In the beginning of 2018, United Airlines announced it was going to start a new route from Porto to Newark. Newark international Airport (EWR) is one of three serving New York city 
and it’s located in New Jersey, about 40 minutes by car from the center. At that time, I was already planning my trip to New York so I got really excited with this new flight because I wouldn’t have to make a stop anywhere (If this new route hadn’t appear I was thinking of making Lisbon to New York with TAP).
I bought my flights (Economy class) online directly in the United Airlines website together with a health and travel insurance. The experience of buying was ok (not the greatest one) because the website is not very user friendly. Nevertheless, the most important is the final purpose was concluded with success and I had the tickets 
in my email.
This trip was in a specific time of the year: in August because that was when my parents could get two weeks off from work. As I already knew this, I started to monitor the flights that I was interested in (after the 12 of August). The flight to New York (OPO – EWR) costed 301.00€ per person with marked place and the return flight (EWR – OPO) costed 221.00€ which gave a total of 522.00€ for the flights per person. Like I said before, when I bought the flights, I also got a health and travel insurance for 30,11€/person. Taking into account that August isn’t the most cheaper month to visit New York (or any other place in the world), I guess it was a fair price for a direct flight.
The morning of the flight
and then, I finished packing my bags. Everything was ready, it was time to go to the airport.
Check-in and board on the flight
Me and my parents went to the airport by Uber 
and we met there with my boyfriend (his parents drove him). We verified on the boards the numbers of the checkin counters and went there. When we were in the queue two people from United Airlines were calling one person at a time and asking some questions like:
- the number of days of my trip,
- who was going to travel with me,
- if I was only stay in New York state,
- if I had something dangerous in my bag or that someone asked me to take it.
Our answers were accepted and allowed us to go to the checkin counter. The check-in process was very quick, passports were validated, the luggage was weighed and dispatched and then the attendant gave us our boarding tickets. After getting rid of the bags, we went through the security gates and we looked for the boarding gate. We needed to pass the immigration zone at the airport but this process was very simple. The agent 
just asked to see the passport and the place where we were going to travel.
At the boarding gate we showed the tickets and the passport and we got on the plane 
.
About the flight
The flight between Porto and New York usually lasts, on average, 8 hours. The plane was a Boeing 757-200 with six seats per row (3×3) and the chairs were comfortable and had more legroom than Ryanair flights, for example. However, the flight was a little complicated because it was a lot time inside a plane even with all the entertainment that was on the screen in front of each chair. The on-boarding entertainment has lots of movies, series, music and games… During the flight I saw a movie 
(Ferdinand) and I played some games. The rest of the time was spent trying to sleep (it’s impossible!) or eating. Two meals were served during the flight:
- (1) chickpea salad, chicken with rice (mutant rice) and vegetables, ice cream and a drink of your choice,
- (2) a pretzel roll and some biscuits.
I’m a little picky about food but on the first meal I managed to eat the chicken and the ice cream of course. On the second, I eat both things.
In the middle of the flight, the flight attendants delivered a blue form (CBP-6059B) that we had to fill with informations about our trip. In our case, we had to fill in two forms because is one per family/residence address and my boyfriend lives with his parents. So, to summarize, two forms: one for me and my parents, and another for my boyfriend.
And so our adventure began ❤️. The flight landed 🛬 around 16.45h in New York… we were a little tired but with a big desire to know everything and more about the city.
If you want to read all the posts that have already been published about New York click here.
