(plane engine humming) (pleasant guitar music)
- I have tequila.
It doesn't make my clothes fall off.
Well hello and bonjour from Paris
or should I say arriba, arriba,
because tonight we're heading to Mexico.
So hold on to your sombreros, have a shot of tequila,
and come with me as we try out
the Aeromexico Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
First stop today was to the Air France lounge.
It's a nice spacious area
although the food selection wasn't great.
We had a choice of beef bourguignon or beef bourguignon.
I decided to push the boat out
and went for the beef bourguignon.
(light electronic music)
So right about there then is our ride over to Mexico tonight
across the Atlantic Ocean.
It's a four-year-old Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner
delivered brand new to Aeromexico a few years ago.
And tonight she's going to be taking me and a few other people
across the Atlantic on a 12 and a half hour flight
across to Mexico City.
(light electronic music)
Now, of course, with this being France,
your high quality expensive mask
with several layers of filtering in it
isn't good enough for flights,
so you have to replace it with one of these things,
at least until we're outside of French airspace,
and then you can do what you want.
(speaking in foreign language)
- Merci. - Merci.
(plane engine humming)
Hola. Buenas tardes. - Hola!
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Noel] Six.
- Six. - Yeah.
(speaking in foreign language)
Thank you. - Hola!
(speaking in foreign language)
- [Passenger] 40.
- [Flight Attendant] 40, inside.
Hola.
(light electronic music)
- This isn't too bad, isn't it?
So then onboard the Aeromexico Dreamliner.
This is the 787-9.
It has a slightly more modern seat config
than the dash eight,
which I'm also hoping to go
at some point over the next few weeks.
Effectively, it's in a one-to-one configuration.
And as you can see,
we've got these little suites at the side here,
and then there's like two in the middle,
and then one on the other side as well.
It's all pretty nice, very spacious,
very bright and airy.
Quite nice, quite comfortable actually,
for the 12-hour flight across to Mexico City.
Very similar to, I think it's this,
is it the Super Diamond Seat, I think.
It's been so long since I've ridden in this seat now,
obviously with everything that's been going on,
but it is effectively the same seat as the BA Club Suite,
albeit without the door here,
and the same as on so many other 787s
and other aircraft as well.
It's quite a nice little touch, isn't it?
A little personalized card
on the seat with my name on it.
"Dear Noel, the best part of your trip is about to begin."
Well they got that bit right.
They must have learned I was an aviation geek
because the flying is of course
always the best part about the trip.
"We're proud to be your airline of choice,
"and we are committed to providing you best-in-class service
"during your flight."
Thank you, Aeromexico.
Gracias.
Thank you and merci.
Make sure we have a look around the seat then.
Very nice big TV screen here,
telling us all about different things.
Table pops out,
I believe, yeah. Just like that.
Folds out just like normal tables, really.
It's a table.
What have we got down here? Let's have a look.
Oh, we've got an amenity kit.
Etro.
It's quite nice.
It's bloody huge, actually.
I'll look at that later.
I'll look at that in a bit.
What else have we got?
Then they'd left me a duvet and a pillow,
and a pair of headphones, premiere class.
(speaking in foreign language)
Headphones, pillow, and duvet.
There you go. That's what we got in there.
What else have we got?
Little controls for the seat
and a little screen there.
And then up here, a bit of storage space.
Let's have a look.
Shiny new passport, by the way.
This is my first trip on my brand new,
brand new British passport,
which is sort of not really,
ooh, because of my glasses,
sort of, not really blue at all.
It's more of a sort of black color,
but anyway, bit of trivia for you.
There we go. What have we got in here then?
A little storage cupboard.
Oh, a three-pin plug.
USB, headphones, remote control.
Awesome.
With a little storage hole at the back there,
which I can't get shut.
There we go.
And just my general crap. Store it there.
Yeah, it's all right.
It's all right. It's not too bad.
Let's wait for everyone to board now.
They're queuing down the jet bridge.
(pleasant electronic music)
(plane engine whirring)
Our route tonight then took us west out of Paris,
to past Southern England,
there across the Atlantic Ocean
towards the East Coast of the US.
We crossed Florida and the Gulf of Mexico
with a flight time of exactly 12 hours,
cruising at 34, 36, and 38,000 feet.
(pleasant electronic music)
So then now that we're out of Paris
on the Aeromexico Dreamliner.
