Having a Rice-A-Roni induced moment are we? Allow me to draw your attention to the following;
San Francisco to San Diego is approx a 1.35 hour/minute flight. It retails for about C$630 in "First" on United.

YYZ-YUL is approx. 1.15 minutes and retails for C$950 - C$1200 for business on AC. For sake of comparison sake let's use C$950.

Yes, when I get onboard the AC flight I am usually offered water or OJ from a plastic cup while the march of the penguins occurs all the while having people coughing or sneezing on me. I forgo my libation now as I feel like one of those Victorian era folks who's idea of a family afternoon was to take in the afternoon's hangings as I drink while the horde of marching zone 3 & 4 stare at me as the trudge along.

Yes, AC offers me a drink during my flight. Often the FA will offer a quick fill up of a wine glass, but the drink is a rushed event. The wine flows freely on AC in large part because it is of plonk category on domestic flights and most people don't ask for a 2nd glass.

Honestly, I don't think the lack of a 2nd drink on the United flight is that unusual on a short flight. They were somewhat generous with me when I flew ORD to LAX and the wine served was pretty decent.

Keep in mind that I detest United and believe that Air Canada as an airline is superior to United. I feel for you, honestly I do, as I appreciate that flying in the USA is not a pleasant experience and the alcohol is of use.

Tell you what, next time I see you on a flight, I will order a rum and coke and hand it over to you (remembering that it must be coke zero)

UA may be slightly less consistent than AC in offering PDB's, but their offerings are better, as you can order anything you want. I've flown a roughly equal split of UA vs. AC over the past year, and I'd say AC is 90%+ in offering a PDB for domestic flights, but it's only water or OJ, and UA is 80%+ but with a wider selection. Sounds like your flight is in the minority.

Both have room to improve on pre-departure beverage consistency, but I'll still take an 80+% chance at any type of drink over a 90+% chance of water/OJ, as I do like being able to get a mimosa, coffee, glass of wine or G&T as a PDB on UA domestic/NA flights.

I usually travel with my own water bottle.

OP, the best way to get UA miles via credit card is with the Cdn SPG Amex. It always was a great card, but their conversion to UA miles was dismal (2:1). However, with the Marriott merger, SPG points convert to Marriott at 1:3. Marriott can then be converted to UA at 112K Marriott points = 50K UA miles so 2.24:1. I believe that means that 1 SPG point = 1.3 UA miles. I'm sure someone will correct me if my math is off. (There's even better conversion options with the Travel Packages if you have Marriott status.) If you don't have the SPG Amex, please contact myself or someone you know with the card for a referral.

i was booked on AC plane yyz-SFO and plane and it was delayed 8 hours?
I live most of the time in YYZ spend $25k USD per year on flights and UA gets the vast majority of my business.
I wonder why.

And yet you seem to do a great deal of posting in the AC thread. I wonder why.

Hey look, another AC vs UA thread!

I switched programs last year. The biggest reason is I am flying mostly international and US now and not much domestic. The second biggest reason is that without changing how much I fly (70-80k BIS miles per year on *A) I went from barely making E35 on AC to Platinum on UA because it's so much easier to earn elite qualifying miles on UA.

I'll start with the good stuff. Keep in mind this is from the perspective of someone who flies almost entirely economy.

1. E+ at booking on all UA flights is nice and makes everything a lot more comfortable. I have a knee injury and it's important to able to fully extend my right leg, which I can't do in non-preferred/E+ seats. As anything but SE on AC, I'd be paying thousands of dollars per year for preferred seats. This is my #1 favourite perk.

2. Free SDC on any fare, over the phone or in the app at T-24 is great. I use this all the time. My #2 favourite perk. This applies to Gold and higher.

3. CPUs happen when they happen. UA has a lot of elites, a lot of RPUs floating around and paid J is much more affordable than AC so they also probably sell a higher proportion of seats. Anyone who thinks they are going to upgrade more than a handful of flights per year as Gold/Platinum is dreaming. I did score three YVR<>IAH upgrades last year though which was nice for the 4+ hr flight. I also laughed at being #56 on the upgrade list as Platinum w/RPU on DEN-IAH on a 787. There's lots of 1Ks and GS's out there.

