vandiemen

Oh, they do, I could almost see it from my J seat on the 777

bowdenj

Hilarious!!!!!

>10:30am – Time for butterflies, am I going to get deny or not. Even if its
>new equipment, I will not be a premium gate lice today, not stupid enough
>to stand first in line
>10:45am – Boarding commences
>10:50am – Gets onboard, all the 1K and GS head elsewhere, time for pics

>I need to study some more political science and learn how to divert
>attention away.

ok2uselane

LOL! I was thinking something similar when I spotted her in that pic.


@Short hair Francis: Nice that you had the time to immediately take advantage of this deal. I'm still in university, so must enjoy vicariously, while taking breaks from my studies. Thanks for sharing!

BingBongBoy

Can someone please explain to me this plastic cup thing for PDB service?

Have I unknowingly been risking my life, and that of passing small children, by clambering around a Club World cabin with a tray full of glass glasses of Taittinger during boarding???

mkjr

probably the some illogical explanation

Short hair Francis

Thanks for everyone's comment, seems like my travels this week and the tickets itself all have the same flow.
Very Messy indeed

And with a crazy change of events during the flight,
Typhoon Vicente was waiting for me as I got back to HKG 3 hrs ago
http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/currwx/tc3.htm

As for any of you who know what the No. 8 storm signal means in HKG, the whole city is virtually deserted

Thanks WChou

I will hint one thing right now, there was a family of 6 flying on SFO-HKG in F today, they took over the entire left side of the cabin

Thanks, hope I'm keeping the humble GS happy by only having one "4 Mile" ticket

I means, its impossible to compare AA/UA to CX/LH/LX/SQ

Your welcome!

AA 762/772 F have them, AA 763 J i believe also has them?
CX has it in J, F is hand service only
LH and LX also have them in F.

She was such a little cutie and I was worried she was gonna cry all flight but that never happen.
Don't you worried, she got her ice cream sundae too.
I talked to the mom a bit after in the SFO IFL and she said her husband books them reward F tix this time but she prefers J so she doesn't have to run around to tend for her.
And no, she wasn't on 4 Miles. I mean everyone that I've seen this week has been supportive about these ticket and the legitmatcy of it anyway.
Certainly no one said I scam United Airlines for one.

Trust me, when you are a little older, you will understand that the time to immediately take advantage of these deal isn't necessarily a good thing.

mattyb2233

4 miles. EPIC TRIP!!!!! glad someone got to take advantage of this!

Carfield

Thanks for the trip report!

It seems to me that United Global First has adopted all the former Business First meal services from Continental. The mid-flight noodle soup and dessert service is the same as Continental BF (just curious if United Business receives this service). The dessert cart featuring ice cream sundae and mini-pastries are also similar to Continental's BF.

Good to know that you made it before the mess that will surely start today.

Carfield

Short hair Francis

Part 3 – What are the 2 most important vocabularies in the United Airlines dictionary, Cancellations and Delays


July 19, 2012 – Thursday
UA 870 SFO – JFK 12:57pm – 9:40pm (752/F)

Took me about 1 hour to cross the CBP today ugh, I really wish I had GE but sadly don’t. Luckily the officer was more than happy to process me unlike processing anyone else. Let say, 3 jumbos (1 PVG, 1 PEK, 1 NRT) arrived earlier than we did due to the small MX delay out of HKG; not everyone from North East Asia has comparative English speaking ability as someone from North America. The saddest part was other travelers were having a hard time figuring out they needed to take off their glasses or do the fingerprint thing or simply have filled out their blue forms. No doubt this was due to communications problem, the worst was a family of three that lined up at the US citizen line when they clearly didn’t even speak English. Sorry, back of the visitor line and another hour of wait for you!

Back upstairs to go through security, the line dragon didn’t realize that Premier Access/First Class bp means I can go through the Priority Security lIne.
Definitely had a DYKWIA moment for myself.

Into the United Airlines First Class Lounge, as always it was a nice retreat from the hectic terminal itself. Sushi galore, cold cuts, I personally can’t think of a better US airlines First Class lounge on American soil.

Just around 12 noon as I was ready to head over to the domestic side, our equipment just got robbed and now I’m waiting for inbound from JFK that was running 3 hrs late. Eek!

Oh well, back to more chows, drinks and more popcorn on the “4 Mile Island” thread. In the meanwhile I had already prepared the first part of this TR already done and ready to go. More on this later


Does bring back some memories at T3 back when AA was still in the same terminal as UA.


Around 1:30pm, as the equipment finally came in. I finally headed over to the domestic side. Now in a delay situation, usually AA can turn a plane between 35-45 mins. Sadly United here did a worse job in dealing with delay flights.
Today just seem like the system was falling apart, due to overcast skies on approach into SFO. Is this gate the flight for New York, Denver, Chicago, Kona? All asked the various Summer kettles.
Actually they are all departing from this gate, we just can’t get planes in and out fast enough.

United Airlines Boeing 757-200



Around 2:15pm we finally started boarding for UA 870


United Airlines 870
San Francisco to New York Kennedy
Scheduled - 12:57pm – 9:40pm, 5 hr 42 mins flight
Delayed Departure – 2:35pm, Inbound Equipment Delay from JFK
Delayed Arrival – 11:35pm
First Class, Seat 1C
Food – Lunch
Equipment – Boeing 757-200 (12F/26J/72Y)

First to board the plane, but the whole gate was crazy lice-infesting like many of my United adventures.

