Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy

Last week, I bought one of the ~$500 RT EWR-HNL tickets for a departure the very next day. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly (which I sent a letter to Customer Relations about). As you're reading this, note I am a CO Platinum Elite with no status whatsoever on UA (though I did fly UA extensively prior to switching to CO about 9 years ago).

The good:

1. I got Economy Plus on all segments.

2. Most flights (except the most important one) were on time.

3. United employees at EWR are every bit as useful and chipper as they've been historically known to be (at its height in the late 1990s, UA's EWR operation was easily the best outstation of any airline in North America).

4. Losing my legacy airline Buy on Board virginity wasn't bloody. It was somewhat painful, to be sure, but United took it slow and easy with me (allowing me time to work up the nerve to go all the way on my flight to San Francisco). By the final segment, DEN-EWR, BOB was almost fun to fool around with.

5. To a T, United employees are enthusiastic about the possibilities the merger with Continental will bring.

The bad:

1. I only had 5 hours originally scheduled in Hawaii before heading home.

2. United agents in LAX and HNL are a generally unhelpful lot.

3. United routes the a/c that operates UA083 LAX-HNL from ORD.

The ugly:

1. United 83 got caught up in the tornadic madness of ORD. The flight ended up taking a 6+ hour delay - in fact, it hadn't even arrived at the gate in HNL before I boarded my HNL-DEN flight.

2. I was rebooked onto UA935, which departed ~ 2.5 hours later than the scheduled time of UA83 and was oversold in Economy. The agent originally gave me an E- middle seat, but switched me to an E+ window seat upon asking. Unfortunately, it was one of the few rows without an actual window, so no ability to ooh and ahh on approach into Hawaii.

3. Agents in LAX and HNL were unwilling to extend my time in HNL at all to make up for the time lost due to the mess of UA83. So, I had all of 2.5 hours at HNL airport, had two mai tais in the UA HNL RCC, bought some souvies for the family, then began the 5,000 mile track back to NJ.

So I've been to Hawaii, but I haven't "been" to Hawaii.