(keys typing)
(upbeat music)
- I'm in Chicago, O'Hare right now going
to fly on a new airline going back to the Middle East.
- [Crew] Mask off, please.
Have a good flight.
- [Jack] How's it going?
- [Crew] Welcome aboard.
Nice to see you.
- [Jack] Yeah, nice to see you too.
Just got on board, a Royal Jordanian Dream Liner.
I chose a really good seat, isn't it?
This is perfect to sleep, there's no window.
No lights will come through.
Very open sitting in the Business Class here,
it's still boarding in the background.
The whole flight is full actually.
Surprisingly, I'm always wondering what kind
of passenger flies on the Jordanian flight.
From which country you are?
- Egypt. - You're from Egypt?
- [Man] Yes.
- [Jack] So you fly to Amman, and connect to Cairo?
- [Man] Yes, I catch a flight to Egypt, yes.
- [Jack] Oh, you think most
of the passenger where they come from, you think?
From which country they all speaking Arabic?
- [Man] I don't know, most of them are Jordanians.
It very cheap nowadays, it's $400.
How are you going to do the review now or afterwards?
- [Jack] Oh, of course, I'll tell you after the flight,
how the flight's going.
- [Man] No, it has to be in the middle
of the flight so we can make decisions.
- [Jack] Oh, okay.
You must be a Royal Jordanian flyer,
- No, - You fly all the time.
- [Man] Yeah.
- [Jack] Yeah, what do you think about this airline?
I haven't flown this for a long time.
- [Man] Love it, love it.
- You love it? - Yes.
- [Jack] All right, enjoy your flight, man.
- [Man] Thank you.
- Hello guys, my name is Ishmael (indistinct),
I'm a first officer for the Royal Jordanian Airlines
flying a Boeing 787 Dream Liner.
And our captain today is Captain Afam (indistinct).
Today we're flying from Chicago to Amman.
Our flight number is 264 Delta.
Climbing around the flight level 360.
Then we will go for higher, after we get lighter.
Then we are going to cross the ocean.
Our flight time for this day,
it's like 10 hours, 30 minutes.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Jack] What did you say? What was that in English?
- It's very nice in Arabic language,
I told them it's your company
and most welcome to fly with us.
- Would you like some Arabic coffee?
- [Jack] Sure, okay.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
So we have apple juice, we have orange juice.
- [Jack] Thank you.
- [Crew] You're welcome, enjoy.
- [Crew] Hello sir, welcome aboard.
Would you like a minute to care?
- [Jack] Are they the same?
- Yeah, it's all the same, it's different in the colour.
- [Jack] Oh, okay.
- [Crew] So which colour you prefer?
- [Jack] Oh, I want all of them.
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] Oh, the red one looks really good.
- Yeah, our logo.
- [Jack] Yeah, I'll take the red one.
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] What about your dress?
Where your dress come from?
- [Crew] Yeah. This is our traditional dress, it's handmade.
- [Jack] Really?
- [Crew] And yeah, we it's introduced the culture
of our country.
- [Jack] So you're from Jordan?
- [Crew] Yeah, of course, I'm from Jordan.
- [Jack] Oh,
- [Crew] And this dress, especially,
motif is from Jerusalem.
- [Jack] Oh, from Jerusalem?
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] Lots of red on board.
The bags are red.
My seat belts are red, the cushion is red.
(happy music)
So looking out, the weather is not pretty in Chicago.
There's a winter storm coming in tonight.
I think tomorrow's going to snow with several inches.
So hopefully we're just going to take
off before that storm arrives here.
- [Tower] Jordanian 264 Delta Heavy, caution turbulence,
winds 210 at 20.27, runway 28 right,
call lane, line up right.
(engines spooling up)
(upbeat music)
- [Jack] Yeah, thank you.
It's been a while, but I think now some airlines
are returning the hot towel service.
(upbeat music continues)
- [Crew] Hello, Sharif, I'm the chef in the economy.
We have dinners now.
We have two choices.
We have chicken, it's very nice.
Gravy sauce with vegetables.
- [Jack] Oh, this is like Asian food.
This is like Chinese food.
So this is fish and this is halal right? Halal?
- [Crew] Yeah, it's all full of are food is halal.
and you can and we have some special meal.
You can order your, your meal with your ticket.
If you, if you diabetic, if you vegetarian,
this is a seafood, already it came extra
with the salmon.
- [Jack] Wait, let me see.
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] There's seafood, smoked salmon.
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] That's very nice.
- [Crew] We have like this it's diabetic.
It's all ordered, we have,
- [Jack] Okay, this is like a low sodium kind of deal.
- [Crew] Yeah, You can order it with your ticket.
- So we're about one hour after takeoff.
Now they are serving dinner.
Luckily the flight wasn't completely full in Business Class.
I took row four here, so empties sit next to me.
The seating as you can tell is not the latest one-one,
it's 2-2-2 wide open sitting.
I, we imagine it would be quite difficult
if you have a neighbour you had to hop across.
Getting really hungry because I didn't eat
in the lounge.
Royal Jordanian told me they use Air France lounge,
but the lounge was closed under renovation.
So looks like a cold cut chicken with tomato Hummus.
- [Crew] Do you like a white wine?
- [Jack] Where does wine come from?
- [Crew] This wine? It's Jordanian wine.
- [Jack] Oh, Jordanian?
- [Crew] Yeah, Pinot Grigio.
- Oh really? I'd love to try.
- [Crew] It's a good one, it's a dry wine.
- [Jack] Okay.
I didn't know Jordanian has white wine.
- [Crew] Yeah, it's Jordan River.
- All right. Thank you very much.
