Originally Posted by
Amil
its an award ticket so thats why im sticking with Star Alliance options. Would 1 hour 45 minutes be a tight layover? grr didnt think about the weather delay but the past week all shows on time.
I fly out of SFO, and it is not unusual to have the fly control planes (and LAX-SFO is one of the first routes that is subject to flow control) be 2-3 hours late. The SFO-SDY will likely go out on time, but that does not help you if you are not in SFO due to a delay ex-LAX. Certainly in the winter I would not want less than a 2.5 hour SFO connection. Shorter is probably ok in the late spring/fall when there is less risk of weather.
Bottom line, SFO is a delay prone airport, and not one that I would want to connect in, particularly if doing so added 4+ hours to the trip just to get a better seat, but the same old sucky UA service.
Put another way, if it was a Polaris plane (direct aisle) vs. ex-CO bird with the last gen seats, I would always go with the Polaris seats, but the length of delay you would need to be sure nothing bad happened (2-3 hours min) would make it not worthwhile in my book.
As others have said, if you want the "travel experience" then take the ANA option in F, they have great lounge in Japan. If you have not done that, do that for hte experience. Nothing about UA is an "experience" (in a good way that it is) at best UA is reasonably comfortable transportation in J.