FlyerTalk and Million Mile Secrets have found a 60k Mileage Plus explorer offer offering 50k miles on first purchase and 10k miles after $25k in spending. dabearz73 on FlyerTalk suggests logging into one’s United account and then going to the offer website.
I currently have the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature card and formerly had the Continental OnePass Plus Mastercard. I’m able to see the 60k offer when I’m logged in.
After finishing exploring the Star Alliance lounges of SFO, I left for the gate to snap some predeparture photos of the plane in old-new livery. I was slightly foiled by the pattern in the glass.
United 863
San Francisco (SFO) – Sydney, Australia (SYD)
Saturday, December 24th
Depart: 10:39PM
Arrive: 7:51AM
Duration: 14 hours, 12 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-422 (N197UA)
Seat: 14K (Business Class)
Ordinarily, I’m an aisle seat person, but I chose a forward facing window seat on the upper deck. Extensive analysis on FlyerTalk puts the length of the bed in this particular seat at 75 inches. My laptop bag and a book from my rollaboard suit case comfortably fit in one half of the window bins of the seat.
The overhead bins on the upper deck are quite small, however, and could not accommodate my suitcase. The flight attendant noticed me staring at the overhead bins for a moment before suggesting I remove anything I might want during flight and he would stow it in the closet.
After stowing my bag, the flight attendant returned with a tray of predeparture beverages (water, orange juice, and sparkling wine). I picked the sparkling wine and settled in.
As the third passenger to board the plane, I had some time to kill before boarding finished. I started by reading the menu before turning to a book I had with me.
As I had requested a vegetarian meal, I was served an off-menu first course with the on-menu vegetarian ravoli.
For dessert, I chose the ice cream.
I played with my laptop for a bit prior to going to bed. The amenity kit was simple yet practical. Honestly, with my suitcase in the upper deck closet, the only essential I needed was a toothbrush.
I woke up around 6AM Sydney time from a combination of the sun and a crying baby. Both of these are largely my own fault as I left my window shade up and chose not to use an eye mask nor ear plugs. Nonetheless, it was a reasonably high quality six hours of sleep as I made it through the next day and evening without feeling prematurely tired. I prefer to sleep on my side, so my only complaint with the lie-flat bed is that there’s a smallish headrest that sticks out near the very top of the bed.
A flight attendant was by soon after to offer a hot towel and to start serving breakfast. The vegetarian breakfast omits the yogurt listed on the menu for some reason.
Just prior to landing, it was time to checkout the air show.
Customs was quick thanks to the Express Path cards handed out to business and first class passengers. Of the fifteen or so minutes I spent getting landside, most of it was walking from the plane, through the duty-free store, and then ultimately out of the customs/immigration area.
After spending the day and early evening in San Francisco, I took the BART back to reclaim my bag from the left luggage service and to head through security. With three Star Alliance lounges to choose from, I decided to visit all three.
My first stop was the United Club in the international terminal.
After coming up the escalator, I turned right and found a nearly empty lounge area with about four other people in it (including for a brief bit, a screaming infant).
At least the United Club food and drinks are consistent?
After a bit of time, I decided to head over to the United Club in terminal 3 to visit until the SilverKris lounge opened. The decor is essentially identical, but there’s a nice mural just past the front desk of the zodiac constellations.
After checking out this lounge and opening up my laptop to purchase some American Airlines tickets for which my hold was about to expire on, I decided to head over to the Singapore Airlines SilverKris lounge. Since I actually had an international boarding pass departing directly from SFO, I had access to the lounge.
The front desk clerk had to make copious notes onto a roster at her desk with details from my boarding pass and United 1K card. It left me feeling rather glad that United is able to just scan the boarding pass to determine whether a passenger has access to the lounge.
As they had just opened for the evening shift, I was the first passenger at the the lounge. The seating area for the lounge is quite small and it’s understandable why Singapore Airlines is so restrictive when it comes to letting Star Alliance Gold elites enter the lounge.
I was quite pleased by the food offerings here compared to the United Clubs, especially for such a small lounge.
I was quite surprised to see open bottles of liquor, even in a lounge, within the United States.
The window had a mix of old-new and new livery United planes.
With my flight from New York arriving from San Francisco a bit early, I had a 24.5 hour layover at SFO. After the Club Carlson 50k promotion went live, I registered and began looking for a chance to stop by a Radisson to participate in the promotion. Even as I plan to use the points towards a night for a substantially more expensive hotel abroad, I couldn’t bring myself to mattress run locally (even with the $100/nt rate that showed up at the Radisson Lexington in December). Since I needed to overnight in the Bay Area, I chose to stay at the Radisson San Francisco Airport Bay Front hotel.
I “splurged” and spent $5 at the time of booking for a bay view room.