United Airlines Boeing 757-200 P.S. First Class Cabin




Got into my seat at 1C, 2 pillows (1 small, 1 large) plus a blanket await me, same offering as the previous Global First Product as previous.

After very slow taxi and extremely long wait for take-off, listening to Channel 9, yay it was on. SFO ground made SFO sound more like LGA trying to squeeze planes all over the tarmac, seem like the entire SFO was trying to leave town. 20-30 planes parked all over the place, also didn’t help the fact when a Frontier 319 in front of us queue had break oil trouble and with the lack of taxiing space finally took off on 1R at 3:30pm

Service started immediately although this was definitely becoming more of a dinner vs. a lunch flight with the departure times we had.

UA 870 Lunch

Appetizer
Cold Cured Meats on Lettuce

Salad
Sliced Tomatoes, baby Mozzarella Cheese and croutons with your choice of creamy ranch or balsamic vinaigrette

Main Course
Short Rib of Beef
Red Wine sauce, ali Amarillo mashed potatoes, and fine green beans with carrots

Tamale-Filled Breast of Chicken
Creamy Corn sauce, grilled vucca, and roasted potatoes

Tri-Color Ravoli
Creamy Tomato sauce and asparagus with Parmesan Cheese

Dessert
Ice Cream with your choice of toppings






Appetizer was average, the salad with the Balsamic Vinaigrette was definitely very sour which wasn’t great. Main Course turned out a little better than I thought, considering it was either beef, chicken or pasta.
Beef – No thanks, had enough overcook beef as it is
Chicken – This has me running for the hills, I’ve seen enough Chicken for a year considering American Airlines bought a chicken farm and that’s all we get served anyway.
So with the process of elimination, pasta it is.

After the meal service, I try to listen in onto Channel 2, 3 on the taped system, yep, you’ve guess it, it’s always the channels you want to listen to that is out of service.
And as if I didn’t make United feel pissed off enough about the “4 Mile” Tickets already , I even got a e-cert out of this flights, yikes!!!!
Not only did United not made any money of me, I’m pretty sure I flew cheaper than a non-rev today. There was no way 75 dollars late booking fee would cover anything in this situation and giving me e-cert on top of that, that is a bag of salt on the wound for sure.

Later finally found out what United’s actions on the rest of the tickets were, thanks gogo Sadly back on the thread was even more complaining about the merits or de-merits about everything on the tickets or the cancellations.

Due to a very tired out body system, I had been flying for 16 hours and travelling close to 19-20 hours, I decided not to read any more since it was 10am HKG time, 10 pm EDT, and I’ve barely had any sleep the entire day. It was to state it’s very painful despite my views on the topic to see the entire Flyertalk to be lit up in flame so staying away from it for about 3 hours was a good idea. I would almost compare it to the Vancouver Riots of Jun 2011 sadly
I think some might even argue we stole the mannequins like the YVR rioters did that day from The Bay or Hudson’s Bay Company.

With 1 hr 20 mins of sleep, I actually slept the rest of the way to New York Kennedy. A clear night of skies around NYC despite the impeding weather system, we finally landed around 11:25pm, about 2 hours late.

Great, 2 United flight, 2 delays. But beggers can’t be choosers.
It was finally 12am when I got to the jfkeze hostel. I need more sleep stat.

Next Part
Part 4 – 2 days of Half Awake/Half Asleep in New York City

Short hair Francis

No you haven't , please keep on bring the champagne in actual glass on BA!

There will always be space for my BA F champagne glasses ^

Thank you, that's one way to look at how everything went!
Looks like there were only a select few that took advantage of the deal, and yes I did read all 2700+ post over on the United Forum.


I actually never have done CO BF before, i mean that mid-flight dessert tends to be pretty good, sadly I don't know who's bright idea is it to cater vegetable noodles on HKG-SFO though

Thank you, that's one way to look at how everything went!
Looks like there were only a select few that took advantage of the deal, and yes I did read all 2700+ post over on the United Forum.

iceman77_7

You mean sfo-jfk right? I got really confused for a while...

Short hair Francis

You Sir are correct on my horrible error^
problem fixed

Short hair Francis

I'm dead serious, I mean that was a big reason I tried to construct Part 1/2 of the TR as such,
the way I wrote those sections are so different than how I usually write my others ones.
It was to reflect the testing out the waters, particularly since no one reportedly flew after the UAInsider originally posted on the Main thread.
I was going to be the new guinea pig as these things go so I had friends that checked FT when I wasn't online or sleeping.
Everything went great though, I mean none of the UA people gave me a hard time even after they found out I flew cheaper than a non-rev.
Every UA person I talked even stated this was their error, the airline should eat the mistake and the people that got tickets were very lucky.

SFO777

You got an e-cert as well? ^
From the looks of that meal, sounds like UA is just giving up on the transcon F market.

Short hair Francis

Yep, got a e-cert on top of everything
Giving up sounds about right, the appetizer wasn't great, neither was the salad, main course was actually good.

They don't even do cookie service and sparkling water prior to landing.
Only Snack basket
Sadly I did like the spacebed over the AA 762 F seat.