cricketer

Just to clarify up front, this thread has nothing to do with lucky9876coins!

SFO Airport

As always seems to happen when we have a lunchtime departure for the whole family headed to (or through) Asia, we started the morning in a frenzied state, trying to get Cricketer Jr ready for the trip. I suppose we underestimate the big decisions she has to make over which toys and stuffed animals get to be schlepped around the world and back, and more importantly for her, get to be placed on the x-ray machine and have their picture taken. This is a great honour, and not one to be to be treated lightly as a result.

She's almost three, and has somehow made it through life thus far with just a single cold, so when she announced to me, quite nonchalantly, that she had "spat some of her cereal on her backpack by accident" I wasn't particularly concerned. Until I noticed that what she had done was actually throw up all over it.

Cue crisis mode, but fortunately none of the contents were affected, and the backpack coulod be scrubbed and wiped clean. We couldn't completely mask the odour, but it was pretty much either take the backpack or leave the daughter behind. I don't think the grandparents would have appreciated us showing up in PER without their pride and joy.

I figured, of course, that this wasn't the best of omens for the impending 15 hour leg to Hong Kong, but visions of finally experiencing the new business class at the 5th attempt kept me positive. A quick check once more on ualcargo.com confirmed to me that I wasn't going to suffer my 5th last-minute aircraft swap, though I wasn't going to believe it until I stepped on board.

280 was a breeze upto the airport, a little bit of seasonal fog in San Carlos not withstanding, and we made it there a good 90 minutes before flight time. Walked to the last row where the 1k/biz/first check-in counters usually are, and in keeping with the day so far, it turned out that once again, for no apparent reason, the lines have swapped sides at SFO. So we trudged back around, and suddenly things were looking up. 5 agents on desk, and not a single customer in sight. Quite a contrast, again, with the last couple of trips out of SFO where we've had to wait in long queues to check in.

We picked a counter, and we obviously chose well, for we were greeted with a bright and cheerful "good morning!" Handed over our passports, and the agent tapped away, started printing out boarding passes, and then looked up happily and told me that my upgrade had cleared!

Ordinarily, I would respond with fist-pumping joy and a little jig or two, but I clearly looked as completely bemused as I felt. I peered, as surreptitiously as possible, over the counter, and saw two boarding passes on the desk. 16A, and 4C. Now I know what "Shock and Awe" really means.

Of course, the instant elation at realising that I had for some reason been bumped into First was tempered by the thought that my poor lowly 1P wife and child, who were on a separate PNR as they are returning at a different time from me, would be stuck in business without me. And then things got worse when it occurred to me that I would actually be stuck on the upper deck with my daughter and without my wife, who would be lapping it up in the nose of the plane.

So I asked politely how I was in First Class when I had already been upgraded into business. The answer I was expecting was something along the lines of "Oops. Sorry sir, my mistake. We'll put you straight back into business class." Or perhaps, "It's your lucky day sir, you're the seven hundred and forty seventh flier in our new configuration and you've been given a free upgrade to celebrate that fact." Not even close.

Instead, I got "Actually sir, all three of you have been upgraded to First Class." More Shock and Awe, making me re-evaluate our last President. I asked what was going on, and apparently Y was so hopelessly overbooked for that sector that the op-ups were being dished out well in advance.

I couldn't have been more thrilled. 4 misses on the new configuration so far, and now here I was going to not only fly the new business, but the new first as well.

We made our way to the Singapore Airlines SKL, just for a change of scene from the RCC, and hung out there for a little while. Cricketer Jr thoroughly enjoyed watching the planes, although she was a little concerned that she couldn't see any 747s, since we were slated to be flying on one. There's not much to say about the lounge - the food spread is better than the RCC, and it was populated with UA fliers.

