ekozie

I haven't read a TPG article in several eons with at least one dumb mistake that would have been caught by even one round of editing.

Best coming to FT to rip on them - you don't want to find out what happens to you if you do it in their comment section.

irishguy28

You should have stopped there!!!

JetAway

The review has apparently been wildly successful, given the amount of comments and web play it is getting.

featheroleather

Who says the fa was moody the entire flight, Einstein the reviewer? Sometimes we are having a great flight but that one pita pax can rub us the wrong way.

findark

I was busy trying to process how one could still be hungry after the breakfast pictured at the airport followed by the onboard meal service

spin88

This guy is English, has not flown United since 2012 per his review, he writes this:

"A member of the ground team came to me and asked my name then said I was sitting in the wrong seat. Typical me! I said I would move, but he said it would be fine, as the seat was exactly the same. Once he left, I noticed little blue stickers on the overhead lockers halfway down the aisle which signaled where the Economy Plus seats were, and I quickly realized I wasn’t in one."

These are common mistakes (sitting in the wrong seat). I've done it from time to time, but I fly so much on US airlines - which unlike European airlines have blocks of E+ seats - I would immediately know I was not in the right seat if it was E-. The mistake was understandable, the FA giving incorrect information was NOT understandable. They should have checked/known. Unfortunately this guy was too passive, should have gotten up and demanded his seat once he realized the deal...

So a chain of mistakes, I certainly don't read a lot into it. Guy is - as he discloses - an infrequent UA traveler and a Brit.... He also makes clear it was his mistake. Had he had his E+ seat, not sure if would have fixed many of the problems he identified on what basically everyone on this board acknowledges is a really, really bad plane in Y, worst of the worst.

zymm

I can understand missing your seat by a row, since the numbers don't always line up exactly over the middle of the seats they refer to. However, by the seat map, he missed his seat by at least 2 rows, as the row immediately behind his assigned seat was also E+. I'm not exactly sure how that happens...

cerealmarketer

That's changing...TAP now has economy plus extra legroom seating forward of the wing on intra-Europe

Not sure the hubuhb about the review other than the (meaningless to begin with) score seems high vs what was written. Writer didn't blame UA for the seating mistake.

CO DCA

This. I get pushed TPG articles as part of their paid Facebook buys, so I started to read them. I'm sorry, but while food in J or F is often good, when reviewers start to use phrases like "the cod was sublime" it's got to be someone whose life experience with food starts at Taco Bell and ends at Olive Garden. I read one paragraph with similar prose to my partner, who isn't a flying geek like me, and his response was "who writes that trash?" While they did get two new eyeballs with their new capital financed Facebook buys, they lost them with their lack of editorial standards.

Honestly, if you want to see similar content, follow the UA twitter feed. It would be a laff a minute, if it wasn't such a troubling window into what people think is worthy of complaining about.

Ted

Two things here.

First, his point about the UA 772 going from nine across to ten is valid. And of course there is no additional storage space, lavs, etc for those extra folks.

Second, did he get knocked out of his paid E+ seat for an E- seat? Seems like he might have as he was not going to get a comp E+ coach meal until he showed his BP.

Thanks.

milepig

The report is pretty clear, he just sat in the wrong seat and then decided to not move:

A member of the ground team came to me and asked my name then said I was sitting in the wrong seat. Typical me! I said I would move, but he said it would be fine, as the seat was exactly the same. Once he left, I noticed little blue stickers on the overhead lockers halfway down the aisle which signaled where the Economy Plus seats were, and I quickly realized I wasn’t in one

ani90

I find it poor form the way in which we are roasting the blogger and attacking him personally, as if he has anything to do with the subject matter i.e. experience on a UA transcontinental flight on a 772. He could be sitting in the lavatory or a jump seat the whole flight for all I care but it does not change the facts as stated.

If we choose to discuss the facts, rather than his interpretation, or the attributes of person who wrote it, then we will see that he still has written a very reasonable account of the experience for a non-elite flying in a 772 in Y on a transcontinental flight. His account reminds me why I will never fly this route on a 772 in Y and why being a premier elite and having TSA pre is important if one travels through EWR.

For those who are castigating the blogger you are more than welcome to sit in a middle seat, or any seat, on a ten accross Y 777 with no IFE for six hours, poor lavatory ratio, relatively limited overhead space, indeed as close to a cattle car as one can get in a UA airplane; he clearly misrepresented flying a United 772 the world's best economy transcontinental experience...

spin88

I agree on not the hubuhb, and also that his review seemed to be better than I would have given vs what he wrote. I see the mistake as being UA's compounded by someone who evidently did not know the golden rule - don't believe anything UA tells you....

Interested in TAP. My theory has always been that E+ caught on in the US given (a) Americans are bigger than others in the world on average, and (b) our flights are longer. I'm just under 6'2" and while I can put up with 31" pitch for an hour or two, I can't do it for much longer.... But few flights in Europe are longer, unlike those in the US...

Perhaps TAP is far enough to one side of Europe that it is doing longer flights, but will be interesting to see if their approach sticks/spreads.

WindowSeatFlyer

The point a lot of posters are making is that since he seems to be pretty much clueless, it's not worth taking anything he says seriously.
He may have valid points, but they get lost among the numerous examples of incompetence.

OhDoctor

In all fairness I ask that question all the time.