Yeah, 12 hours flight,
which is actually a lot longer than I thought,
to be completely honest.
I knew Mexico was sort of that way on.
It didn't really occur to me
that it was going to be much more
than sort of nine hours or so,
that you'd fly on to get to Texas or somewhere like that.
But of course, it's quite a lot further south
when you get over.
So yeah, 12 hours.
It's a long haul flight, this one.
Pretty soon, it was time for dinner.
And it's fair to say
that the food on Aeromexico is pretty decent.
So the main course has turned up
and I've gone for the salmon.
There's no menus or anything on board.
They're just coming around reading it out,
which is obviously due to COVID and everything.
But we have salmon, which is quite nice,
but you can't really see it in that light
'cause it's kind of flickering away,
but more importantly,
much more importantly,
I have tequila.
(loud exhaling)
And don't worry, it doesn't make my clothes fall off.
I don't think. I don't have it often.
If it does, I won't video. I promise.
(pleasant electronic music)
You know what,
I have to say that our meal service
was absolutely delicious
and it was presented so nicely as well.
None of this separating food into little plastic cups
and cling film over them and all the rest of it.
It was just a really nice business class meal.
The service is just fantastic.
The crew were so friendly.
They keep going around, offering me more tequila.
And I haven't finished this one yet.
All right then. Let's go through the amenity kit.
Etro.
Etro is a new tradition.
The sum of artisan know-how
and creative documentation and experimentation.
Some sort of company that make amenity kits anyway,
from what I can see.
But it's a nice little pouch that it comes in.
It sort of pops out.
Like so. Well that's quite stylish, isn't it?
Very stylish.
Etro, exclusively for Aeromexico.
That's very cool.
What have we got in here?
(Noel gasping)
That eye mask. Wow, look at that.
Now that is a stylish eye mask.
I like that a lot.
It doesn't have the Aeromexico logo on it.
The only downside.
But the eye mask itself is gorgeous.
A pair of Aeromexico slippers there.
A mouthwash.
There's loads of stuff in here.
What else have we got?
Toothpaste, toothbrush.
Etro perfume or aftershave or something.
Comb, always handy.
And an Aeromexico pen. Lovely.
What else do we get?
And field notes, a 48-page memo book,
durable materials made in the USA.
Da-da-da-da.
Brings you field notes
in hopes of offering an honest memo,
but worth filling up with good information,
practical applications, favorite 737 seats.
It's just a list of things
you could write in the book, I think.
Anyway, that's unique, anyway.
I've not seen anything like that before.
(plane engine humming)
(door clicking)
Right, the bathroom on the Aeromexico Dreamliner then.
And it's very nice.
Look, we've got flowers and things.
And the biggest thing here,
look, it's a loo with a view.
(window thudding)
Of not a lot.
I figured it'd be a good time
to come and get changed into my nightwear,
try to get a bit of sleep tonight.
(Noel clapping)
That's better.
Go and get some sleep now.
The Aeromexico 787 has a full walk-up bar
which is nice to see fully stocked.
There's a range of drinks and snacks to help yourself too.
(plane engine humming)
(Noel sighing)
Right then, bedtime.
It's actually really comfortable.
I put the bed into the lie flat position.
The blanket or the duvet is ever so slightly weighted,
so it's quite comfortable and snugly, which is quite nice.
I have to say Aeromexico so far are really impressing me.
The service just does not seem to have been put back at all
in the name of COVID
like so many other airlines are at the minute.
They've still got a full meal service,
the bar that you can help yourself to drinks.
I've not seen that on a plane for over a year now,
and Aeromexico, are doing it, and doing it really well.
It's just really good.
And it's fantastic service.
The crew are just amazing, the food, and everything's good.
And the plane's really nice as well.
So it's, it's all very good.
I want to try and get some sleep now.
We've got about just under 10 hours
until our arrival into Mexico City.
The bed's comfortable.
It's completely lie flat.
I will speak to you in the morning
when we are hopefully not far off landing at Mexico City.
So for now, good night. See you in the morning.
Well, good morning. I've woken up.
We've got two hours to land.
We are over the Gulf of Mexico.
We've just flown over Florida.
And, yeah. Got a nice night's sleep.
I got eight hours sleep,
which was pretty decent, to be honest.
I've heard cutlery and pots clinking around the cabin,
so I'm guessing that they're popping around
with food or something.