There was an amusing pair sitting near us, who were busy one-upping each other, or should I say attempting to do so. Their exchange went something like this:

"Do you fly a lot?" (translation: "DYKWIAM - I'm hot stuff")

"Yes, I do" (translation: "Oh please, I'm all that. You can't hold a candle to me")

"I really fly a lot, I'm a 1K flyer on United, which means I fly 100,000 miles a year" (translation: "I bet you've never heard of the term 1K, that's how cool I am")

"So am I, and I fly all those miles just for pleasure too, it's not work travel or anything like that" (translation: "Sucker, I know what a 1K is. And I paid for it myself, I'm rich!")

"Oh, me too. I mean, I fly over 100,000 just on pleasure travel" (translation: "Oh come on, I do that just on the side")

"Well, I'm actually a million mile flyer too, I've been flying a lot for many years" (translation: "mine's bigger than yours, and not just because you're a girl")

"Oh, well I started pretty late, I've only been flying regularly for the last 10 years or so, but I'll be getting to a million miles pretty soon" (translation: "I'm going to leave you for dead, mister!")

I would have stepped in and congratulated them both, but there was the small matter of a plane to catch, and for Cricketer Junior, an upper deck to sit in for the first time.

cricketer

Off we traipsed at the usual leisurely rate towards our gate. Gate 102 this time - why is it that always depart from one of the last gates at SFO? We usually have the same luck at SIN as well - arriving on UA into B10, and departing on SQ out of A19, at opposite ends of Terminal 3. Sure, we usually have about 8 hours to walk across, but still!

We tagged our stroller at the gate, and the agent told us to make sure we boarded through the Economy jetway, because they'd only be picking up the strollers from the 2L door. That's probably true, but it's interesting that we've never been told that before, and our stroller has always made it despite being left outside 1L at boarding.

I approached 2L with what can best be described as optimistic trepidation, my track record ensuring that I still wasn't completely confident in what we were about to encounter. Cricketer Jr, oblivious to my anxiety, stepped onto the aircraft ahead of me and announced that "These are funny seats," and I knew that my moment had come!

My annual bright idea had also struck as we approached the door, and I asked the FA who was on greeting duty if it would be okay to store our stroller in the closet. Before I could complete my sentence he had asked me to wait just a minute, went to check the closet at the back of C and came back to inform me that it would be his pleasure to keep the stroller in there. At which point I informed him that we were going upstairs.

We climbed up, and made our way to row 16. We had 16A, B and J, with the plan being for my wife to sit across the aisle, with me and my daughter to occupy A and B as appropriate. The first thing that struck me, apart from the fact that there were only 2 or 3 other people on the upper deck at the time, was that the seats were at a fair angle off the straight, something that I hadn't realised from photos or from trying the seats at FleetWeek last year. Makes sense though, with the nested footwells for the opposing seats. That, and the widely reported lack of storage, which was fortunately mitigated by the side bins on the upper deck.

And then I noticed DYKWIA in 16K. Boy did I so want to swap seats with my wife at that point, but Jr was having none of that, unfortunately! Mrs Cricketer had a lengthy conversation with her seatmate while at the gate and right through takeoff and up to cruising altitude. Unfortunately for this trip report, I have yet to interrogate my wife about the experience.

In the meantime, Cricketer Jr got to work exploring all the different buttons on the seat. Fortunately, being the plane freak that she is (I wonder where she gets that from?), her favourite was the airplane button, so it was never going to be a challenge to get the seat in the right place for take off. Our first opportunity to assess the width of the seat arrived at this point, and based on the fact that her collection of ducks, plane (stuffed UA 747, her #1 toy) and partially-hatched dinosaur egg all fit on the seat with her, I concluded that it couldn't be quite as bad as some people have made out.

At this point I figured I'd check out the entertainment system, and that's when I discovered that my remote was firmly wedged in to it's socket. Somebody had clearly jammed it in there with the cord not retracted properly, ensuring a slightly-too-snug fit. I was hesitant to apply too much force, so I asked an FA for some assistance when she walked by. She tried, and failed, and then called in her colleague who also failed to extract the device. And then, to my chagrin, he said he was going to call a mechanic in to fix it.

