MEL-SYD-LAX-LAS-CLT-LGAxJFK-SFO-PVG-HRB in Y on UA, US & HO

[seanpodge]

Hello all,

Relocating to Harbin, China for a year doing one of those English teaching scams and I felt like going there via the scenic route. The fact that this would qualify me for *A Gold at the end of it all never was a consideration at all, of course. Having a couple of days of clean, sober fun in Vegas before spending four relaxing nights in The Bronx. Following that is an overnight stay in Shanghai before arriving at my new home for the next year or so.



It all starts in about twelve hours, so I should really finish packing I suppose. :shock:

 

[straitman]

Hello all,

Relocating to Harbin, China for a year doing one of those English teaching scams and I felt like going there via the scenic route. The fact that this would qualify me for *A Gold at the end of it all never was a consideration at all, of course. Having a couple of days of clean, sober fun in Vegas before spending four relaxing nights in The Bronx. Following that is an overnight stay in Shanghai before arriving at my new home for the next year or so.

View attachment 7507

It all starts in about twelve hours, so I should really finish packing I suppose. :shock:

A true AFF/FT itinerary :!:

Keep us updated on how you are getting on.

 

[seanpodge]

UA840 MEL-SYD
Cabin Economy Seat 45K
Scheduled departure 11:20 Actual on time
Scheduled arrival 12:45 Actual on time
Aircraft Boeing 747-400
GCM Distance 439 miles

As much I have enjoyed my previous visit to the US and was looking forward to seeing Las Vegas and New York again, the ability to get *A Gold in anticipation of future travels was pretty significant in my choice of destinations. So I was pleasantly surprised that my lowly *A Silver was more useful than I thought.

Checking in at the priority queue, I was able to save about fifteen minutes of my life I'd have never got back. That was only a prelude to when the check in agent offered me an emergency exit row seat, to which I practised my poker face in offering my calm acceptance of her offer. With my boarding passes printed and bag checked in, my opinion of UA was rising from its rather low base quite quickly. Migration and security was handled relatively speedily, so it was time to waste my money in duty free. I got a Swatch (I've, of course, already scratched the face) and a bag of m&m's in case the food on board wasn't up to much. Had breakfast at the Cafe Vué (is it just the T2 one or are they all overrated?) and headed to the gate, where our ride (still in the pre merger UA livery) was waiting for us.



There was a pretty reasonable crowd at the gate and the plane in the Economy section would have been about 70% full. Boarding is organised by group numbers printed on the boarding pass and the staff were quite strict about enforcing it. After boarding we taxied to the edge of the runway, waited for about half a dozen QF planes and a DJ, then we finally were on our way. Just as the plane was taking off, some bright spark a couple of rows behind me decided that that would be a great time to just casually get up, get something from the overhead locker and have a chat with someone in another row. If I we're the FA, he may have found his complementary beverage served to the crouch area of his trousers. Just unbelievably self centred behaviour in my opinion.

As it turned out, I was on my own for this leg in the emergency row (is that strictly legal?) so I shuffled over from my designated aisle seat to the window. The leg room was delightful, particularly after walking past a few rows of economy seats and seeing what a seat pitch of 31" looks like in the flesh. I didn't even realise which seats were premium economy until I had a second look as I disembarked. Definitely nothing to get excited about, particularly given that on my last long haul flight on OZ, one got 34" seat pitch (equal to UA PE), personal IFE and free alcohol in standard economy.



Service consisted of a beverage and pack of pretzels.



On the screen was an episode of How I Met Your Mother followed by something about dogs eating weird objects. I decided to look out the window instead, with a clear view of the ground below for the whole flight. Sadly, I couldn't get the ATC channel to work on the IFE since that's a feature that would appeal to the nerd in me.



The flight attendants provided a good service in a somewhat casual fashion. I was actually located next to the galley so I got to have a bit of a chat with the two looking after my section. For those wondering, the crew from MEL only go to SYD and make it back to the US on a future flight, presumably the next day. We soon were landing in SYD from the somewhat less scenic southern approach in the midst of a debate of how many oceans there are (clearly why wifi access to Wikipedia is desperately required on all aircraft!) and walking off to being the next leg of the journey.

 

[seanpodge]

Flight UA840 SYD-LAX
Aircraft Boeing 747-400 Registration
Cabin Economy
Seat 45H (aisle, emergency exit row)
Scheduled Departure 13:50 Actual close enough
Scheduled Arrival 10:10 Actual 09:39
GCM Distance 7488 miles


Flight UA840 might not win too many awards, but it probably is the easiest transfer from a domestic to international leg one can have at SYD. The plane to take us to LAX was already waiting for us at the next gate when we arrived (the plane that performs the MEL-SYD leg actually continues as UA870 to SFO, so make sure that you've got ALL of your hand luggage when getting off at SYD!). Feeling some slight stomach muscle cramps due to dehydration, I bought two large bottles of water and made my way back to the gate. At the gate, there was a fenced off pen for passengers with status, even lowly *A Silver riff raff such as myself. While the only benefit of the pen appeared to be a functional seat to passenger ratio, I decided to act like I'm better than I am and enter the pen and take a seat. A quick scan of Facebook on my iPad was all that's could manage as boarding commenced with no deviation from the schedule. UA840's punctuality streak continued as we pushed back and took off with a fairly lengthy taxi between.

