After lots of haggling and nearly 3 hours on the phone with GS, I got on LH to India, all of the way on 11/16.

This is really pathetic. I was told that the transpac flights have been delayed several times last week. I think UA is in big problems now.

But you are right. If I were a normal 1K, I wouldn't have gotten a thing. There were a bunch of people at the airport (I still had to go to the GS counter at T6 in LAX to get my ticket changed over to LH), who were told they would now have to overnight at Tokyo and would be given a hotel room at Narita. I bet they were in for a rude surprise when they got there. All morning on 11/16, UA kept insisting that the flight NRT-SIN would be held in NRT because they were 32 pax on the LAX-NRT flight, connecting onwards to SIN.

By the way, UA kept insisting that the inbound aircraft into LAX, which would have been my outbound UA 891 to LAX, would depart at 1240 PM. I knew this would be impossible, with the inbound aircraft arriving at 1122 pm. Last time I checked, the UA 891 on 11/17 was due in at 6:20 PM in to NRT, about 1 - 1 1/2 hours after the connecting flight to SIN departed that day.

After a long time, I did get a chance to experience the service in LH C after a long time. Some things were better than UA, others were not. But I think this may be the way to go for me in the future.

I went from BKK to ORD and then was supposed to travel back from LAX to SIN all on UA C, upgraded in advance to NF. Out of 4 UA intl segments, would you believe that I was on only 1 UA Intl flight, NRT-BKK.