I tried my best to protest, with visions of being lynched by a mob of angry passengers once they discovered that my complaint about my remote control was the reason for their 24 hour delay to HKG, but he was having nothing of it, and said we needed to get this fixed before departing. Fortunately, before the call went out, another FA came along and gave the remote the sort of almighty tug that nobody else had dared to, and it popped right out.

Taxi and take-off were wonderfully uneventful, and it was during this period that I actually managed to play around with the entertainment system for a little while. I had read a few reports that channel 9 audio and the map did not co-exist, but I discovered that this is not in fact true, and you can watch the map and listen to the tower communications at the same time. I also discovered, and hopefully the attempt at obtaining photographic evidence was successful, that the route between SFO and HKG varies by seat.

We had an mixed crew for this flight, all very professional, but while there was one FA who was right up there with the very best of them, the majority were from the "nothing more and nothing less" brigade. Couldn't fault them on anything, but there was nothing to write home about either.

They were all called into action early on though, when a passenger tried to use the forward lavatory. The passenger attempted to push open the door, but it would only fold in a few inches before it met resistance. It could probably only happen on a UA 747, but it turned out, or so we were told, that one of the ceiling panels in the toilet had come down, and was blocking the door. The scene that followed, with three FAs, a flashlight and a set of "tools" from the galley, should have been in one of the Airplane movies. To their eternal credit however, after several contortions, grunts and the occasional bang, the FAs were able to push the ceiling panel back into place and restore the lavatory to full working order.

Other than that, the flight pretty much went about as uneventfully as any other toddler playdate would, so I'll spare everyone for the most part! The service was impeccable and my two water glasses never went dry, but the best thing I can say about the meal is that it arrived on a plate, as expected.

It's a long time since I've flown the SFO-HKG route, as we have typically routed through NRT for the better odds of NC space for both or all three of us, but I'm sure things were never this bad. The first meal was a choice of dry fish, or dry pecan-crusted chicken; the mid-flight snack as we all know has very little left in it these days; and worst of all, I was quite surprised to discover that the pre-arrival meal was one of those same all-bread-and-cheese sandwiches that pass for a lunch on domestic flights.

Fifteen daytime hours and just one proper, albeit unpalatable, meal? That simply can't be right for a premium cabin.

So the big question, of course, is what did I make of the much vaunted new business class hard product? My overall impression was overwhelmingly positive, but let me break that down a little.

Direction of Travel

We were forward facing on this flight, and I haven't yet tried the rear facing, so my comments have to be qualified in that context, but I spoke to a couple of rear-facing passengers, and they said they didn't really feel any difference, apart from the obvious on take off. I don't know how they felt about landing because I spoke to them in-flight.

At least two passengers didn't have their magazine racks secured for take-off, resulting in a couple of Hemispheres taking flight, but that was about it as far as obvious problems go.

I'm pretty clear that I will choose to be rear facing whenever I have the option in the future, both for the sleep factor, which I'll comment on later, and the more interesting view, both outside and inside the cabin. However you do get the sense that, particularly in an enclosed pod style layout, it really makes very little substantive difference outside of those two aspects.

Aisle vs Window

I must admit, I was a little surprised at the difficulty some people had getting out of the window seats. 16K had to ask my wife to put her footrest down in order to get in and out, and it seems that anyone on the shorter side would probably have some difficulty. The gap between the center armrest and the front of the pod was also much narrower than I thought it would be - I'm no more than a handful of pounds away from being in very good shape, and I had to pay attention when moving in and out.

The other thing that I haven't seen mentioned, and which made a difference to me, is that there is a difference in the two footwells in each pair of seats. The right hand side seat has a marginally wider footwell, with a straight sidewall, because it doesn't have an opposing footwell linking up to it on that side.

It's hard to clearly describe without pictures (which I hope to add later), but the difference was enough that for me, at 6'3", it was significant. It's important because of the way the seat is angled as well, as I mentioned earlier, and that marginal extra width made it a little more comfortable for me storing my feet in there. In truth, I'll have to play around with this a little more carefully, as I didn't actually recline much on this flight.

