Hey, what more could you ask for?

I'm currently at the Gate Escape at LAX. It's 10:35am on Sunday, Dec 1. My 11am flight to ORD (UA842) was oversold, and they took me as a volunteer (the upgrade wouldn't have cleared anyway). So I got a free roundtrip for the lower 48 states for 3 hours of inconvenience.

To top it off, they have free packs of Eclipse Flash Strips in the RCC. Not quite as potent as Listerine Pocket Paks, but hey...did I mention that they were free? These were also on my C-class meal tray on my LAX-IAD-LAX legs this past week.

I had them with my C meal IAD-LAX last week and F meal DEN-IAD last night. Both were the cinnamon variety.

There were bowls and bowls of them at the SEA RCC last Tuesday. These were the regular Listerine-style strips.

DEN RCC yesterday afternoon had some Halls throat thingies.

Presumably Eclipse is using UA premium pax as a target market... well, I wasn't converted, per se but I might pick these up in the future.

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More Room Throughout Coach: the Website of Free Miles and Free Markets

Whatever in the world are you talking about?

Had the regular flavor (peppermint?) on my meal tray ORD-MCO-ORD last week, both ways in F...My traveling companion doesn't like them, so I got 4 of them...Woo hoo! (It's the simple things in life I get a kick out of.)

The nice thing is that the 'free trial size' package is more like a full-size pack...What, 15 of them in there or something?

hobson:

http://www.wrigley.com/wrigley/produ...ipse_flash.asp

I've been getting these on all my meal trays the last couple of weeks. Must have at least 20 of them from meal trays by now.

They also had them at the RCC at LAX for about a week, but the last 4 days they were back to having bowls of Halls Fruit Breezers mini-packs.

These strips were part of the meal tray
on the 0845 LAX to BWI in F last Friday.

The Eclipse products are on all meal trays in F, C and Y. They are a promotion from Wrigley's. There are 24 in each pak (I had to look because it seemed like forever for mine to run out!!)

i found these tickets about worthless. they are controlled by the cheapest tickets, W, V and T (i think) and ua only flys to about 43 of those 48 states.

the end value of the ticket is about $300 on a discounted ticket.

of course, day-of-departure or one day in advance, quite often those booking codes are available.


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f

[This message has been edited by fparker1 (edited 12-01-2002).]

fparker: I agree....not the most valuable cert, but I will use it to fly my Dad out from VA to visit me in CA...so it will be put to good use.


FYI: I got one of only TWO upgrades on UA104 this afternoon (2pm departure) on the 777 from LAX-ORD. Row 15 of the 777 configured for Pacific use.

Much commotion around the boarding door as 3 large goons boarded to 'secure the aircraft' for our VIP: Grey Dave (Gov. of CA....yawn). Funny thing...this is my 3rd time flying with him in 3 years. He was in row 9 of C.

Slow night here in the F RCC at ORD. Connecting flight to Ottawa on AC is delayed.

Cheers

like i said, these can have a good use if you have plans for them ahead of time or have a last minute trip.

i am glad you were able to get a good deal from them. i have gotten a couple of them and found no use for my purposes, however, with my current travel situation, they could prove to be valuable.

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f

I overheard an amusing story about the Flash Strips Friday on my ORD->OAK flight as Feorlen and I were coming back from T-day festivities.

The person in the seat in front of me commented on how strong they were to the FA who was serving her. The FA giggled and related the story of an older passenger(she estimated 80+) who kept ringing and ringing the call button.
Every time she went up there, his request was the same. More water. She'd bring it to him, he'd slug it back and 30 seconds later she'd get *dinged* again. After a couple times of this she asked him what the problem
was.

It turns out he opened the package and popped the ENTIRE contents in his mouth
He had no idea what they were.

It kind of reminds me of the various "Green Tea" or "Guacamole" stories I've heard about peoples' initial encounters with Wasabi paste

JD

Thanks to the freebies on my United flight on Thursday, I tried the Eclipse strips. Yuuuccchhh. Man are those things strong. I gave them to various family members after Thanksgiving dinner. Most people's reaction was interesting. It went something like this: "Ewwww. Those things are really strong and not very good. Can I have another?" (See also "tomacco").

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ChicagoBound - formerly PremEx2000 (wrong year, wrong status!)

[This message has been edited by ChicagoBound (edited 12-01-2002).]

Thank you Premex for the informative link.

I've not been on a United flight since mid-October. Now I understand. Something to "look forward to" later this month.

Anybody know what the "inside scoup" on these stong little mints and UA is? Meaning, I've been seeing them on my tray for almost a month now, and I'm curious is this strickly a move by that company at no expense to UA to market its products, or is this a bi-directional thing?

I think you'll see many more corporate alliances/promotions in the future as United tries to max out revenue streams and/or attempts to provide discounted or free goods or services to it's customers to improve perceived value.

Many companies like to use captive marketing to get their product noticed/sampled. Sometimes they pay with $$$, sometimes just with free samples, or both and/or other agreements/barter deals.

There will be contracted ones (like the Pepsi deal), and looser ones, like this one.