Since moving to New York, I’ve flown to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving.  To save on airfare, I taken to flying on Thanksgiving morning itself.  While last year’s trip was an uneventful journey of domestic first class, this past year’s was more interesting.

To begin this story, I paid $159.80 for one-way coach ticket between New York and Los Angeles on UA927.  While the absence of complimentary upgrades on United’s p.s. service increases my odds of flying in the back of the plane, I booked the ticket figuring I’d get paid to fly (by being bumped) or get an operational upgrade.  With the flight completely sold out in coach for weeks leading up to the departure, the odds were good.

I made it to the airport and fought off fatigue (6:30AM departures are not my cup of tea!). In light of the holiday, the premium cabins were still on-sale, leaving me to go hat in hand for an op-up rather than a bump.  My inquiry as to “whether we’d need volunteers today” (to dance around asking about my upgrade chances explicitly) lead to a new boarding pass on the spot for 9B.

United 927
New York Kennedy (JFK) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Thursday, November 22nd, 2012
Depart:  6:30AM
Arrive: 9:37AM
Duration:  6 hours, 7 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-222 (N525UA)
Seat: ~~16D (Economy)~~ ~~9B (Business Class)~~ 3C (First Class)

Ah.  Row 9.  The seats with just too much legroom.

I settled in, read the breakfast menu, and began drifting off to sleep.

On our taxi out, the purser came back to the business class section with a simple pronouncement:  “I need 4 volunteers to sit in first class.”  The statement registered and I was moving forward, now to 3C.  With the plane steadily taxing to the runway, I was handed a new menu, which read as follows:

With the plane beginning to turn onto the runway, the purser came to my seat to take my order.  I chose the cereal, making my breakfast markedly similar to the one I had in p.s. Business Class in August.

The two course breakfast seemed better structured than the single-tray approach from August, but having not had a recent business class breakfast service, I could not determine whether this was one of the few distinctions of the first class product.

This year, I’ve largely shifted my New York-San Francisco/Los Angeles trips to American as I’ve been greatly enjoying a phenomenal complimentary upgrade rate.  With my booked September travel completing my Executive Platinum re-qualification, I’ve begun to switch my attention to United.

For most of my travels, I’ve been departing out of Newark and La Guardia for reasons of destination, price, schedule, and the eligibility for complimentary upgrades.  Last weekend, I was flying to San Francisco on p.s.  In an effort to conserve my upgrade instruments, I had confirmed an upgrade for myself only on my redeye return.  Nonetheless, my flight was oversold in coach so I was able to pick up an operational upgrade to business class.

United 397
New York Kennedy (JFK) – San Francisco (SFO)
Saturday, August 4th 2012
Depart:  8:18AM
Arrive: 10:53AM
Duration:  5 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-222ER (N517UA)
Seat: 11C (Business Class)

For now, the hard product on p.s. is unchanged, although it is due to adopt the Continental lie-flat business class product and lose its first class cabin late this year.

My seatmate was no where to be found until two minutes before the door closed, so I wound up using his seat as my example of a business class seat (as I had already settled in and thrown my pillow and blanket into the overhead bin):

Sadly, the “new” United has “aligned” its on-board products including its menus.

Thanks to “alignment,” the menu looks unsurprisingly similar to my Newark to San Francisco flight in May in format.  While the “p.s.” designator is mostly just another marketing term (American uses the word “Flagship” to refer to its service along thes routes), it is still disappointing to see it removed from the product.

My return to this trip was an uneventful redeye back on p.s. to JFK.  While I’m disappointed by the decline of the p.s. soft product and the lack of complimentary upgrades on the route, I still prefer the p.s. business class seats to those on American.

I got to LAX a bit early (1 hour, 45 minutes or so before departure) and made my way to the premium check-in line.  Since the flight was showing F0J0Y0, I volunteered to be bumped to a rather surprised service manager.  Am I the only 1K traveling in business class who has ever asked about being bumped?

I then made my way to the priority security line to enjoy my Freedom Grope.  (I’m now 8 for 8 in being “randomly” selected for the backscatter at the United LAX terminal in the past 11 months).  I had the (mis)fortune of facing the nonpriority line to notice two facts:  The nonpriority line was markedly shorter and the nonpriority line only seems to have walk-through metal detectors.

As I had about an hour and a half before departure, I visited the United Club where my old standbys awaited me:  Crackers, cheese, carrots with ranch dip, shortbread cookies, trail mix, pretzels, and yogurt-covered raisins.  At least it’s consistent?

An hour before departure, I headed to the gate next door to look into my chances of getting VDB’d where I got to kick off the start of my trainwreck of a p.s. flight.  It seems these days that misadventures in business class are the best first world problems I can muster.

