We did it.

We went all the way.

I couldn't help myself.

Everything has changed now, though, and I'm not sure what to do. I can't go on like this, torn between the two of them, I have to choose.

I didn't mean for it to turn out this way.

Yes, I'd had my eye on him for months, but it was harmless fantasy, it didn't mean anything, right? It was April the first time I thought about him. My partner and I were having some troubles, but I thought we could surely get through them, I'd learn to adapt to his changes. How did it end up getting this far??

I didn't do anything about it for months. Not until the big fight in October. Both of us said things we knew we'd regret, but it was just too much to bear. He just didn't care about me anymore, and I knew I was worthy of finding someone who did. So, right after the big fight, I asked for this new guy's number.

How excited I was when he gave it to me! He even gave me his private, direct line. He made it clear that he would make me feel special, and I needed that.

We went on our first date the next week, and it was amazing. It was so short, and over before I knew it, but I couldn't beleive how nervous I was!! I didn't know where to go or what to do, I was like a schoolboy!! But, even in that short time, I enjoyed things that were but a memory with my partner and I. Just sharing a Coke was pure heaven!

I didn't see him again for a few weeks afterwards. Not that I didn't want to, but when you've been together with someone for so long, it's not like you just unwind all your commitments on a dime. My partner and I had planned a lot together in November, and I had to follow thorugh with it.

I hated it. Everything that annoyed me before enraged me now. I couldn't help but compare them to each other at every chance, and the fight wasn't fair. I knew it was over, but couldn't tell him yet, it was just a matter of time.

It seemed like a lifetime, but finally last night we had another date, and we both knew it was but a prelude to today. Today we knew we'd go beyond childish dates and share something real.

Sure enough, today I went all the way and flew American from San Francisco to Chicago, my first long-range flight on American in years. It's a total slap in the face to my old partner United to do this on his turf, but I had to know.

Am I doing the right thing?

Oct 29 - AA828 LAX-SJC
Like I said, I was soooo nervous for this, our first date. I didn't think I would be, but when I got there, I realized I knew nothing about flying on AA. I was running late, and realized I didn't even know what terminal to go to! I finally called and figured that one out, but everything in the airport was laid out differently, and I felt like a total novice traveller. How cocky I had been with my years of UA experience, and I realized I had to learn everything all over again.

It culimnated in my finally making my way to the Platinum check-in line (getting his number was my comp), and getting discombobulated when a woman offered to let me check-in at the self checkin lines. I guess I mumbled something about wanting to checkin with an agent since I hadn't flown AA before, but she then wanted to send me to the regular line. Somehow, I managed to figure out what she was talking about and let her know I was Platinum, but I realized later that I was flying F anyway, so it didn't matter.

The agent was very nice and helped me figure out where to go next and welcomed me to the airline. Being bad never felt so good!

Now, at this point, I already realized that the gate and terminal areas were looking incredibly dumpy by UA standards, but I was willing to overlook all that. I figured that part of it was being in the short-haul terminal of AA. After all, the Shuttle gates were probably dumpy too!

On board, I couldn't overlook the ugliest seats I've ever seen!! At least the old UA seats just look old, but I can't imagaine when anyone thought these F seats looked good. They, simply put, looked weird and uncomfortable. I was relieved to sit down and realize that they were comfortable enough, but don't think I'll ever get over the ugliness and bizarre curves and protrusions where none belong.

Once I got over the shock of the ugliness of the seats, I had a new shock to deal with, and that was the emptiness of the seats! There have only been 2 occasions on UA in which I can recall empty F seats. Once was on a nearly empty positioning flight from DFW-LAX, in which they upgraded the entire cabin, and still had left-over F seats. The other was my first post-9/11 flight (Sept 18th). Plenty of empty seats everywhere. But here was row after row of F seats on a short-hop, and tons of empty seats!!

It was a good thing, too, as my ugly seat was also broken. It kept reclining on its own and wouldn't stay up (You know I wanted to do a Viagra joke in the opening vignette, but restrained myself ). I was able to reseat myself and had a great flight.