My personal preference then, going forward, will be a "right hand side of the pair" seat, to be trumped only by any upper deck window option (which would give me the side storage bin).

Seat Comfort and Recline

This is where the seat scores big time in my view. Quite simply, it really is comfortable. My wife reckoned the only better seats she might have sat on were in LH F and SQ F (747), and I'd say that assessment is there or thereabouts. Every part of my body was just happy to sit on it. Even better, I was able to find perfect lounging positions, with great support from the leg rest, and using the footwell as a footrest.

Sleeping

I struggle with most lie-flats, especially forward facing ones, when it comes to sleeping. I've commented before that although people always talk about lie-flat being important, more often than not I see people on lie flat beds not reclined all the way into bed mode when they have a choice. It's no surprise either, when your plane is flying at an angle of a few degrees. Not many people can sleep comfortably with their head below their feet.

This bed is no exception, and the sensation when fully flat was pretty uncomfortable for me. Rear-facing is the way to go, and I could tell (at least as much as I could by lying the wrong way on my seat!) that I would be able to lie flat the other way around and sleep comfortably.

The seat continues to be very comfortable in bed mode, and as a result, even though it was too short and too narrow at the feet for sleeping on my back, it was very comfortable for side-sleeping. With the forward facing seat, I even managed to artificially create extra length by raising the back/head part up a little, leaving a gap between the legrest and footwell that my legs didn't really notice.

In the worst case scenario, you can easily recreate the old business class seat, but with infinitely better foot/leg support - so a winner all around, once again. I'll go so far as to say that I may be able to sleep better on this than the new SQ F on their 77W (read the other trip report linked in my signature for my opinions on that one!)

I did notice one other thing - it didn't seem that anyone on the upper deck at least knew that the armrests could be pushed down. The extra width created by doing that is pretty significant, and while it doesn't make a difference to a side sleeper, anyone under 6 foot who is sleeping on their back is missing out if they don't lower the armrests to sleep.

IFE

UA have hit a solid home run with the IFE as well. It worked flawlessly on our flight, although I didn't really watch much, as Cricketer Jr doesn't care for TV and I'd pretty much seen everything on my domestic travels of late anyway. The bottom line is that there's a pretty fair amount of choice, the controls were very responsive (unlike on SQ), and the interface pretty intuitive.

Personally I'd have liked to see a few more movie options at the expense of audiobooks, and that's what I told the survey, but it's hard to see much room for complaint about the IFE. It's never going to please everyone, and in fact it's never going to please any one person perfectly, so you have to put it in perspective when you assess what you have.

Overall Conclusion

I was very concerned, as apart from the poor IFE and a minor issue with the length of the footrest, I have had a great time with the old C seats, and not always a great time with lie flats on other carriers.

However, this seat gives me everything that the old one had, in increased comfort, with a far superior IFE and the potential for lying flat. The lack of storage is a very insignificant price to pay in my book, even if it is a little annoying. Two massive thumbs up to UA from me.

cricketer

It's been several years since I flew through Hong Kong - I wish Kai Tak was still operational, as Cricketer Jr would have absolutely loved that approach. Disembarkation (is that a word?) and transit security was an absolute piece of cake, and we made our way over to the Thai First Class Lounge, since we had the lot to pick from.

The lounge itself was nothing special, but the personal service and buffet spread were excellent. We had barely sat down when an attendant arrived to take our drink orders, and he was immediately followed by another one, who brought us the restaurant style menu. There were only a few choices, but none of us was feeling hungry, so we passed on that. I did venture out to explore the buffet, and gave into a couple of the dim sum offerings. How I managed to not have a small pot of ice cream I'll never know, given my usual inability to resist that particular treat.

The only drawback of the lounge was that the WiFi was abysmally slow, and in fact problematic to get onto, so I eventually opted to piggyback onto the JAL wireless, which worked perfectly.