I’ve come to set a few minimum standards with my hotel stays. I want a comfortable bed. I want a fast internet connection. I want peace and quiet for when I’m trying to sleep. For hotels with airport shuttles, I want the shuttle service to be frequent and run during the hours posted (unlike what happened at the aloft Dulles North to me in July).
My shuttle arrived within a few minutes of stepping out of the terminal. Check-in was fast and painless. Upon entering my room, I heard the occupants next door. Since it was 10PM and I had little intention of going to bed right away, this didn’t really bother me as I wanted to catch up on my email and use the internet connection for a bit. Around 1AM PST, my neighbors were still talking and laughing. I wound up calling the front desk and was able to get moved to a new room on a quieter floor.
By the time I called, I had heard four distinct voices next door. As I was leaving, I passed another party of four going into that room carrying several cases of beer into the room. Needless to say, asking for another room was the wisest move I made all trip. With my basic priorities of hotel stays satisfied, I settled in for the night.
I traveled just over 144k miles this year, approximately 125k of which were revenue flights:
I wound up with four redemptions:
I earned miles and points from a number of sources:
To give perspective on my ability to meet credit card spending thresholds, I spent approximately $22k on credit cards. My total spend on flights occurring in 2011 (inclusive of StarMegaDo3) was $8367.49 for revenue flights and $431.27 for award flights. I spent $2703.62 on hotels (19 stays and 23 nights) and $1727.10 on rental cars (inclusive of insurance, but not gasoline, for 19 rentals, 34 rental days).
Until a few months ago, Aeroplan permitted its members to book into United’s (domestic) first class cabin on two-cabin aircraft while traveling on business class awards. When it came time to piece together this award in early December, I had few options to get across the United States around Christmas. Economy seats were scarce because of the holiday and first class awards were practically unbookable due to the mileage penalty. While better than economy, United’s domestic first class isn’t exactly that thrilling, especially at a price of 45k additional Aeroplan miles. This left me originally booking a flight on Continental, which codes its “first class” as business class for ticketing purposes.
Two weeks later, United opened up several business class seats on its p.s. service from New York Kennedy to San Francisco. Then, a week ago, United opened up several business class seats from Los Angeles to New York for my return leg. With p.s. availability for both domestic legs available, I splurged by ponying up the $90 Aeroplan change fee to switch. p.s.’ business class is on par with United’s old international (non-lie-flat) business class seats and, in my experience, been a far better experience than Continental’s domestic first class. The flight change left me departing New York on Friday, December 23rd, rather than Saturday, December 24th. I left work and caught the train to the airport.
Frequently flying has caused me to pick up a few quirks exhibited while traveling. The first of these is something of a fetish for boarding passes. A proper boarding pass is on crisp, clean paper stock. The boarding passes printed on 8.5 by 11 inch paper, or worse, stored entirely on a cell phone, are fare to ephemeral for me. The premium side to United’s check-in desks had two agents. One was assisting another party; another was happily tapping away at his computer, leaving me to use the kiosks that offered printed boarding passes on thin, flimsy sheets of paper.
For this trip, TSA did not disappoint. I offered my boarding pass and NEXUS card to the name checker. She proceeded to look at the picture, look at me, waive the card under her UV light, mark off my boarding pass, finally handing the two back to me. As I approached the plastic bins, she summoned me back, demanding to see my ID once more. I handed my NEXUS card back to her. This time, she looked at it for a while, took a look at the back, and concluded that because she “had never seen one of these,” it was an unacceptable form of ID. I tried to explain that it was a trusted traveler card, but was rebuffed by it being for “my safety” that I show proper ID if I wanted to fly that day. If it weren’t interfering with my traveling experience, I would call the JFK Terminal 7 TSA staff’s urge to cite “my safety” as their reason for doing anything amusing, but sadly, it isn’t.
Once past the name checker, I headed off to the United Club since business (and first) class passengers have access to it.
There are a few works of art just outside of the entrance to the club. The first of these is an obvious p.s. destination; the second leaves me wondering if this is a secret symbol of San Francisco.
There’s a longish hallway from the entrance desk out to the edge of the terminal, overlooking the tarmac.
The club had the usual United Club fare available.
The JFK Club’s bar area:
The club has nice views of the tarmac:
After spending a few minutes in the club, I realized I hadn’t checked how full the flight was, mostly on an assumption that if it was oversold, United wouldn’t have released a Star Alliance award seat on it. I checked with the front desk agent who told me that they would be fine. On a hunch, I left the club 50 minutes before departure and checked with the gate agent. He recognized me from all of my ex-JFK p.s. segments (and VDB voucher bookings) and told me that while they’d be “full,” they wouldn’t be so full as to need to bump anyone. As I was wandering back to the door to take a picture of the departure screen, he waived me back over: “Would you mind sitting in first class this evening?” As it turned out, the four people in my row in first class were op’ups. Ordinarily, I’m an aisle seat person, but I chose a window seat so I wouldn’t disturb my seatmate so much if I decided to play with my seat during flight.
