I arrived in Los Angeles from my very nice trans-continental flight from New York on the new American A321T and hurried a few gates down where my flight to Dallas was already boarding. I was the last first class passenger to board, so I took my seat and had a glass of water. At that point, I was pretty exhausted, as it was about 1am Pacific time — early in the morning on my eastern time zone body clock.
I fell asleep before we even left LAX and didn’t wake up until we were landing in DFW — a short, sub-three hour redeye flight. Pretty much the most miserable timing ever. But I was okay with it. I made my way to the D terminal at DFW and met a friend who had just come in from San Francisco at the American Express Centurion Lounge. We had four hours to kill before we boarded our flight to Hong Kong. I was able to access the lounge as his guest, as he has an AMEX Platinum card (I do not have one — shocking, I know).
For those who haven’t been, the AMEX Centurion Lounges are hands down the best domestic lounges in the country. And DFW’s version is no exception. I was dragging pretty significantly at this point, so I put my name on the list to take a shower and freshen up. The shower was ready in no time, so I took a long shower and changed clothes.
Bam! I was a new man.
For the next few hours, we had some breakfast, a few drinks and I had a free massage in the while awaiting our flight. My third friend joined us later that morning, so we naturally had some bon voyage drinks before making the short walk to our gate to board the longest flight that American Airlines flies: Dallas to Hong Kong.