We headed over to our gate shortly thereafter, and headed into the new First cabin. Cricketer Jr pointed out that we weren't on the upper deck, and she wanted to go on a 747 as it had an upper deck, but when I explained to her that we were on a 747 but as a special treat we were going to fly in First Class which was in the nose of the plane, she was absolutely thrilled.

We came on board with our stroller once again, and the crew were more than happy to store it in the closet in First.

Mrs Cricketer went into 4A, cricketer Jr in 4C, and myself in 4H. The first thing I noticed was that even the new F seat really didn't have a whole lot of storage. The second thing I noticed was that the new F seats by the windows did have a whole lot of storage. I had never realised that there was a significant difference even across F seats, and to be honest, it wasn't clear to me that this difference was required. Then again, I'm no interior designer.

The seat itself was insanely comfortable, in fact I'd go so far as to say that in the sitting position, it could be the best First Class seat in the sky. Note that I'm talking simply about the seat hard product here. Also note that I've flown a grand total of 3 airlines, and 7 different seats, in First Class.

The purser came over to say hi, asked if we had any special needs, and if there was anything at all they could do for Cricketer Jr. I told them that although she looked wide awake, she had been awake for the last 22 hours, and she was going to pass out at wheels up.

She did precisely that, as did Mrs Cricketer. As for me, I had to experiment with the dinner service in F. Let's just say that I shouldn't have bothered. The best part of the meal was watching Slumdog Millionaire at long last, and frankly even that was overrated, though my tiredness and all the hype may have influenced that opinion unfairly. The food was barely palatable - I had the stir fry which appeared to have been neither stirred, nor fried.

The part of the flight I was dreading was the landing in SIN. After take-off, with my daughter asleep, I'd been able to easily recline her seat into bed mode, and she was completely out of it. I was concerned that we'd wake her up while putting the seat upright, and in her almost 150K miles of flying, the only time she had cried previously was when she was 6 months old - we landed in PER with a large bump, it woke her up, and she bawled from touchdown till we reached the gate.

Sure enough, we couldn't get the seat upright without waking her, and my expectation was realised when she started crying and saying she just wanted to sleep. In fact her exact words were "I want the pilot to keep flying. He shouldn't land so that I can sleep some more!"

Here's where the crew were outstanding. No less than three of them rushed over at the first sound of crying, with offers of milk, water, blankets, and asking what they could do to help. The seatbelt sign was on, and the purser and an FA consulted, and told me that if I wanted to hold her in my lap with the seatbelt around both of us, that would be fine. I picked her up, and the FA came around and helped me get the seatbelt and shoulder strap on, brought her blanket and a couple of toys over, and she calmed down in an instant.

It may sound trivial really, but that's what I call first class service. They did it not only for me and for Cricketer Jr, but for the benefit of the entire F cabin, whom I'm sure appreciated their efforts. Frankly, this was the first time I felt a little guilty having my infant/toddler with us in a premium cabin - it's just a little harder in F, when you're not really sitting together per se.

We taxied to the gate, yet another lucky moment as we arrived into B6, meaning a very short walk to the transfer counter to painlessly check in for our morning SQ flight, and then just a minute further to the T3 transit hotel. We all crashed within minutes, and slept soundly until our little angel sat up in bed at 5am and announced that she was ready to go and find the plane that goes to Australia.

cricketer

With nothing else to do, we got up early, went over to the KrisFlyer lounge and had a small breakfast. Quite randomly, we met an acquaintance of mine whom I hadn't seen for a while in the lounge. He was on his way back to SFO from BLR. Once we were fed up of the lounge, we headed out to the Koi ponds, where my daughter had plenty of fun talking to the fish, who kept approaching her with mouths wide open, apparently in the expectation of being fed. A few rounds of the children's play area, and then it was off to our gate. We struck it lucky yet again -- instead of having to go to the far end of the A gates as is usually the case, we were on the B side, though I can't for the life of me remember the gate number.