Two last thigns to mention. One was the wonderful feeling of asking for and receiving a Coke, and the other is the unbelievable beauty of the flight from LA to San Jose. Every time you looked out the window, a picture postcard was looking back. Either mountains or the ocean or just the way the clouds found the perfect spot to sit, it was breathtaking.

Oct 31 - AA851 SJC-LAX
No great insights into the differences between AA and UA on this flight. I was still nervous and unsure of myself, as I declined the upgrade with an eye towards sampling the much ballyhooed MRTC, but then, in my confusion, I ended up taking an exit row seat, which defeated the purpose! (It certainly can't be bad however, that in 4 flights so far, I have not managed to get a non-premium seat, despite my actual desire to have one!).

my UA flights in November
I don't ever want to see the movie Signs again. Please make it stop!!!

Dec 15 - AA1942 LAX-SFO
I actually booked my flight to Chicago from SFO as we had intended to drive to SFO for a long weekend with some friends, but that fell through after I had my tickets finalized. So, it was spend $1000+ to change my outbound routing to leave from LA, or $150 to book a flight to SFO. Yeah, that's what I'd choose too.

My only big insight this trip was the frequency with which I am seeing festival seating for many gates combined on AA. At UA, you pretty much only see common seating for multiple gates in a few places like the ends of ORD-C or the far gates of LAX-7 and particularly 6. On AA, I have seen them for every flight! Is this the way AA works, or have I just had a weird sample?

Well, it was particularly annoying this time, as my flight was delayed about an hour and a half due to the weather in SFO. The airline was very forthcoming with information, even telling us that SFO was only operating with one runway, and that was screwing up everything all day long.

The seating arrangement, though, meant that I had to cram myself between 2 people to work on my laptop to make use of the time, and there was no hope of a quiet space to myself near an outlet.

The flight itself was fine, but a bit bumpy on approach (as expected) and we clearly must have been circling as the 1 hour flight seemed to take forever. The captain may have said something informative, but I couldn't hear a word of any of the announcements from my exit row seat in row 21.

Oh, one more thing, I did put my Platinum bag tags on my luggage for this trip, and it was nice that when I took a little longer to get to baggage claim (I was trying to send an email since I was now running late for a meeting in wich someone else would have to use by background notes), they paged me by name to retrieve my luggage which had already been pulled from the carousel as I was waiting, looking over baggage from a later flight. It does seem that AA baggage handling is much faster than UA's, and the PLAT tag must have meant something, as there weren't pages for the others who had baggage sitting there.

Dec 16 - AA1486 SFO - ORD
Thanks FlyerTalk! This was where I really got some mileage from my FlyerTalk connections! I had booked this flight with the wonderful Business Class seat in coach anomaly. Now, UA would never permit such a flagrant benefit to its customers. I recall a time when UA was screwing with its fleet a lot and ended up flying 747's from DEN-LAX, and they went ahead and sold C as C. What a load of crap.

Speaking of crap, that brings us right back to those god-awful monstrosities that AA calls seats. Even the Sleeper seats looked spooky, ugly, and weird!! The legroom was on par with UA's business class, but that was it as far as AA getting any points on the seating.

Even the controls were ugly and not terribly functional. I tried to increase my lumbar support only to find that the lumbar lever only releases lumbar support, so I immediately deflated the lumbar cushion and never had it back the whole flight (anyone want to explain how this works?). I don't even want to try the sleeper seats, as I took a look on my way out and saw what looked like a 1950's Department of Defense interface to control the chair. Advantage UA (pardon the pun).

The legrest was much shorter than UA's, and was of no benefit to me whatsoever, since at 6'5" it left me with my knees bent at a 90-degree angle when the legrest was fully extended.

I was very surprised to see no personal video in the Business Class product. Even F didn't have it (although their screen was bigger and better than ours). All in all, a dramatically inferior product. It led me to wonder if UA's troubles are really that they spent too much money bringing too much luxury to market. If so, that's too bad, because UA would be worth a premium to AA in this respect.