4. UA has a dedicated phone desk for elites, I never waited on hold and they always did what I needed during IRROPs (within the limits of what was physically possible).

5. If you get hit by mechanical delays UA will compensate you with a travel credit pre-emptively, usually within 24 hours. No writing in for a 10% off code. Had a 12-hour mx two weeks ago, was given $400 credit. Didn't give me my 12 hours back but it helps.

6. Wifi on every flight. Love it, always buy it on long-hauls.

Now the not good stuff:

1. UA has a lot of old crappy planes. Some of the 767s and 772s they have flying make AC's dingy Airbuses seem relatively new by comparison.

2. International economy catering is pretty bleak, perhaps even worse than AC. Pack your own snacks.

3. United Clubs within the US are universally awful except the refurbished ones at ORD and LAX. The HKG and LHR clubs are great.

4. J cabins are always full with upgrades, which is a bummer if you actually pay for J.

5. Cabin cleanliness leaves much to be desired although it is not any worse than AC.

Thank you for the balanced point of view.

Another negative I would like to add is that R space is getting harder and harder to find on UA. That being said, I'm on my way to HKG today in biz class which was upgraded at booking last August.

What I wonder is why fly UA when UA pulled its 1:30p nonstop SFO-YYZ (its only flight on that route) to give you AC as the only nonstop alternative?

This is not strictly true. It requires the same fare class be available. It's often the case that they make it available, but just the other day I was helping out a friend booked in a very low fare class, and a few hours out, the flight was Y2B2M2 and everything else was 0. No SDC possible without paying fare difference.

Also, if you're booked in I or X, good luck. That's almost never going to be open day of departure.

Absolutely not my experience. I've always had to write in (I don't think I've ever been proactively offered anything on any airline), and I've even had some claims rejected by UA for issues they created.

I recall a year ago, flying SFO-OGG, I paid an extra $100 for a United flight because it had wifi advertised.

It cut out as soon as we were over the pacific. If you don't see the irony here, look at a map.

For the record, wifi worked fine on the return flight, so it's not even as simple as "it never works on this route". It depends heavily on the aircraft type and which wifi system is installed.

AC failed to offer PDB in PY at Christmas.
UA F has never failed. I think I've flown UA F twice though so others may have more experience :P

You're right. I checked the fine print and the actual perk is more like free standby; the original fare class has to be available to make a confirmed change. I never encountered this in the wild since most of my trips are booked one or two weeks out so in fairly high fare classes. FWIW free standby when the original fare class isn't available is also a pretty useful perk.

I won't claim to know what criteria there are for getting the "United Customer Appreciation" emails after a delay, but from my experience and reading the United forum they're almost always sent out after 2+ hour delays. I usually get them before the delayed flight even lands. The lowest offer I've seen was $100 for a 3-hour mx on SFO-YVR.

Was the wifi just not working (i.e. broken), or was it the Gogo terrestrial system that physically can't work over the Pacific? I guess Hawaii is the one route where you would have domestic 737s that don't have the satellite wi-fi setup flying over an ocean. Satellite wifi also doesn't work over certain countries for regulatory reasons or is sometimes just broken on the aircraft you're flying. There's also the aircraft with US-only wifi that fly to YVR so it doesn't work for like, the last 10 minutes of the flight. Those are all reasonable caveats, but in general the entire United fleet is wifi enabled.

It was a terrestrial system. But it was still happy to accept my $20 right after take-off for 4-5 hours of wifi. I was very puzzled when 15 minutes into the flight it cut out. I had to flag down a FA and ask about it. I was not happy.

But they were happy to tell me, at time of booking, that my flight would be wifi-enabled. And that was the primary reason I booked United over a cheaper alternative (I can't recall if it was Virgin or Hawaiian).

Also, "We expect to offer Wi-Fi on all two-cabin regional aircraft by mid-2017."

I tend to fly SFO-LAX/SNA more than other destinations on UA, so I'm actually impacted by this quite a bit. It's obviously getting better over time though.