United 389
New York (JFK) – San Francisco (SFO)
Friday, December 23rd
Depart: 7:28PM
Arrive: 10:06PM
Duration: 5 hours, 38 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-200
Seat: 3D (First Class)
Ever since United announced that p.s. would shift to a two-class, lie-flat configuration, I’ve been considering possible itineraries that would book me into the first class cabin. Christmas came a bit early for me.
Earlier this year, I was on an oversold JFK-LAX flight that led to me being rebooked from coach into business class on this very airplane (N512UA). It was my first trip in a premium cabin and I concluded at once that I was overwhelmed by the few levers that the business class seats had to offer. I’ve since learned how to manipulate all the levers and knobs for the p.s. business class seats, but this seat offered even more options:
I know. I have terrible first world problems.
The seat has respectable legroom. Besides having so much as to make it possible to lie down on the floor in front of you, it’s hard to ask for more.
Our purser came by before departure to offer predeparture beverages and dinner menus.
The wine list read as follows:
I had previously requested a vegetarian meal, so my first and second courses came from United’s Asian vegetarian offerings. (Oddly, they don’t offer an ovo-lacto vegetarian option on request for p.s. flights, even though their menu was provided for one.)
In between the first and second course, the purser came by to offer white and whole grain rolls (not pictured here). One thing that is in the picture, however, is a can of Coca-Cola. The purser provided the passengers in the cabin with poured glasses as well as the accompanying cans (for those beverages which came out of cans). While some would argue that it’s not as stylish, it’s far more practical when one wants a refill.
The food was far tastier than the dim lighting would make it appear to be. Dessert was an ice cream sundae, which I took with hot chocolate syrup and whipped cream.
I swear there’s some ice cream under there. As a follow-up to all of this food came the traditional United cookie:
The Tulip lives! We touched down nearly an hour early to the smoothest landing I’ve had all year (absent hearing the thrust reversers or looking out the window, it was not apparent we had landed). As fun as it would have been to head to Sydney a day early since the flight was still boarding, I left the airport for my hotel, the Radisson San Francisco Airport Bay Front for the night.
SPG is offering bonus points on multinight stays between 1/9 and 4/8. Two night stays earn double points; three night or more stays earn triple points. The offer has a number of nonparticipating hotels.
Thanks to the Aeroplan glitch (or unadvertised “promotion”), I put together a quick trip to Sydney and Auckland in business class for myself during Christmas and New Years. While the award is hardly maximized, it worked out reasonably considering the limited business class availability across the Atlantic and Asia between Christmas and New Years by traveling via Europe. Considering I spent 76k Membership Rewards points (and bought 4k Aeroplan miles), the itinerary is a steal compared to spending 130k United Mileage Plus miles.
When I had been looking at possible routings over the weekend before I booked, my transpacific segments were constrained by United and Air New Zealand’s then award availability. United had plenty of seats from the US west coast to Australia at Christmas but none back for New Years. Air New Zealand had good availability around Christmas, some availability around New Years back to North America, and almost nothing to or from Australia. The fickleness of these award seats is represented somewhat in my routing via Vancouver. Originally, I had been considering returning from Auckland via San Francisco, picking up a United flight back to Newark. Around lunchtime, that seat disappeared, leaving me looking for new transpacific openings; I found AKL-YVR. To get back to New York, I tacked on an Air Canada segment to Los Angeles and, thanks to Aeroplan’s allowance of two stopovers in addition to the destination, added a stop in Los Angeles to wait for flights with suitable transcontinental award availability.
In the intervening two weeks, Air New Zealand did open up seats to San Francisco and Los Angeles direct from Auckland, I kept the routing via Vancouver. The one upside of paying UA’s normal award rates is that I can call and make changes for free as a 1K; changes to these Aeroplan awards might require more miles, miles that I don’t have (any more because I spent them on a trip to Asia in March :D). If nothing else, I’ll be able to stop by to get my NEXUS iris scan done and see what Air Canada has in way to offer at its Maple Leaf Lounge. Around 2AM EST Wednesday, I noticed that UA had opened up some availability right after New Years in p.s. business class. When I got up to call Aeroplan at 7AM to adjust my outbound flight to p.s. as well to consolidate the change fee, the “promotion” had ended, but I was able to change out my Continental segments for ones on United p.s. While I’ve flown numerous times in both of these cabins this year, p.s. still holds its distinction for me. With these tweaked segments, my new itinerary is New York Kennedy to San Francisco to Sydney to Auckland to Vancouver to Los Angeles to New York Kennedy, traveling 21947 miles in 10 days.
I’ve added a trip report index spanning this year to the blog.
There’s a rather nice video on YouTube featuring images of United’s old, Tulip-bearing livery circulating.
