Comments are very much appreciated and welcomed. 
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[url=http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/products/premieraccess/default.aspx]
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Routing for this 15-hour cross-country adventure.
United Airlines First Class with the 757-200s of PMUA FLL-ORD-IAD-FLL
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FOREWORD
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United Airlines is certainly a controversial corporation in today's post deregulation aviation industry. CO supporters loathe the new airline and their employment practices, while UA lovers lament the loss of the Saul Bass tulip and Jeff Smisek. Just last week, United announced $600,000,000 USD of losses in the first fiscal quarter of 2014, with the shareholders leaving the stock call with less than tarnished feelings.
Love it or hate it, this trip report will document my journey on the pre-merger United 757-200s.
Why? The three 752s in this report are from the pre-merger United Airlines, as in, 757s delivered to United and painted in Tulip livery before the arrival of the omnipresent golden globe. I can't seem to find the original post, but someone mentioned here on ANET that the "May 3rd FLL-ORD 752 is a one-off event". From what I can tell, they are soon to be retired from service, replaced by Airbii or 739s. These old girls have no IFE, but they do have channel 9. Looking at the United fleet page on Google, it seems I was right: some of the domestic 752s are marked for complete retiration and are going to be sent to Victorville to be scrapped.
This route, FLL-ORD-FLL, ranges from around $600 in First during the slow winter months and up to $1,500 in July. When searching for flights I was initially trying to get a routing involving a lie-flat internationally configured BusinessFirst 757 with a splash of some Silver Airways S340s mixed in. To do that I would have to go to Newark, connecting through Orlando.
Since I did a lot of hard work trying to find out which routes the BusinessFirst 752s run on, I shall share it here so it won't go to waste:
EWR-MCO
EWR-ORD
EWR-DEN
DEN-EWR
MCO-EWR
ORD-EWR ( also operates on a three class international 763 occasionally)
EWR-IAH
IAH-EWR
ORD-IAH
IAH-ORD (
this flight is also served by a frequent 787)
The routing would be FLL-MCO-EWR-MCO-FLL, with two Saab 340s, a 739, and a BusinessFirst 752. But the cost was $1,200 which wasn't so bad, but I figured I could get a better deal for my money. My reasoning behind this is that there is routings with one-time pricing that doesn't occur very common, if at all. Looking at the fare calender for FLL-ORD, May 3rd was listed "$715 USD, one stop" What stop, I asked? Turns out it was IAD.
A week later I looked at the prices again and the routing for FLL-ORD-IAD-FLL in United First Class had dropped to $675. Right then I decided to buy it, as we all know by now, UAs' domestic 752s are only disappearing from service and that price was waaay too good to pass up. The BusinessFirst 757/Saab 340 combination looked attractive, but I can do that pretty much every day of the week.
Every now and again United offers me an sweet deal. Here we get one more flight in first for $11 USD!
Picking my seats for FLL-ORD after checkout.
Along with this flight is the fact that I'm trying to bridge my Delta/SkyTeam alignment with a Star Alliance frequent flier program. I hope to reach United Silver by the end of the year, and in order to do that I need to get 23 more active segments on Star Alliance flights and/or 25,000 MileagePlus revenue miles. I'm hoping that I can do several more Intrafloridian flights on Silver Airways and maybe a few legs on United First, which grants a bonus of 150% miles and 1.5 active flight segments. What does everyone think the preferable option would be? (I was pretty disappointed to find out US Airways had switched to the OneWorld Alliance earlier this week. That Envoy report may or May not happen to that end....)
Now, for the report!