(pleasant electronic music)
Aeromexico offer Wi-Fi on their 787s,
which I found pretty reasonably priced,
and it seemed to work quite well too.
(pleasant electronic music)
So the options were
cold cuts of meat, salmon, or an omelet.
And I figured I'd go for the omelet
because it was the warm option.
So we have a lovely omelet
with some green things on the side, and some tomatoes,
a little bit of fruit, yogurt, chocolate croissant,
coffee and OJ.
Breakfast of champions.
(pleasant electronic music)
It wasn't long before the bright lights of Mexico City
appeared on the horizon.
And I got my first glimpse of this massive metropolis.
The approach into Mexico City really is stunning
as you weave your way down the Mexico Valley
before coming in level over the city
for an arrival into the airport.
(pleasant electronic music)
I was lucky to do this approach many times
during my time in Mexico,
and I can confirm that it never gets old.
(pleasant electronic music)
With an elevation of over 7,000 feet,
the aircraft approached with a really high ground speed
onto the runaways
that don't really give a lot of room for error.
(plane engine humming)
(pleasant electronic music)
I'd like to take a moment
to say thank you to my fantastic Patreons.
You can join them too with the link on the screen
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(pleasant electronic music)
- [Flight Attendant] Thank you for boarding.
- [Noel] Gracias. Adios.
Thank you. Bye.
(speaking in foreign language)
Hola. - Buenos dias.
Gracias. - Gracias.
(pleasant electronic music)
- Paris? - Paris, yes.
Thank you. Gracias.
(speaking in foreign language)
Okay, that was all very easy.
Flashed my passport.
Straight through. No health questions or anything like that.
Now currently there's a form I have to show
but nobody asked to see it.
So who knows.
But now I need to get to my hotel, which is at terminal one,
and Aeromexico flies to terminal two.
So I have to get on this bus
but there is nobody here yet
because it's like 20 past four in the morning.
After an hour or so,
the driver turned up but it wasn't going to be that easy.
(speaking in foreign language)
Terminal one?
(speaking in foreign language)
Oh, pesos. Sorry.
Okay. Do you take card or?
- No, cash. - Just cash.
Oh, I don't have any cash.
I need to get cash then.
All right, okay. How long?
- Five minutes. - Five minutes, okay.
I'll be back. Thank you.
So I had no choice but to lug it back into the terminal
to try and grab some pesos before the bus left.
Mission successful then
and time to head back to the bus
or at least that's what I thought.
Oh, (bleep).
(Noel sighing)
He's gone.
He wouldn't, he's gone.
So after all that, I decided to go,
and do what perhaps I should have done in the first place,
and just grab a taxi.
Gracias, senor. Thank you.
(vehicle humming)
(upbeat music)
(elevator door clicking)
(hotel key card flicking)
(door thudding)
Hey. Made it at last.
(Noel groaning)
Good Lord, that was a nightmare.
Here then at the Hilton Mexico City Airport,
at, well, I arrived two hours ago.
Immigration took about five minutes, straight through.
Just showed them my passport, stamped my passport,
and I was out. Dead easy.
But getting across here to terminal one was a nightmare.
And you'd think that for a quite small terminal,
it would be quite easy to find the hotel,
but it's not signposted or anything.
It's just an absolute nightmare.
But we are inside, I believe.
I haven't looked out the window yet.
We are inside the actual terminal building with a view,
I hope, over, oh,
would be a view over the airport
but there's all sorts of stickers on the window.
I don't know, hang on.
Anyway, Aeromexico. They were pretty decent, weren't they?
I really enjoyed that.
Their business class product was just fantastic.
And the fact that they,
you know, their meal service, the bar service,
everything was just on point.
It was just fantastically,
it doesn't seem like they've cut anything back
in terms of the quality of their onboard service,
which is really really positive and really nice to see.
So yeah, I've got a couple more flights actually
with Aeromexico while I'm here,
and I'm really looking forward to them now.
Welcome to the Mexican adventure
and who knows where I'll go from here
because this is the first time
I've ever been away on a trip,
and I don't have a flight home booked.
So who knows where I'm going to end up on this trip?
(Noel sighing)
We'll find out.
Hit the subscribe button
and then you'll find out soon as well.
In the meantime, thanks for watching. Take care.
I'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
(loud thudding)
(plane engines humming)