NH service didn't matter much to me for such a short haul--I didn't even use the lav. Even if it was NRT-LAX, I'd rather fly UA than NH for its E+, but as a window pax I don't like the GPS-dark 787. I guess I'll be back to flying HNL-GUM or SFO. (Ch9 over Alaska, Russia and China was interesting!)
We had already used NH PNRs to select seats, but the real problem was UA NRT-LAX seat locking up in the last 24 hours, which wouldn't happen if it was an all-UA itin. Nevertheless, there was a day-before panic with HKG-NRT, as our A+B became A+C, which I thought meant across the aisle. Turned out they changed the 767 mapping from AB-CDE to AC-DEF.
For NRT-LAX, my father was obviously in a "white" seat, but was kicked by the computer at about T-16h up to E+ a few rows from me. So I tried to move him to B/C next to my A. When we left the NH counter at 0745 we were hungry and didn't want to hang around at the UA counter until 0800 (EWR: 1100) or walk to UC which wasn't the one we wanted to visit. Eventually the seat change was done when we reached the regular NRT UA counter after getting off the bus (B/C were still empty). We wanted to try the NH lounge, having both been to the UC. Two taking ABC in E+ was nice.
He had no HK data plan on his old Samsung so he tried to connect to SQ lounge's wifi. The password/login mechanism (which was fine for my iPhone) took him to Chrome which blocked the "hijack attempt". OK, I had an hour and 0.3 GB left so I turned on my hotspot, except mobile signal was too weak to share. This wouldn't happen at the UA/TG loft.
Due to where we stay in HK we mostly take the bus, so AE in-town bag check isn't much useful. But last time I flew late evening BR TPE-HKG that downtown bag check was a lot nicer than HKG--you're not even obligated to use the train!
And I'd rather go through one (SFO) or two (GUM/HNL) TSA Pre checkpoints than a regular NRT check. As I said I haven't tried/am not sure how much seat/bag trouble westbound UA-NH can be, zero checkpoints after LAX surely beats one.