My Station in Life

I was one of the last passengers to board the plane and was very surprised when I discovered that only three other passengers occupied the 10 seat F cabin. I recognized a couple of the JFK based crew but was not familiar with the FA working the F cabin. As she was serving my pre-departure drink, she asked me where I was "stationed." I wondered briefly whether revenue passengers have become so rare in some of these three class F cabins that it would engender this type of expectation. But my big fat body doesn't exactly resemble standard FA morphology and if I were a UA mechanic, I would be somewhat surprised if the FAs would even want to talk to me at all given recent events. So I guess she must have noticed the "United Will Stand" pin that had so effectively distracted the check-in agent two hours earlier.

After takeoff, I sipped a gin and tonic but it seemed rather weak for my tastes. Ironically, I actually can't stand the taste of gin so the only way I know that a drink has the right stuff is if I grimace when I drink it. This was the first time in many years in which I have started a JFK flight where I wasn't already three gins to the wind so I decided that I needed to rectify this situation ASAP. So I asked the FA to bring me tonic, ice and several Tanqueray bottles and to kindly replenish when empty.

Its Operational

Just as lunch service was about to begin, another passenger marched into F from the C cabin and helped himself to a seat in the middle section of row 2. Can you imagine the nerve of someone trying to sit in F when they shouldn't be there? As the purser and I made eye contact, I motioned him over. He explained that the passenger was a 1K that was sitting next to a "fidgety" seat mate and they decided to rectify the situation by giving him an op upgrade to F.

I bet the purser expected me to be very angry at the fact that someone had been upgraded for free whereas passengers such as myself either purchased their seats with dollars, miles or upgrade certs. But instead, I told him that I thought it was an excellent idea and that UA should consider doing things like that more often!

Lunch included an appetizer comprised of well cooked "rare" tuna with wasabi, followed by paella, washed down with a so-so pinot noir and some more gin. The FA served a salad with parmesan peppercorn dressing, which was individually ladled out, just like in the olden days of fine service. UA even remembered to load a pepper mill so I didn't need to use the one I always bring along just in case I need some emergency fresh ground pepper. As I was about to eat the salad, the purser noticed that the course had been served in the wrong order and asked the FA to take it away and serve the soup first. The soup was a somewhat salty squash soup that wasn't as good as when I had enjoyed it on previous flights.

Impersonal Videos

As is usual on these old 762s, the personal videos didn't operate very well at all. Between tracking and audio glitches I wound up spending most of the time listening to MP3s. It was either that or suffer through "Spy Kids II", which was taking up space on the main screen. I usually wrap up these flights with a couple of glasses of Grand Marnier but none had been loaded. So I had to make do with a few white Russians, which were actually quite tasty.

We landed in SFO a little early and I bid adieu to the crew and what will probably be my last employee class trip for quite some time. Even if I were willing to continue paying for this service as I have done so frequently over the past few years, there are widespread rumors that UA is planning to deploy 757s on this route next year. And I guess that will end the entire concept of "Premium" transcon service once and for all, at least in the SFO market. It was a very fine service indeed a few years ago but the only premium aspect remaining is the price.

As I started walking down the jetway, the FA smiled and said to me "you're quite the little drinker aren't you?" What can I say, since joining FlyerTalk three years ago, I have learned from some of the best.

The sh*ttle flight from SFO to PDX was fairly uneventful. The good news was that it was an A320 that had not devolved into an A319, an event that seems to be a very frequent occurrence with UA. This was of more than passing importance to me because I was assigned seat 3D and the A319 only houses two rows of F seats. On the slightly negative side, they didn't have any gin at all! It was not that I actually needed to drink any more at this point but I had wanted to add a couple more bottles to the "wall of gin" that I have been building in my apartment.

19 Miles Fewer

The following morning, when I checked my Mileage Plus account, it seems that I was awarded a 25% class of service bonus for the JFK segment, netting a total of 6919 miles for this trip. However, by my calculations, the original itinerary via IAD, including the 100% 1K bonus, should have yielded a total 6938 miles and an additional 333 status miles. I wonder whether I should call Mileage Plus and ask them to credit me with the missing 19 miles from my original itinerary.

Although it certainly got off to a very bumpy start, this trip turned out to be a very fitting way to wrap up an extremely busy travel year, which included the attainment of Million Mile status in June and the parking of my butt in UA metal for 195,000 miles. Sometimes I feel like such a wimp for not flying the extra 5000 miles to attain 200K but I cannot honestly say that there are any real concrete incentives for doing so.

In any case, although service in F and C really has declined quite precipitously over the last couple of years, for my $230 fare, my last trip of the year was certainly worth every penny.


[This message has been edited by LarryU (edited 12-16-2002).]