SFO-ICN
UA893
747-400 - tail N199UA
11:25 - 15:25 (+1)
Seats 1A/1K

After reading ShF and other TRs on UA Global First, I had an idea of what to expect, but I tried to surprise the girlfriend. Reading excessive over the top TRs tends to set expectations a little too high. Apologies in advance as well, as I am not as trigger happy and my composition sucks. I need to start breaking out my dSLR and not have any shame taking cabin pics.

After checking out the FT UA 744 ultimate seat thread, we booked 1A/1K for SFO-ICN for our first real forward pointy nose experience. We've flown on LH C in a 744, but in row 4; you get to turn left at 1L, but not the true experience. I was very excited about being in the pointy part, but I also knew that there were no overhead bins over 1A/1K and that storage might be an issue. On the return from ICN back to SFO, 1A was occupied, so I initially booked 1K/2K. But after looking at the way the nose is curved and the setup, I changed to 3H/K.

We went from terminal 2 to the international terminal, about a 15 minute walk with nonroller bags. While almost to the gate, I checked the UA app and the flight was delayed by 10 or 20 minutes, so we decided to briefly stop by the Global First Lounge for a bottle of water and to look around.


the gf said no Ruinart for us, gotta board the aircraft. always anxious about missing the flight... more UA F club photos to come on the return.


nothing like a big ol 747 to take you across the Pacific! 2 jetways for boarding. lovin the metallic car windowshades in the cockpit. my windowshade on my windows were super hot, so I can definitely see the use.


boarding UA 747 thru 1L


getting situated in 1A. the open compartment against the wall can definitely hold an ipad mini, phone, pocket sand, headphones, etc.
note: no under footrest storage, just putting my bag there temporarily.


looking at 2a, 3a, 4a


front closet, about a foot wide. fit my duffel bag and a large longchamp bag. i was kind of concerned as some said that FAs might take the whole closet, but all they had were their blazers hung up.


more storage. bottom left, by where your right shoulder would be, has a compartment for water and things. on the bottom is a deep compartment all the way to the floor that can hold larger items.


the IFE wired remote, seat control, universal power plug in front, and a variety of connectors (headphone jack, USB, obsolete panasonic ipod conntector, ethernet jack )

We were graciously greeted by the Asian-American purser, who introduced herself with a handshake and welcomed us on the plane. Totally unexpected by my GF and I, but very nice. Our only experience seeing pax greeted was when we sat across from a GS in the upper deck in J. We were given sparkling wine PDB as well as menus while we were waiting to depart. I would say that the sparkling wine was probably champagne, but they came straight from the galley and the menu is crafty in not listing the actual wines.

Let us briefly examine the offerings in F:
Menu cover. Oooh, caprese salad, something that might actually be good on a plane and requires minimal preparation!




beef, chicken, OR fish? how extravagant!





After flipping thru the menu, we asked the purser take a photo of us in the nose. I think 2A or 3A might have been chuckling at us ; I was a little annoyed because I try not to be "that guy", but whatever, there's only one first time in F. Or maybe it was Tom Stuker, and he was recalling his first F trip back in the glory days of UA, and how we would never know what that's like. I definitely wouldn't want to fly 10 million miles on UA to find out...

Prior to takeoff, the flight deck got on the PA and actually encouraged use of channel 9, callsign United 893 Heavy! ^^^ Unfortunately, Channel 9 is going the way of the dodo/747/GF cabin as UA goes toward wifi/BYOD streaming IFE, but as an amateur avgeek, very awesome.

We finally pushed after a 35 minute delay.


old UA livery...cargo? i think the old charter 744 has different livery than this.


CX 870, 77W landing. Looking closely, I don't think the nose wheel is fully touched down, but the thrust reversers are activated? Didn't know you could do that!



Lining up on 28L. We took off to the Northwest over the peninsula, with a slow gradual ascent. The view thru 1A was, tbh, a little overrated. You could kind of see forward but not really.



Lunch
About 45 minutes after takeoff, lunch commenced.

Started with warm nuts and a proper bread plate.

App: Coconut chicken skewer plus tabbouleh and an eggplant-mango sauce. Sauce was a little bizzare but the chicken was crispy.


Soup: French onion. Is this really what distinguishes GF from BF? Tasted enough like grueyere. Not bad.


Salad. Yum. mini mozzarella balls make everything better, as does creamy peppercorn.


Skewered beef, bok choy, steamed long grain american rice. The beef was tenderloin, pretty good, tasty sauce, wish there was more bok choy. However, the presentation is...lacking, to say the least...unless you're comparing it to the domestic UA "asian beef with noodles". And you would think on a Korean flight they would use korean rice, but at least it isn't Uncle Ben's.


The girlfriend ordered the chicken, taste unremarkable. The mains that we had on CX J easily beat UA. (pix to come!)


I skipped the cheese and port (semi lactose intolerant) for the ice cream sundae. Fantastic as always.

Food wise, I guess I will sum it up by saying that my girlfriend, who has only flown UA C once and who doesn't look at very many trip reports, actually commented that the food in F was essentially BusinessFirst with soup. Beverage wise, the wine was...drinkable? My palate isn't fully developed enough to differentiate Franzia from a 3 buck Chuck, but I've had enough decent wine to tell that Doug Frost is working with a very very tight budget.

