DC777Fan

This is attempt #1… a dry run for the DPS trip next year--and perhaps another surprise V-day trip… taking suggestions on locations within 10 hours of total flying time (max 1 connection) from WAS--her rules.. only 1 trip 10+ hours in the air per year.

Apologies that I was a bit camera shy on the outbound… I'll try to do a bit better on the return.

Background:

I booked this trip in March of this year. I was still pretty new at the FF game on the burn side. I've been good at the earn side for a while--religiously putting everything on CC's, using bonus points/miles portals, buying things for others and getting repaid in cash, etc, but have made some pretty shameful redemptions in the past few years of point amounts I'd kill to have back.

But by March, I'd realized that Amex points best value are in transferring to airline partners… and I'd recently heard about a new IAD-HNL flight, so this was now the goal. I checked it out and lo and behold, but there was space available on the direct flight in a 2-3-2 configuration, so that's about as good as it gets for a couple in coach.

So booked it!

A few weeks later, we decided we could actually stay in HNL an extra day. So being the sly one I am, I called UA (not Aeroplan) and asked them to change the date by 1 day. Being outside 14 days, this was free on UA, but would've been $90pp on Aeroplan. CS rep processed the change with no issue whatsoever and didn't even mention that UA didn't have control of the ticket??? Turns out this may have led to a few issues down the road...

Since then I've earned tons of UR points and have a surplus of UA miles, so a month or two ago I decided I'd convert the r/t on Aeroplan into a 1 way in F (cost a few more miles as Aeroplan charges closer to 60% for one ways) and then get a couple 1 ways back on UA. That's scheduled for HNL-ORD in F and ORD-DCA in Y…. we'll see what happens as far as award space opening up on the non stop or perhaps via LAX/SFO/EWR/whatever if we can get F both segments…

On the outbound, UA was showing a new F itinerary (IAD-DEN-LAX-HNL) in F under the PNR but ALSO the original flight in Y. Weird, but whatever… as long as the F flights were confirmed and we had seats…

BUT, 2 nights before the flight, there were 2 award seats available in F on the direct flight, so I scrambled to call Aeroplan (tried UA too, obviously, but this time they told me it's on AC stock, so they can't touch it) as fast as possible--$90 fee be damned. But their phone systems were down and I couldn't modify my ticket online because of some ticketing error (likely the UA date switch issue). By the time I woke up at 7am (when their offices open) only 1 seat was available -- talk about crap luck.

Juuuuust as I was getting ready to call Aeroplan and switch back to the direct flight in Y (I know, I'm weird), I checked one last time and BOOM 2 award seats.

IAD:

We arrived at IAD courtesy of a quick enough $57 ride from Red Top Cab from our apartment in Arlington and checked our bags curbside. As I was reaching into my bag to get cash to tip the guy outside, he said something to the effect of "we take tips outside" as I guess he thought he was about to be stiffed.

Now into the terminal. I was looking forward to the "Premium" security line, but alas, all security lines were absolutely slammed at 11:30am, and it didn't seem like premier access gave us much of a break. It took about 30 minutes to get through security and onto the moon buggy to Concourse D.

Luckily the UC was literally across from our gate, D5, so we had a few moments to enjoy the club. I emerged from the club around 12:30 and was shocked to find a nearly empty gate area for our 1:00PM departure.

IAD-HNL
Seat: 4B

As I boarded, I found out that basically the entire flight was on board already (seat map showed a pretty light load in Y). Since we weren't sitting together yet, I wanted to ask if I could switch seats with whomever was in the seat next to my girlfriend (who was in 4A). I had 2K (aisle) and the gentleman in 4B (also aisle) cheerfully switched seats with me which I was very grateful for.

I really liked the configuration of the 76H, though I'm not sure I would've really liked the single middle seat. The seat pitch is excellent for domestic F, and the seat is very comfortable as a seat (more on sleeping later). It would be extremely difficult to get out of a window seat if the pax in front of you are fully reclined and you didn't know your seat mate. My girlfriend has to basically climb over me (and I have to close my computer and fold up my tray table so she can balance on my legs) to get out. Highly recommend bulkhead or center seats if you're not traveling with someone and plan on sleeping at all.