- Cheer. - Cheers.
- [Crew] Enjoy.
- Now we are preparing for the buffet.
We're popping up our food.
We're going to be placing everything over here.
Watch out, it's really hot.
(upbeat music)
This is the most important part, the vegetables.
- [Jack] Wow, Look at this.
(upbeat music)
- [Crew] Hello Mister, would you like to have the dinner,
The legumes, the broccoli,
- [Jack] Oh, yes.
I'd love to have a little bit of everything.
- [Crew] Oh yeah, sure.
- [Jack] It looks so nice.
- [Crew] Chicken Mushroom and the,
- [Jack] I having a steak, I have a steak and I have pasta
and then a little bit of scallop.
- [Crew] Yeah, sure, for sure.
I would make a collection for you, okay?
- [Jack] Okay, sounds good.
So shocked to see Royal Jordanian have
the buffet serving dinner.
Like this is as good as the pre-COVID days,
long live the buffet.
- [Crew] After the dinner, I serve up the dessert tray,
I do tea, coffee and cheesecake, just enjoy your meal.
- [Jack] I really like this mug here.
- [Crew] Yeah.
- [Jack] I like this mug, the Royal Jordanian logos.
- [Crew] I will give you one.
- Oh yeah? - Yeah, sure.
- [Jack] Aright, don't tell anyone.
Yeah, I'm going to have a cheese cake on the right.
- The marbled? - This one here.
- This one, the plain one? - This one, yeah.
- [Crew] Yeah, sure.
- [Jack] And I'll have a tea please.
- [Crew] Here sir is your tea.
- [Jack] Thank you.
So we're just having a little chit chat here
with Maha and I feel there's no more COVID
on Jordanian Airline because there's hot towel,
there's buffet, everything's back, right?
- Yeah, everything is back to normal except the masks.
- Yeah.
- I ask you, have you been to Jordan before?
- Yeah, I actually been to Jordan, I took my Mom.
We went to Patua one time in the Dead Sea,
and this is not my first time flying Jordanian Airline.
I actually flown the old A 340 about eight years ago.
- [Crew] With one stars or two?
- [Jack] I know, and I have the buffet as well, right.
That's probably before you started, right?
So long ago, young lady, and I'm showing my age here
and I have the Crown Class, which is completely
180 degree leather chair.
I love it, open sitting though.
No privacy, but very nice.
Eight years ago, yeah, memories, memories.
- [Crew] So next time when you come back,
you have to go to Wadura.
- I'll phone you. (laughing)
Yeah.
- [Crew] Okay, my pleasure.
So Sam, you know, these airline before Royal Jordanian,
it's named Alia.
Most of our passengers, they know this name more
than Royal Jordanian.
They are very old customers.
They used to fly us when it was Alia.
And most of them, they are from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon
and they keep flying Royal Jordanian
after Alia and they still call us Alia.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)
- [Jack] Oh good morning, we are one
and a half hour before landing.
I just been woke up for the breakfast.
Right now is 4:00 AM Chicago time.
And you can tell I'm very sleepy.
I didn't sleep very well.
Only managed maybe about one hour.
I don't know why.
It's funny, this bed here, when it fully flats
is a bit narrow, so I was sleeping on my side,
but it's just one of those nights.
You didn't sleep very well.
And also the 787 window during daytime is not able
to fully block the sunlight.
You can actually see some sunlight in front of you.
So it's not, the cabin is not fully dark.
- [Crew] Morning, your breakfast. Enjoy.
(upbeat music)
- [Cockpit warning] One thousand.
- [Ishmael] One thousand.
- [Cockpit warning] Approaching minimums.
- [Ishmael] Check Minimums.
- [Cockpit warning] Minimums.
- [Ishmael] Continue landing.
- [Captain Afam] Check.
- [Cockpit warning] 50,
30,
10.
(wheels rumble)
(upbeat happy music)
- [Jack] We've just landed in Amman,
and 10 hour flight just went like this.
I think Royal Jordanian is pretty solid.
And I had a very good experience
especially with seeing lots of things,
they've been restored on board service,
like the buffet dinner.
There's a bit of downside things too.
They don't have wifi and the seats
are not the latest individual seats in business class.
and no doubt, I think COVID has hit them hard.
Mainly they're doing international connections.
There's very little domestic market here
and I wish them all the best.
They need to do some fleet renewing soon.
So hopefully the best is yet to come for this airline.
Hi, thank you, see you soon.
- [Crew] Bye, bye Sam. Bye, bye.
See you soon Sam, nice to meet you.
(upbeat happy music)
- So I'm enjoying this Kabsa,
this is even a little bit with spices, chicken Kabsa
from the lounge and they have some other Arabic
few hummus, Moutabel and live cooking spaghetti station.
So I will have a Spaghetti Bolognese, okay?
- Sure. - Thank you.
- [Crew] Very spicy?
- [Jack] Ahh, okay spicy, yeah, okay.
This is taking the personalization to the next step,
it's such a beautiful coffee.
Didn't want to drink it, didn't want to ruin this actually.
Well, thank you so much for the lounge staff.
So just walking to board my next flight onto Dubai,
after a two hour transit, look at a concrete rooftop.
Everywhere is concrete.
It's not an old airport.
It's only opened, I think like seven or eight years ago.
But you know, it's just like, they never,
they forgot to paint the concrete.
So Royal Jordanian has two, A 321 and looks
like my flight to Dubai is operated by the retro.
- [Crew] Hello, welcome aboard Royal Jordanian.
- [Jack] Yeah, nice meeting you sir.
- [Crew] Can I check your boarding pass?
- [Jack] Yeah.
(more happy music)