictures in the mix:

For every new jetBlue destination, a relevant painting is unveiled.  For Hyannis, you can see a couple of four-letter acronyms sailing.  Makes sense to me.

Ah, food.  Now it was worth the trip.  But wait, since this is the flight to Hyannis, how come there aren’t any plates with cranberries, potato chips or lobster rolls?  More on that later.

The captain said that the flight would be 35 minutes, and he was…off by five minutes.  Curious about the distance?  Have a look here.

Our fifteen minutes of fame.  In other words, if the total in-air time was 40 minutes, we spent another 15 waiting to disembark.

Also, it’s a tradition that inaugural flights get a water cannon salute right after landing.  Southern Californians must be enraged.

As it was the first day of the flight, extra time was added to allow for festivities at Hyannis’s (HYA) airport.  I took advantage of this by running down Barnstable Rd. towards the water, to stretch my legs, snap a photo of lobster trawlers and…

to have a lobster roll.  Normally, I’m a guaranteed clean plate.  This time, I could only finish 96% of the meal.  A good treat nonetheless, though I also wonder what an Azorean lobster roll would be like.

Being able to walk from an airport to a downtown is refreshing, considering you’re sitting for the majority of the time you’re on a plane.  But, how about taking a crisp morning jog on the runway?

How’d those get past security?

jetBlue handed out gift bags as well.

Suffice to say, I won’t be needing a lot of that stuff. However, I’m a big fan of Cape Cod potato chips.  In fact, they are possibly my favorite US-brand.

My question to you is, are you curious about the presence of a light bulb?  Here’s my answer: Cape Cod is known for its lighthouses.

Bonus: During both the flight to and from HYA, the flight attendants handed out a few prizes to passengers in randomly selected seats.  I happened to be sitting in the right place because I received frequent flier miles.  This begs the question, where to next?

–
Have you ever been on an inaugural flight?  Did the loot favorably compare to what jetBlue offers?

Advertisement