Getting on board the SQ 777-200 was a complete shock to the system. We were in row 33, in coach, and the leg room wasn't quite comparable to UA's new C or F. The row in front of us all reclined about 3 seconds after wheels up, which is when the seatbelt sign went off, and that set the tone for the rest of the flight. The meal was lousy, eveny by coach standards, although I welcomed the usual ice-cream for dessert, as did Jr who ate more ice-cream in one sitting than she probably has in her entire life to date.

Krisworld was a complete shambles in our section of the aircraft. It appeared to not be working at all, but we eventually found that it was, but with a delay in response to each button press that ranged from 7 seconds to 43 seconds. Yes, I timed them. We don't usually use the IFE at all with Cricketer Jr, but SQ have a great kids audio channel, and on our last trip she had been over the moon with songs and stories about rockets and planes that were playing. No such luck this time, as it was just impossible to navigate through the menus to get to that point.

The row in front of us made a lot of fuss about the IFE, and eventually had their names and addresses taken, with the purser promising them that they would be adequately compensated for their troubles. I once had a business class flight on SQ from Seoul to SFO, probably in 2000, on which my seat didn't recline at all. My compensation from SQ for that was $30 worth of duty free from their catalog. I'm guessing for slow IFE in coach maybe you get a brand new dollar bill?

One thing I did note about the IFE - it was pretty much the same selection of movies and TV shows that UA has in the new system, only SQ appear to have a much larger hard drive on board, and so have a whole bunch of extra ones as well - but most of those were in the foreign and classics section. Perhaps we're harder on UA about movie selections than is really fair.

Arrival in PER was an absolute doozy, which is unusual. It's not quite my favourite airport to deal with. It was completely empty, we went straight to an immigration counter, were virtually waved through, our bags were all in the first dozen that came out, and we were sent through the green lane at customs. The only pause was when they informed us that we couldn't bring water into Australia, and emptied the contents of Jr's water bottle. They've never done that before, so I'm not sure what's changed, but they filled it up with some good southern hemisphere water (maybe it's different), and we were outta there.

The return trip is going to be an interesting one for me. I'm coming back alone, and I'll get to check out the new SQ A330 on it's first flight out of PER, albeit in coach. After that however, it's UA old C on the 777 via NRT back to SFO. At this point it's already clear that the seat won't be the major issue for me - it's going to be the lack of entertainment, in the absence of my daughter and AVOD. A trip to the bookshop while in Perth is certainly in order.

flyingfkb

Hi cricketer. Do we get some pictures, too? This would be a real great addition. Looking forward to read the upcoming parts.

jetfan

^ I can already tell this is gonna be good and entertaining.

Braniff

I thought you were all upgraded to First...

Looking forward to the rest of the report.

lucky9876coins

Fantastic report, so far, cricketer (especially the first line and the two passengers in the SKL). Look forward to the rest!^

raikje

Just for the HKG-SIN sector, by the looks of things. Looking forward to the next part.

cricketer

I do have some pictures, but haven't been able to upload them yet (long story), and even then, I need to photoshop Cricketer Jr out of them as I'm not comfortable putting her up on display :-) I will hopefully add at least a few once I get a chance. It's definitely easier to do photos when I'm flying on my own, that's for sure!

Thanks... to be fair though, I think the pre-flight piece might be the most entertaining, thanks to those two wonderful pax in the SKL. The rest of the trip was more interesting than amusing, unfortunately!

The upgrade to F was just for the HKG-SIN sector. If it was the whole way I'd probably still be on the ceiling.

flyingfkb

I try to imagine the reaction of the other passengers to an announcement by the crew informing the passengers that there will be a mechanical delay because of a non operating remote control in First Class. It would probably qualify for a very realistic reenactment of the Storming of the Bastille.

cricketer

Sorry about that -- took me a while, but this TR is now complete.

aviatorzz

Fantastic report.

Hope you are able to post some of the pics from the trip. It would be neat to see.

zz

flyer121

Thank you for informative report.

MatthewLAX

Brilliant trip report! Your analysis of the passenger exchange in the SKL really cracked me up.

Sad that UA's food so often lets people down.