As soon as I sat down, I was asked if I wanted a PDB by the purser. I got a water and my girlfriend who came a few minutes later got a mimosa. I was shocked as I was told on FT that there'd be no bubbles on this flight, but I tasted it, and there was certainly sparkling something in there. The purser also took our food order with a simple "pasta or steak." Most everyone asked what the pasta entailed and she explained it was spirals with spinach and tomato sauce. I was a little confused by the order she used when asking, though. She went 1A/B/D; 2A/B/D; 3A/B/D; then hit the opposite side all the way back (excepting 4D) before getting us in 4A/B and finally the poor man in 4D (who did get his first choice, so I suppose all is well).

Takeoff was quick--no long lines today, and we were in the air.

Food was served immediately--directly from the galley, 2 trays at a time--and the pasta came with a cold shrimp (kind of) and salad course presented on the same tray as the pasta. "Red or White" wines were offered and we both had the white which was drinkable, but not good enough to care to ask what it was…

After lunch, trays were cleared VERY promptly and the purser and another FA brought around the sundae cart. I went with walnuts and strawberries--never been a big fan of chocolate syrup other than making chocolate milk.



I tried to recline and fall asleep, but I just can't find a good comfortable sleeping position for this chair. It reclines a good bit -- probably 155-160 degrees, but the lumbar support isn't in the right position--at least for my torso--when reclined. I fell asleep for a few minutes by putting the pillow on the arm rest and curling up, but I woke up with quite a crick in my neck and quickly regret that 30 minutes of sleep. I'd be pretty PO'd if I paid for this, as it's priced like TATL business and the product is nowhere near.



As I write this--about halfway between the WC and Hawaii), I've seen neither the purser nor the FA that assisted on the sundae cart (both of whom were great) since sundae service. We now have another FA who seems a lot less pleased with her job and is completely going through the motions. Everything we ask for is met with a sigh and a "OK" (things like, a cup of hot water, or to clear our snack trash).

They also don't have Mai Tai's on this flight. We asked and she said they "didn't load them today." I inquired and she seemed surprised and just said "yeah, we had them yesterday, I don't know why we don't have them." Not a very consistent product, and I can't believe they don't have Mai Tai's on a Hawaii flight. Also no halfway to Hawaii game (which I remember from a LAX-KOA flight several years ago). Do PMCO crews not do the halfway game?

So since then I've been catching up on some work, listening to music and watching airshow. The movie choices on this flight are a little un-exciting and Snow White and the Huntsman doesn't work at all (not that I wanted to see it, but…). I watched a good ESPN 30 for 30 (USFL), and have been on Airshow since then. The IFE on this flight is 17 channels of looping (2:45 mins and they all restart at once) video on personal TV screens. Sadly, my screen is going a bit and only airshow really looks decent. Good thing 30 for 30 is mostly interviews.



Screen was very discolored, contrast and brightness were un-fixable...

My girlfriend, who is immensely pleased to be flying in first, and not one to complain, keeps saying things like "there are just so many little things I'd change that wouldn't cost anything." It's more being frustrated at how easy it would be to have an excellent product. And I tend to agree. (We're both self-employed, so that's just how our minds work) Why is service so on point for the first 45 minutes of the flight and then non existent for the rest of the flight?

I'm still sitting at 34% on my MBP and I've had my computer open most of the flight… not sure who this miracle is happening 2 hours out of Hawaii…

I'll update as our pre-arrival service is completed, but thus far the flight is basically what I expected. A pretty good hard product for a domestic flight and mediocre soft product. The food was edible, the service has been adequate, but neither truly good. If we weren't left with the worst FA of the three for the majority of the flight, this could've been much better IMO.

Agriculture forms were passed out about 90 minutes out of HNL. No pens, of course…

An hour out and the good FA just dredged back through the F cabin with a few pillows and blankets. Purser also came through a few minutes ago and moved my backpack out of the aisle (oops--forgot it was there)--smile on her face and very nice about it.

