Flying from Charlotte, North Carolina to Los Angeles with American Airlines

The LAX (Los Angeles International Airport). Photo / Getty Images

Andrew Parsons flies aboard AA1976, from Charlotte, North Carolina to LA.

The plane: Airbus A321. Good, clean and modern.

Class: Standard.

Check in: We didn't, as we were through-checked from Key West via Charlotte to LA.

Airport experience: Charlotte is American Airlines' East Coast Hub and is the eighth-busiest airport in the US. It has a main concourse with around 20 shops and eateries and six terminals leading off it. The concourse has a good selection of seats, unsecured Wi-Fi but no points for charging devices.

Seats: 27A (window) for me and 27B for my wife. Entertainment was delivered via Wi-Fi and an onboard app, but again there was no ability to charge devices.

Passengers: Full of Americans including a very pleasant chap on his way home to Fresno sitting next to us.

Flight time: 5h 30m, including time the aircraft queued to access the runway.

Food and drink: Soft drinks, coffee and biscuits served by friendly staff.

Toilets: The usual two at back and one at front.

Luggage: 25kg per person included with the whole booking.

On time: No — we had landed on time but the aircraft parked at our gate before us was defective and needed to be towed away, leading to a 50-minute delay.

This meant we had 20 minutes to get from the aircraft to our flight for Auckland. It was here that service dropped dead — we asked the flight attendant to help expedite our eventual departure from the plane and she criticised us for booking too short a connection (which was actually booked by our our travel agent) and was initially hostile to doing anything for us. With good Kiwi charm and manners, we managed to persuade her to at least try to move us up the plane to row 5. A further inquiry to the polite male attendant at the front elicited the promise of a golf-cart shuttle and the captain asking for Auckland passengers to be let off first. However, the golf cart ride to the Auckland flight never happened, so we had to run through the terminal, getting lost several times.

Oh and one of our bags didn't make it on to the aircraft.

Fly again: Absolutely no way. I had challenged our travel agent and also the gate agent at Key West about this short connection and was told that it was okay.

You really need 90 minutes to be safe for an international connection. LA-Hell lives up to its name again!