Originally Posted by
trooper
Wonder how their freight loads are? They may not care too much about the empty seats?
Exactly, but I didn't think to ask.
Originally Posted by
smanch
200 empty seats... crazy. Talk about inefficiency!!
A big downside of UA916 for me is the early departure time; I end up hardly sleeping at all on that flight even when in Polaris. But I can't imagine that's contributing all that much to the totally empty planes. Weird.
Yes, it was crew who told me about the 200 empty in the back and invited me for a walk to take a look. Crew were happy though, almost no work.
And since you mentioned sleeping, 917 to AKL was perfect and given UA food, I opted to sleep instead and that Polaris bedding gave me an outstanding 11 hours. Gel pillow is just fantastic. Sure, the NZ memory foam mattress is awesome. There are obviously also different seat and sleep format designs between NZ, AC, AA, and UA - all of whom I fly on Pacific and South Pacific routes.
As for the 916 departure time, it's not an issue if perhaps you start out in AKL, I was connecting and this nonsense I went through in June and yesterday with the extra security at the gate (in that long walk to the satellite gates), plus my limited connection time, made it good timing and a cardio workout for me, but otherwise annoying.
BTW, prior to airport control, the UA 916 J seat map showed half empty cabins (2x 30 J). Some seats filled up at the gate as I was told empties would go to UA GS and UA 1K etc.