We were served another snack before arrival. It was a burrito...honestly not sure if it was vegetarian or meat, but it was fine. I actually like microwave burritos for lunch (I work from home and am cheap for lunch usually), so it was fine. The salad came out still frozen, but the fruit actually was good. And the little chocolate cookie thing was good.



The purser served the opposite aisle and the bad FA served ours. Her entire side, include the middle section, already had all trays cleared before our FA emerged from the galley (not by choice). As my girlfriend had a bit more work to do before landing, she pushed her call button to ask for her tray to be removed. In a very annoyed tone, the FA said "you know, we come through very often. The call button is really for emergencies only."

Car service I found in the HNL thread for $30 was already waiting at the airport when we arrived, and thankfully our priority tags had our bags out first. At the hotel before 6:00PM.

More to come...

DC777Fan

damn how do i re-size pics?

trust77

thanks for sharing. WOW, what a huge change in the catering since I last flew a sCO aircraft and crew. No wonder UA is making this flight, and all the other longer non-stop flights with a BusinessFirst cabin to HNL RPUable. Your observation about sCO f/a's being absent after the meal service is nothing new. In fact, I had considered this normal, until I realized how much more "visible" sUA f/a's are in the premium cabins on domestic flights to and from HNL. Flying the 764 though beats flying sUA's domestic 777's and 767's to HNL.

zcat18

Very interesting--thanks for the report! I also flew a PMCO 76H recently, IAH-EZE as part of an award itinerary for our honeymoon. We were sitting in Y, seats 24 A & B, which were perfectly adequate under the circumstances. Boarding was through 1L, so I got a good look at the old "BusinessFirst" hard product, and I have to say that I hope nobody on that flight paid for J. To say that it's antiquated is an understatement. Am I correct in assuming, however, that the IAH-EZE flight had an international soft product, while IAD-HNL as reported here is operated as a domestic service? Also, is this service actually marketed as F on that HNL flight?

Thanks again for the intriguing report!

1P

Whenever I find a thread like this that is too wide to be viewed in a normal window because the photos are oversize, and the only way to read it is to keep scrollling across and back for every line, I simply don't read it at all. Can't be bothered to make the effort.

Is there any way of persuading people not to include such huge photos that the thread becomes unreadable?

DC777Fan

Me too, but I can't figure out how to re-size them...

Edit: just got it... as I said, this is a practice run

Jimgotkp

Typical service on US carriers... If only every FA had a sincere smile on their face and didn't give an attitude to the customers..

freeupgrade

Great trip report.

The FA who made the comment to your gf about the call button was extremely rude.

When you arrived at the gate and cabin door was open; I would have told that FA that her remark was completely unncessary and uncalled for.

Aloha and be sure to post a trip report for the return flight.

DC777Fan

Thank you. As I said it was a first attempt, so hopefully the HHV portions and return flight are a bit better.

It took a lot to not say something at the time to her. Given the circumstances: A) In F--where people often have work to do B) 2/3 of the cabin already had trays cleared and C) she was nowhere to be found until call button was pushed; I can't imagine how she thought it wasn't appropriate. We also pushed the button about halfway through to order Mai Tai's (which they didn't have), but it's not like we were laying on the call button all flight.

I'll have a chance to compare to HNL-ORD on Sunday, though given that this is an overnight flight, I'm not sure how visible/attentive the FAs will be--not really a fair comparison.

Also I was serious in OP about taking suggestions for a surprise V-Day trip. I'm thinking Spain (unfortunately Seville seems a bit cumbersome to get to from WAS), Paris (kinda cold) or Rome (she studied abroad there ~5 years ago)...

1P

Thanks so much for reducing the photos and the width!

Often1

This is pretty typical of UA's long-haul domestic F product. Only difference between TCON and HI is that HI gets a second meal while TCON gets a snack such as piece of fruit,chips and the like.

Kind of a good middle ground given that there's no demand for real intl.-style service on mainland-HI flights.

Tpa-flyer

I really liked reading this trip report, and am looking forward to reading your next one. Too bad about the FA/call button/remarks. I've never thought a FA's job was a piece of cake, but your requests were simply not unreasonable ones and should have been met with a professional attitude whether she was in the mood to provide customer service or not.