But, again, I was techincally in coach, so let's get back to the coach product. Now, I won't bash the Bistro meal. UA offers nothing better in their box lunch (although, you do get a napkin), and I do immediately see the benefits to both me and the airline in having me grab my own meal (depsite the hassle of managing it with all the other carry-on stuff).

For me, I don't have to sit there looking like an idiot during the interminable wait between meal and beverage service on UA, and I assume the airline is able to shrink the size of the galley more than UA is since they don't have to stow meals.

Now, I will bash the beverage service, and I'll bash it hard. I was so thrilled with getting Coke on my earlier flights that I didn't notice I wasn't getting a can of Coke (12 ounces), but a 3.5 ounce cup of Coke. If I did notice it, I'm sure I immediately chalked it up to the fact that we were on 50 minute flights, and it didn't make sense to give the whole can, since they start picking up the moment they're done distributing the drinks.

But this time, I got my cup, and was surprised to not get the can. Not half as surprised as I was when she wouldn't give me the can when I asked for it!! She said she'd have to check after the service to see if there was enough left over! I was too stunned to respond and off she went.

Now, I'm the guy who drinks Coke so fast at restaurants that the server automatically brings a bigger glass for the third round, as they know they'll wear out their shoes otherwise. There was simply no way I was going to be able to stretch 3.5 ounces of Coke over the entire Bistro meal (bet you never thought you'd hear the word "entire" used in conjunction with a Bistro meal!).

Sure enough, half-way through the sandwich, I had already eaten all the ice and had a bone-dry cup in front of me. I waited a little while to see if she was coming back, and then finally I craned my neck around to see... no cart in the aisle. She had forgotten about me. So, I hit the call button for the first time in years, and in reponse I hear... nothing. Total silence, no reassuring "Bing!" I see that the light above me is on, so I figure it sounded in the galley or something, so I wait.

and I wait...

and I wait...

After 5 minutes (it felt like 10, but I'll assume it was only 5), I try the button again, clearing the first call and issuing a new one. Still nothing. Finally, after another 5 or 10 minutes I realize that I had better finish my sandwich dry, as every minute was just making it crustier.

Right as I choked down the last dry, crusty bite, the cart appears next to me, and I figure she has returned triumphant with my Coke. No such luck, she had totally forgotten about me and only had the trash cart, no beverages (except water, OJ, and coffee on top). When I ask her about the Coke, she says it's in the back, but then goes ballistic when my seatmate also wants one. She makes it abundantly clear that she loathes his very exisitence and that, once again, the soft drinks aren't on this cart, so he can't have one. When he makes it abundantly clear that she can go get one, she vanishes.

Another 5-10 minutes later (while I'm thinking I should have at least got the water), she reappears with, to her credit, 2 cups of Coke for us, but then flees the scene before anyone else can ask her for anything. We never see her again.

Last unpleasantness surrounded the movie. Now, it's not like I was dying to see Spy Kids II. In fact, I had never heard of Spy Kids I, so I was a tabla rasa of cinematic expectations. But I couldn't beleive that AA still charges for headset rental!! They wanted $2.00, which I would have begrudgingly given them, but it was too much hassle to try to dig out my wallet from my carryon and deal with the whole thing while she glowered about having to wait for me. So I didn't watch the movie. This whole charging for headset rental thing always seemed stupid to me, and I hate that AA is still doing it, although, at least it is cheaper than the $5 UA used to charge.

I did miss Channel 9, but it is so inconsistently available, that its not like I'd come to expect it anymore anyway.

So, I've gone all the wAAy with AA now, and, as is so often the case in life, everything is different. I don't feel special anymore and I wonder if I've done the right thing.

I don't fly enough to screw around for long. I requalified for 1P on UA in November, so I can fly either airline, but I have to choose one by the end of January or else I won't have enough miles to requalify the following year.

So, how typical was my AA experience today? It was a dramatically inferior product to UA's, but then again, UA may not be able to provide that product anymore anyway.

I didn't mean for it to turn out this way.