Yesterday was really something... Expecting to do a usual p.s. C one-day, back-and-forth to the West Coast and ended up with over 10 hours of quality time with the new C seats and a brand spankin new 763!
^ Flew the bird out to SFO on its maiden voyage, then got right back on the same one to come home.
My thoughts:
Cabin: One of the things that most surprised me about the new C cabin is how spacious and roomy it feels compared to the old C. When I've looked at seat maps, I've always thought the cabin looked kind of cluttered. In reality, it actually felt very open. It's hard to describe the feeling, but a combination of having fewer seats and having them alternating backwards-forwards makes it seem even more private and spacious. Putting aside the seat for the moment, the experience of riding in the cabin -- if you can believe it -- was overall more relaxing and "luxurious" than I anticipated. I think it's the "non sardine can" effect -- having people facing in different directions, and the asymmetry of the suites themselves, had a very different feel than seeing seats all in a row facing the same direction. Again, it's hard to describe, but the layout didn't at all feel "cookie cutter" and this translated for me into a more open feeling than I'm used to, even more so than the 744's UD.
Another interesting effect is achieved by the seats facing in alternating forwards-backwards directions in the same row. On the way back,
SeattleFred and I were both in the same row, on the aisle across from each other, but with seats facing the opposite direction. I think he'd agree with me that this "opposing seats across the aisle" layout was extremely conducive to conversation, much more than sitting next to someone, actually. I've always found it somewhat awkward to have a conversation with a seatmate on a plane when you're both facing forward. You either have to rotate your entire body to face the other, which isn't always practical; you twist your neck, which can be a pain after a while; or you face forward all the time, which is kind of off-putting. Sitting across from each other as we did made conversation much easier.
The only minor minus I can foresee in this cabin is for the pax in 6CH and 9CH -- these are the first and last pair of center suites. There's so much leg room, that, when the seats are not deployed, boarding pax (and others) think it's a good place to cross from one aisle to the other. Not a big deal, but something to keep in mind.
Other than that, it's really hard to stress enough how vastly improved the C cabin is on the new 763.
Huge ^ to UA for this!
Seat: I think UA has hit a solid triple with this seat. It's not a home run, as there are some problems with it, but these are minor in comparison to the huge improvements. I get the sense that the negatives are mostly the result of needing to fit more seats in the cabin for revenue reasons, so in that sense I'll take it under the circumstances. I personally loved the seat, but I can tell that it won't be for everyone. To wit:
* The controls take a few minutes to figure out, but they're intuitive and quite easy to use. I especially appreciate them when compared to the ps F/SQ old C seats, which, though easy to switch between upright and wedgie flat, are IMO really difficult to achieve a desired position in between. The controls are of two types. One set of buttons, when held down, move the chair to a specific position. The "plane" button moves the seat to the full upright, the "lounge chair" puts you in an intermediate reclining position, and the "bed," well, you can guess that one. The other set of buttons allows you to change the degree of recline and/or the footrest independently of one another. Sounds simple, right? It is. And yet there's some genius there because somehow, with very little effort, I was consistently able to get the chair into
exactly the position I wanted. Doing this with the ps F seat was always a chore, but the ergonomics and controls with the new C seat are dead on. I fooled around with the chair for hours (
), and I really was amazed at the ability to get it into just the right place for eating, sleeping, movie watching, reading, etc. How else can I put it? Huge ^.
* The pitch of these seats is something else. I'll try to post some links to photos I took that show the space, but for now let's just say that the amount of "personal space" was considerable. I was surprised at this, again because the seatmaps really look cluttered, but what they don't show is how the new overhead bins are so high up and recessed into the ceiling that even a 6' person could stand in their space without having to duck. I had room to crouch on the ground to tie my shoes. And because no one reclines into your space, that space is
yours. (Well, at least in the center seats... More on this in a sec.) As with the feeling in the cabin, I had a very different feeling in the seat than I've had before. My only point of comparison is the old SQ seat, and I can safely say that the new UA C seat feels a
lot roomier. Seriously, it was almost more space than I knew what to do with.
* The width, on the other hand, is an issue. Seating upright, I definitely noticed it was narrower than the old C. If you're large, you'll be a little squished in there. Of course you can lower the armrests to buy you a few more inches on either side (well, lots more room on the aisle side, where you can "hang out" if you want), but there's no question that it felt a bit tight. Which I must say was strange: Roomy cabin, lots of pitch...and narrow. UA had to compromise in some places, and this is definitely one of them. It will matter to some more than others for sure, which leads to...
* The bed: In some sense, lie-flat is lie-flat and therefore a huge improvement over the old C. I took a 3-hour nap JFK-SFO that was terrific. But the narrowness I feel made a difference here: I'm a bit broad in the shoulders, so I "hung out" a little over the aisle and came up against the middle barrier as well. In fact, I found sleeping on my back a little constricting: It was fine as long as I didn't try to move. The constriction was exacerbated by the narrow footwell, which forced me to sleep at a slight angle. Obviously if you're shorter and narrower, these things will matter less. But a tall, broad person might feel really tight sleeping on your back. On my
side, however, was an entirely different story, and it's here that the seat came unto its own as a bed. Sleeping this way felt completely natural and comfortable -- the slight reduction in body width and length that results from sleeping on my side improved the seat dramatically as a bed. In either position, the back shell of the seat provided a lot of privacy, which made it quieter and more personal. I liked that. Bottom line is that depending on (a) your body size and shape and (b) how you like to sleep, you'll either love or hate this seat as a bed.
I never had much difficulty sleeping in the old C seat -- an Ambien and that barcalounger feeling was all I needed. But the feeling of privacy, of greater personal space, and the ability to actually
sit in lots of comfortable positions makes this seat a big winner in my book, especially for longhauls. This kind of surprised me: I thought the bed would be the big thing, but it's the seat and suite that actually made the bigger impression. Again, though, YMMV depending on lots of factors.
Oh, and one more thing: The 2-2-2 layout of the 763 means that the center pair are the only ones with aisle access and no one needs to jump over you. As far as I’m concerned, that makes these seats on the 763 better than anything will be on the 772s or 744s.
AVOD: It's kind of hard to know how to rate the new AVOD system. In some ways, it's so unbelievable to have anything like it on a
United plane that I hesitate to say anything negative at all. It's so,
so much better than the PTV stalks that what more need be said? But here are my thoughts anyway
* The screen is amazing. Period. My jaw literally dropped. At first it seems a bit far from the seat itself, but after watching a few movies it quickly became clear that it was the optimal viewing distance for its size. The quality and size were superb.
* Movie and TV program selection was good not great. I imagine this is something that can be changed over time, so it's nothing I worry about, but only 20-ish movies on a system like this is kind of weak. Same for the TV program selection. Only one episode of 10 different programs seemed like underkill. If I could have watched 10 episodes of The Office, I absolutely would have.
But no dice, there was only 1.
* The system is very easy to use, but there were some quirky non-user-friendly aspects to it. For example, at one point I paused a movie to use the lav and to chat with an FA. When I came back 15 minutes later, the movie had come "unpaused," but there was no way to get back to the point at which I had paused it other than rewind...but the fastest rewind speed is x8 -- there's no chapter skip. So it took 3-4 minutes to rewind to the point I wanted. This was a pain. I learned through playing around that what you're supposed to do is stop the movie, then, when you come back, you go to start the movie again, at which point it asks if you'd like to completely restart or just resume from where you left off. Navigating the different menus and submenus is also easy, but again there were some annoying quirks that forced me to backtrack through different menus to get to what I wanted. Nothing major, mind you, but sort of annoying.
My humble thoughts… YMMV!