DC777Fan

Hilton Grand Waikikian

I won't spent too much time talking about HHV. Not much more can be said about it, but we did enjoy our time there. It was a pleasant 10-12 minute walk to more expansive shopping, dining, entertainment, etc.

I do highly recommend Alan Wong restaurant which we did on Saturday night. The food and drinks were great and instead of being a more generic "fine dining" restaurant, there was a definite Hawaiian flair to everything. Given that my sinuses were acting up and I didn't want to deal with swollen shut Eustachian tubes again on decent, I started a steroid course on Friday, so I was grateful that Alan Wong had a large non-alcoholic cocktail menu as well. I had some fruit, basil, mint drink and it was great. I wish I could remember exactly which fruits....

A few pics of our room at the HGVC Grand Waikikian... We had a "partial" ocean view room on the 32nd floor, so I'll start with a panorama from the room:




The 32nd floor is actually the top floor below the sales office and penthouse rooms, so it was a good location, but "partial ocean view" is perhaps a bit kind. I guess it's true, but...

I also didn't know that it is apparently constantly (as in 365 days a year all day) cloudy in the central part of the Oahu island as seen in the picture on the right.

I took a few more pics of the room on our way out, so pardon the mess as we were packing. HGVC rooms don't come with maid service on stays of 6 nights (not sure what the threshold is), though they do have a full kitchen with high end GE appliances. You can also request new towels, linens, trash service, etc and someone comes right up to take care of it for you.

The kitchen:


The dining nook:


The living room area:


The bedroom:


En suite tub + closet:


As far as the rest of the HHV, the shops and restaurants are very unexciting. It definitely needs a refresh in that department and lags severely behind Waikiki proper.

We also found that of all the pools, the most pleasant was the Kalia tower pool--located just outside from the spa on the 4th floor. The chairs were almost always 70%+ available, there were few kids at the pool, and the towels were available on the honor system. The rest of the resort uses the "towel card" system with 1 towel per person. You can also snag cold scented towels from the spa area for cooling off. So I highly recommend the Kalia pool at the HHV.

Kalia Pool Panorama (I was in the front row of the main bank of chairs, so most of the aforementioned empty chairs are behind me from this view):




Coming up: UA 200 HNL-ORD in F with pics (along with brief remarks about ORD-DCA in Y)

DC777Fan

HNL-ORD
777 Domestic
Seat 2B

All I can say is WOW what a difference a crew makes. This was a severely inferior hard product to the 76H, but a much, much more enjoyable flight. And even with it being a redeye, the FA's were much more visible and attentive.

We got to HNL around 4:30 after scoping the departures. With a lot of WB mainland flights in the evening, we thought it would be better to spend a few extra minutes in the RCC than in the security line...

At check-in, there was 1 person ahead of us in the vast expanse of priority lanes, so we queued up behind him, but not a single UA employee to be found. The coach/non-elite line was backed up almost to the Agriculture Dept screening, so they may not have even noticed that anyone was in the priority lines.

After 3-4 minutes, someone came over to service the gentleman in front of us, and it took another 5-6 minutes for him to be serviced.

When we got to the desk, I asked about the gold lane stamp since I read on FT that a Premier Access/F BP isn't enough for the TSA goons here. Unfortunately, she couldn't find the stamp. She told us "you may as well just wait in the security line instead of waiting for me to find the stamp... then at least these people can get checked in." I guess, but just kinda crummy service. Here we go again, I thought....

We decided to try the gold lane anyways, and were surprisingly not turned away. The regular line only looked 5-10 minutes long (vs 2-3 for gold), so not a huge loss if we'd gotten bounced.

Through security and a hard left and we arrived at the 2nd story RCC by gate 10.

It's a pretty standard UA club and MNF was on in the far side of the lounge area. Cheese and crackers, trail mix, carrots and ranch, AND fruit cups. Very exciting.

At about 6:45 we head down to the boarding gate for our 7:26 departure only to find the inbound GUM passengers juuuuust starting to disembark. This also shuts off half of the gate lounge with a rope which turns basically everyone who arrived after the rope went up into de facto gate lice.