United 912

Los Angeles (LAX) – New York Kennedy (JFK)

Monday, January 2nd

Depart: 11:49PM

Arrive: 7:44AM

Duration:  4 hours, 55 minutes

Aircraft: Boeing 757-222 (N512UA)

Seat: 9C (Business Class)

Row 9 is the stuff legends are made of.

With three agents at the gate, one was busy for 50 minutes “setting up the flight” to avoid passenger questions.  The other two stood around helplessly, talking between themselves.  When it came time to start boarding, the two agents both openly announced to the other gate agent and the passengers in earshot that they did not know the boarding order.  While United has made changes to its boarding order, it’s not especially complex.

I made my way to my seat and began noticing the differences between this flight and my normal experience on p.s.  Three flight attendants were gathered in the galley at door 2R talking amongst themselves rather than greeting passengers or taking jackets.  While my jacket was stuffed into my carry-on bag in the overhead, numerous passengers were sitting with jackets in their laps.  Given the conveniently placed handle on the right (and only right) side of business class in front of 9C that a flight attendant normally temporarily hangs bags on, I can only believe that taking jackets is the rule and not the exception.

About five minutes into boarding, I wandered up to the galley to get something to drink as I wasn’t going to be interested in my choices of water, orange juice, or faux champagne.  One of the flight attendants, annoyed that I had disturbed their conversation, retorted back that my “choices were those on the tray,” gesturing at the three beverages that were prepoured in the galley.  At this point, it’s worth noting that customized predeparture beverages have been available on United since September 1st.

I returned to my seat to be asked by a husband and wife split across 9A and 9D to change seats…  with their 13 year old son seated in 10D.  Going from an aisle seat with practically infinite legroom to a window seat is hardly a fair trade, especially when the son (nor technically the parents) was not exit row qualified.  Needless to say, 9B wasn’t enthusiastic about their offer either.

We had an initial 35 minute delay for pushback because the ground crew was still loading bags.  Having missed our slot for departure, our wheels up time was further delayed by another 15 minutes.   After take off, I opted for the cheese plate as a quick snack while checking up on the Internet before turning in for the night.

While the hard product was every bit as comfortable as it normally would be, the experience on this flight was far below my expectations on p.s. and lackluster even for a domestic flight.

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.

My regional upgrade cleared a few weeks ago for last night’s LAX-JFK p.s. redeye, allowing me to grab one of the six exit row seats in business class. From Row 9:

That seat back pocket is so far away!  For comparison, I flew in seat 5B (next to door 2L) in July.

Since there are no Saturday night redeyes from Denver to the New York-area, I caught a 7PM flight from Denver to Los Angeles to connect to the LAX-JFK p.s. redeye.  As a reminder, Gogo has a sponsored 30 minute window of free wifi on p.s. flights for the remainder of September.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, my TSA experience couldn’t have been better.  The TSO administering the patdown was a physics student and consequently empathized with passengers who opted out of the naked-scan.

The Gogo company representative on FlyerTalk announced that passengers on United’s p.s. service (JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO) will have 30 minutes of complimentary internet access during the month of September.

Depending on how well publicized this is to passengers actually on board these aircraft, service quality should range from normal to a true tragedy of the commons.

To get back to New York, I booked the United p.s. LAX-JFK redeye flight in economy.

For my previous four bookings on this particular flight in its various incarnations as UA82, UA691, and now UA599, United was looking for volunteers to be bumped.  Of those three oversold flights, I’ve taken the offers twice and been upgraded to business class once.  This time around, they were actually clearing the standby list.

When I noticed a bulkhead aisle seat open up, I grabbed it.

United bills its p.s. economy section as “Economy Plus.”  A quick glance at Seatguru shows that the pitch on these seats is only 34” for United p.s. 757-200’s compared to the 36” for mainline United 757-200’s.   The bulkhead row has a bit more legroom, perhaps even a bit more than the bulkhead in United’s A320 first class.

A week prior, clicking through on United’s “upgrade to premium seating” offer actually showed a price ($375) to upgrade to business class.  Amongst United’s premium domestic cabins, p.s. is the only one which has ever tempted me to upgrade, even with miles.  Nonetheless, I declined and chose to gamble on being bumped and rerouted onto an itinerary eligible for a complimentary upgrade to first class.  Apparently similar reasoning went through the rest of the cabin, as we departed with empty seats in business class.  Similarly, my flight out on American also had empty seats in business class.

Like the balance struck by charging for standby, upgrades are similar.  As a midtier elite on American, I’m not eligible for automatic upgrades; United excludes p.s. flights from automatic domestic upgrades for its elite members.   Denying free upgrades to passengers, even with space available nominally preserves the value of upgrading in advance.  Why pay to upgrade when one can wait it out and gamble on getting an upgrade right before departure?  If the price were a bit lower, I’d likely jump on it.