Losing my United religion

I took the Hunnybear express to LAX to board my full-fare morning flight to Dulles. I had called to confirm upgrades both ways on this overnight trip to give a talk on the future of E-Business. I headed straight for the Red Carpet Club, which seems to nave the nicest United agents at LAX, but there was a long line so I went directly to the gate. “Do you have your upgrade certs?” the nice young man asked me. “Do you ever give free upgrades to 1Ks traveling on $2200 fares?” I asked. “Not any more,” he said sadly, “not any more.” I handed him the certs as I mentioned to him that I thought United was doing a great job solving their problem of overcrowded flights by driving away customers.

The flight was in the two-class 767-300, which has the least comfortable First Class seats in the fleet. I had 1H, a bulkhead aisle with a private video monitor (but not personal videos, massages, or noise-canceling headsets). The flight did have laptop power. There was no preflight drink service because the lame excuse but we pushed back and took off right on time. When we were aloft the stewardesses passed out menus to the left half of the cabin. The purser Maria, who was very nice when interacting with me but disappeared for most of the flight, took my order first as a 1K and I selected the omelet rather than the two other carbo-bomb choices. I drank water throughout although it was refilled only once during the four-hour flight. I took my glass up myself once and refilled it right in front of several flight attendants who took no notice and made no effort to help as they dined on leftover First Class meals.

The movie was Frequency, a fractured fantasy film about a father and son who solve a serial murder through a ham radio penetrating a parallel universe via the Aurora Borealis. It wasn’t that bad actually. After the film they showed the usual bad sitcoms. I read my book Burning the Tables in Las Vegas by Ian Andersen instead. It was very good.

Toward the end of the flight they served a seafood bisque and chef’s salad but I passed because I wasn’t hungry and just grabbed a box of Godiva chocolates, which were one degree warmer than frozen—silverware temperature. The flight attendants congregated in the galley chatting for the rest of the flight, never thinking to stroll the aisles to see if any of the First Class passengers wanted anything.

We landed on time and my Hungarian driver Judith was at the gate to greet me. She whisked me via back roads and construction sites to the Lansdowne Resort, where the conference was. I checked in with a lovely young clerk who handed me the key to a room on the lowest floor. I winked and said, “Is this a good room?” “You know what?” she said, “It isn’t my best room,” and took the key back from me, replacing it with a room on the seventh floor with an eastern view. I thanked her for the upgrade but it was really just a small ordinary room on a high floor.

I went down and met with the event people and had a yummy chicken & salmon dinner (surf & cluck?) with an excellent crème brulee, which I sampled to be polite even though as a rule I don’t eat dessert. I fine-tuned my speech and got a good night’s sleep for my talk tomorrow morning.


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