Service-wise, the FAs were forgetful, but nice and grandma-like, for lack of a better term; for example, I had to repeat my drink order (coffee, cream and sugar) twice, then they forgot the cream. And on the breakfast service they gave me the wrong entree. Not malignant bad but just...not good, not bad enough to complain to someone, a very awkward level of disappointment. I wish there was a better way for airlines to allocate service staff on long haul flights outside of purely using seniority, but the unions would never go for an actual quality metric, that would make too much sense.

IFE and amenities

In terms of IFE, UA has a decent selection. Channel 9, audio playlists but no individual albums (kind of annoying as it's just 1 big mp3 and you can't really see individual songs, more like radio), TV shows, movies, and some games.

The movie selection was pretty good, in particular I recall 22 Jump Street, The Fault In Our Stars, Captain Phillips, The Neighbors, Chef, a couple foreign movies, a lot of popular movies that were relatively recent.. Additionally, this UA 747-400 had international wifi for around 16-18 bucks, plus free streaming wifi entertainment. Of note, briefly scanned thru the streaming wifi, and there are different movies for streaming IFE, more classics (e.g. Top Gun, The Godfather 1/2/3, etc).

I got up and took a walk around, I didn't have the heart to go past J, but I know that these old birds have awful E+/E with no IFE. I think the last time I did such a thing, they had projectors with VHS quality?

Once channel 9 went off, I watched 22 Jump Street (3/4 stars, predictable but a lot better than other comedy sequels like hangover 2) and The Fault In Our Stars (2/4, predictable and formulaic, if it wasn't for my mini crush on shailene woodley i might have fallen asleep. GF says 4/4, predictable with lots of emotions!!! n.b. pretty sure GF cried at the ending, confusing the FA who was bringing her more wine. don't mix alcohol and sad young adult films.

Afterwards, I asked the FA to set up my bed and I went to the lav and changed into a t shirt and PJs. The UA F lav is pretty much a normal sized lav, with the same J class amenities (philosophy face spray, face cleanser, and lotion). I really like the face spray, definitely need to keep refreshed and it has a generic nice smell to it.

The F amenity kit itself is a decent set of kit; trifold, mesh pockets, able to be hung from a hook, definitely boring but way more practical than the rimowa F amenity kits on TG/BR/LH and whatnot. Packed in the kit are mints, purell, facewipes, a mini face spray, hand cream, chapstick, toothbrush/toothpaste, mouthwash, comb, pen, eye mask, and other things that I can't specifically remember.


Came back to the mattress pad added. Not bad!

I slept for 3 hours, and woke up almost sweating Normally I'm an exit row kind of guy with vents turnt while on the ground until it cools off. So being under a duvet in the nose, on the westbound flight with the sun beating down on my side of the plane, with no vents...not as fun as I hoped. And if it's warm on UA...how much hotter is it going to be when I fly CX or SQ F?

I walked around to cool off and also got a drink; FAs put out lame sandwiches on a cart, pass. I tried to go back to bed with minimal success; fell asleep off an on for two hours, and then woke up to meal service going on around me.

2nd meal service around T-90 minutes:
choice of omelet or chicken noodle soup




"it was like every other airplane omelette potato broccoli thing that i've ever had"


I always fall for the Asian option on UA, and always get disappointed. Noodles would have been a more appropriate late night snack. Wontons were terrible, as the filling was shredded cabbage with too much MSG. Noodles were a little soft. Soup was extra salty generic asian chicken broth. Honestly, I can and do a lot better with a hot water maker, a pack of shin ramyun, and some trader joe's frozen dumplings.

Another sidenote, the airline food apologists really bother me. Obviously you can get almost always get a much better meal on the ground and there are clear limitations to what one can do at FL 350. But at the same time, when you see TRs on other international airlines in F/J, the classic airline food jokes just don't hold up. I don't expect modern american or super authentic korean, especially on UA, but if you're going to attempt premium service, they could do a hell of a lot better.

Landing
Seatbelt and shoulder harness on, I turned on channel 9 and got to hear our flight crew awkwardly communicate with Incheon Control. Kind of scary as an ugly American when you see how close you are to North Korea on the IFE map, and the total avoidance of going anywhere near the airspace.


lots of scratches



touchdown incheon

Summary:

Traveling with my girl, UA J would be fine (we've flown the UA 744 upper deck prior), I definitely wouldn't pay extra and don't mind being in close quarters. Comparing the cash price of a proper non-mistake UA A fare, it's actually MORE expensive than an SQ or OZ discount F ticket, by a couple thousand dollars (about 10k AI on SQ/OZ versus 14k AI on UA). The only justification I can think of is price-insensitive flyers who have to fly a US flag carrier in F (what a rough life!), or frequent flyers on UA who don't know that SQ/OZ are in star alliance.

I know that UA is probably planning on dropping Global First like a bad habit, but I feel it's not successful due to bad corporate behavior and circular logic (cramped hard product, filling F with nonrevs and upgrades, poor catering/staff, and then saying that because only upgrades and nonrevs fly in F, there's no money to be made, justifying subpar service).

I am certain some of you think the spoiled brat is great with this one, but I don't think it's that irrational to expect the best when you're flying in First, even on UA. It's not that I hate UA, it's that they could do so much better! We are thankful that we did get to try it, since it was a great fare and on a classic, aging, soon-to-be obsolete aircraft. but you'd be out of your mind to choose this if you had better options available.

tl;dr: honestly, the best part of this flight was being in 1A/1K and the amenity kit. worst part, forgetful FAs and catering.

Next: CX ICN lounge and ICN-HKG on CX