The rationale for no inflight entertainment went like this: the guy who tried and failed to detonate the bomb when the Delta flight was close to landing evidently told the authorities he was using the flight tracker (you know, the map and statistics that tell you just how much longer you have until arrival) to time when to denote the bomb. Voila - no flight trackers for anyone. I assume there was no way to disable the flight tracker section of the entertainment system without disabling the whole thing.

The implications were (a) no inflight entertainment and (b) anything tied to the remote that operates the inflight entertainment was also disabled. No overhead reading lights nor any flight attendant call buttons. We did OK, once I figured out where the extra light was in my seat. The folks in coach, though, were not so lucky. As the purser said following the decision: "folks, I hope you have an Ipod or extra sleeping pills for this flight". What a mess for the crew, and nothing they could do about it.

I was really, really glad we opted for business class on this trip. We had found one of those really short super sale fares on United back in June. Fares didn't get that cheap again, so that was a lucky break. Couldn't use miles for free tickets, and the cost of the upgradeable coach tickets was not a whole lot less than the super discounted business fares. I only checked sporadically, but did not see any upgrade availability even if we had wanted to go that route.

The plane was cold because they were pulling in the outside area (around 50 degrees when we were in San Francisco). 90 minutes of extra cold air didn't help matters. It was about 5 hours into the flight before it was warm enough to take our coats off. The blanket was summer weight, so not very warm.

We're out of here in about 90 minutes for our trip on the TranzAlpine Express. So far, Emirates' baggage agent has no details as to where the bag is. Perhaps the bag is enjoying its own tour of the USA/Australia and New Zealand. I just hope it didn't decide to see Seoul along the way :rolleyes: . thank goodness we have several days to sort this situation out before the cruise leaves on 3 January. If not, we'll be spending time in Auckland picking up a new wardrobe!

Cheers, Anne