I traveled through ORD today, (only my second time in ORD, I do mostly coast to coast) and I noticed a few things that struck me as interesting.

1. Sitting in the international terminal food court for a short lunch, I was approached by an employee of JAL, who asked if I was a passenger for the noon flight to Tokyo. No, but thank you for asking, says I. Then I notice that JAL has sent no less than 3 of its employees to the area, courteously asking diners and customers in the nearby duty free shop the same question -- clearly their job being to herd the last passengers toward the gate for departure.

I was quite impressed with this -- talk about looking out for your customers. OK, I admit that on a Sunday, with a pretty empty terminal, this isn't such a difficult thing to do. Also, with only one flight that day (maybe?), they can take a lot more time to do these niceties. But, what a great feeling to know that they're watching out for you, whereas upon transferring to terminal 1, it was obvious that airline personnel would rather you not be at the gate in order to reduce their workload... I can't imagine any domestic airline sending personnel out to bring customers to the gate.

2. ORD (UA) has the most hierarchical of check-in services -- separate lines for Premier/Silver, PremierExec/Gold, and 1K, in addition to First, Business, passengers with bikes, passengers with animals/small children, etc... This was nice, since most airports have only a combined premier line. No waiting from what I could see in the exec lines, while if you were one of the poor masses in regular economy, both domestic & econ, be prepared to wait until Y2K.

The advantage gained at Premier lines is dampened somewhat by the 5-minute wait at
security -- they really need to work on this. Certainly it's a function of the large number of passengers through this terminal, but this wait at security was terrible. Following up from point #1, this is not the place to go and get the feeling that you're one of their individual and valued customers.

3. First time (!) flying on a 777, and it was a good experience. I think I may want to stick with 767s where possible, though (domestically) -- the services are quite similar, except in first (see below). The increased number of people in a given section of the plane creates (to me, at least) a noticeably louder environment (small children, etc.) 767s are better in this regard, maybe? I don't mind flying the newly outfitted ones.

I sat next to the wing -- and really got a feeling for how exaggerated everything is on this aircraft. Engines as wide as 737 bodies, gear large enough to crush large cars, etc. But the most interesting and shocking -- the huge amount of empty space in first class! It is almost wrong how much unused space there is up there! You could store your pet elephant behind your seat if you wanted... I know, seats need to recline into that space, but it really does seem a little bit empty -- makes you feel like UA just put in the seats, and didn't know what to do with the rest of the room!

Good travels, everyone.