10-15 minutes later and we were seated in the formerly roped off area and waiting for group 1 to be called. A couple next to us jumped up every single time someone got on the PA. Literally jumped up 1 minute after the "We'll start boarding in 10 minutes" announcement which was an announcement about sizing your bags to ensure they fit. At the end of that announcement, I think the GA had a laugh and said, "so again, we'll be boarding in 9 minutes or so."

Boarded through 1L with coach pax boarding through 2L was pleasant with a full load in F.

After being seated, we were immediately greeted by name by the purser who asked what we'd like to eat and drink. The choices were (again) beef or pasta, but she actually explained each dish without being asked. White wine for the gf and (no alcohol on steroids) Sprite for me. I wasn't about to mess with anything as my ears had a bit of trouble equalizing earlier in the day in the elevator.

We sat at the gate a VERY long time waiting for stragglers and departed almost an hour late at around 8:20.

FA's sprung into action when we made our initial climb. Purser, another female FA and a gentleman worked the F cabin throughout the flight. Cocktail and warm nuts followed by food trays sans Entrees and warm dinner rolls.

Tray as presented (minus roll which I ate before remembering to snap a pic):


Salad was the exact same as the outbound--though properly thawed this time. Shrimp were considerably larger (hard to be smaller than the 3000ct shrimp on the outbound) and cocktail sauce was actually pretty decent.

I got the "hoisin beef with asian noodles and grilled veggies":


...and my girlfriend got the pasta (forgot how that was described):


Food was pretty good. I tried the pasta and it was better than the outbound pasta. My beef dish was better than the pasta dish IMO and the "Asian noodles" weren't bad.

Coffee and tea were offered, but we both declined and tried to get some sleep. I'd have been a bit upset at the IFE if it weren't a redeye, as it was main screens only with 2 movies back to back, "MIB 3" and "What to Expect when you're Expecting."

I actually got some great sleep. Woke up several times and found my water cup 2/3 full every time (despite finishing most of it every time I woke up). FA also noticed me get up one time and asked if he could get me anything other than water. I declined and fell back asleep.

I woke up just as they were beginning to offer breakfast service, which we both took. It was a ham, egg & cheese croissant, fruit and yogurt. I got hot tea as well to try and help drain my sinuses as much as possible, though I was able to equalize pretty easily without it. The croissant wasn't very good, but the fruit and yogurt were fine. I also don't mind UA's tea.

Breakfast:


During breakfast we asked if there was any way to make hot milk for my girlfriend's Starbucks pumpkin spice powder mix. The purser told me they don't have microwaves but said "let me see if they have any ideas and I'll be right back." She came back with a jug of milk and empty mug and asked her how much she needed. Filled it up 3/4 of the way and said she would put it in the oven and hope for the best. 10-12 minutes later, she came back with a perfectly hot cup of milk which worked out wonderfully.

Landed shortly later, and ran down from B16 to B10 for immediate group 1 boarding for ORD-DCA.

I REALLY can't stress enough how incredible this FA crew was--each would've been best I've ever experienced individually. All three were completely on the whole time. The gentleman was the perfect level of "there but not intrusive" during the night portion--filling up the waters, noticing when pax woke up, and always asking what he can do. The purser and other female FA both super friendly and attentive as well throughout the service. Really exactly what you want in a FA crew. I hope the HNL route is the one they want, though I imagine it probably is, because they deserve to be servicing the route of their choice.

The purser was also genuinely upset that the breakfast set ups didn't come with spoons. I overheard her mentioning it to the others, and that she would put it in her report. Nice to see someone not just going through the motions...

ORD-DCA was uneventful, on time and a smooth ride. Slept through most of it, somehow.

Uber from DCA back home to Arlington was already waiting for us at door 3, priority bag tags actually worked again, and home after a great trip!

gonezen

Quick question: my wife and I are staying there end of this month. How much is parking? Did you rent a car? We figured with transfers from HNL and an overnight sidetrip to LIH, a car would almost pay for itself…not including HGW parking fees. Thx.