About an hour after takeoff, lunch was served. The dichotomy between the ambiguous tortellini and a rather more adequately described barbecue chicken with potato, carrot and green beans was concluded in the favour of the latter. The meal was pretty reasonable for Economy, the chicken in particular doing very well at staying moist and tender at 30,000 ft. A lettuce salad with bonus lettuce and a reasonable enough chocolate brownie completed the tray.

The film selection was a bit "two and a half from me, Margret", sadly. With the ATC channel again not being broadcasted on the flight, I did tune in for the first film, One For the Money, but tuned out when lunch arrived and never felt particularly compelled to tune back in. With the inflight magazine suggesting that things were unlikely to lift from cinematic purgatory, I decided to take advantage of my own IFE that I had prepared earlier, with an old 4 Corners on supermax prisons in NSW (pretty good, would have been better if they were allowed to talk with current prisoners, I think) and season one of Laid, all broken up by regular visits to the lavatory as a consequence of curing my stomach cramps, which thankfully cleared up after two to three hours. I snuck in some pretty poor quality sleep somewhere along the line as well.

The hard product in Economy may be well behind its competitors but the UA flight attendants made the best of what they had with friendly and constant service during the night. Water and orange juice were regularly offered and passengers were more than welcome to request other drinks or just take one from the galley. A snack of a small roll with meat and zucchini was also provided for those who were awake. Towards the end, a breakfast was provided. I chose the sausage and egg with potato over the yoghurt with fruit. The fry was pretty reasonable, although the egg of the passenger next to me looked more like scrambled Cheezles and remained largely undisturbed.

Overall, while it is clear that the UA hard product in economy is well behind its competitors (last time I flew to the US with NZ and was quite pleased with it), I can happily say that some of the horror stories about rude service from the flight attendants one hears seemed well wide of the mark on this occasion. People should obviously go into it with their eyes open, but given that UA can only compete on price (except maybe to SFO, although NZ8 from AKL is an option here) it can be a cheep and cheerful way to get to the US. That said, until the product is upgraded to somewhere around where SQ were in the mid 1990s, UA would have to be offering a significant discount on their competitors (as they were on this occasion) in order to be in the running for my money.

The window shades were opened just as we started passing over land again, giving us a good view of the area surrounding Los Angeles. We managed to get to the gate over thirty minutes early, which I suspect was a vital gain for those with tighter connections than myself given what followed.......

 

[BVT]

Nice TR, so far. Thank you.

We all love a good cliff hanger!

 

[jetlagger]

Nice TR, so far. Thank you.

We all love a good cliff hanger!

+1... Look forward to your ongoing adventures. I have a trip planned to Harbin in Jan 13... Cheers

 

[seanpodge]

Sorry for the delay, people. Interweb + iYoke issues

Flight UA5326 LAX-LAS

Aircraft Bombardier Canadair CRJ200
Cabin Marxist Seat 8B
Scheduled Departure 12:50 Pushback 13:15
Scheduled arrival 14:03 Seatbelt sign off 14:20
GCM miles 236 FF miles credited 237 x 1

After enjoying an unexpectedly decent flight on UA840, the LAX airport conspired to let the side down with poor planing and even worse crowd management at immigration. A full 747 load of passengers were funnelled into a small room with no signage to face the wait to the processed by the few staff to fill the plentiful border control booths. After a bit of shouting by an UA representative let us know which curled snake was for foreigners and which for the locals (a problem that could have been handled by more barrier rope and some actual signage). Obviously getting order from hundreds of people isn't an easy job, but whoever is responsible for the situation has done a pretty poor job, particularly given that a full 747 had just stepped off of a 14 hour flight.

In the queue, I managed to get chatting with another passenger who was on my connecting flight to LAS, which helped pass the time as the line crawled along. Once I got
let in, I headed over to the luggage carousel where I managed to spot my bag coming out just as I arrived. One swift lift to the trolley and then a pretty quick congress with Customs, where I declared US$17 and a bag of m&m's, my bag went to the transfer carousel, where the staff member was treating the bags of previous passengers as though he was practising caber tossing. :shock: I quietly waited for him to take someone else's bag before gently placing my bag on the belt in some delusion that my bag would somehow not be piffed around behind the scenes anyway.

After this, I eventually found my was to the domestic security checkpoint (once again, poor to non existent signage was letting LAX down) and once through security finally found a screen showing my flight. Noting a gate change from the boarding pass printed nearly a day ago, I made the trek down to the gate, which of course was now the second to last in the terminal.

There was a break in United's punctuality streak when there was a maintenance delay, which delayed pushback by about 20-30 minutes. This delay did however save the bacon of the man I met in the immigration queue, who had been waiting at the old gate and made it a couple of minutes before the scheduled departure. Group based boarding was promptly dispensed with once the pointless of having priority boarding for a 50 seat aircraft became apparent and while scraping my head against the ceiling, I made my way to my seat. One issue with a small aircraft like the CRJ200 is that the emergency row isn't actually all that spacious, and I think I may have got about one inch of seat pitch over my fellow passengers. I imagine that particularly rotund passengers would struggle to fit trough the space made once the emergency door is dispensed with and might be best placed in the front row to exit from the much broader front door in an emergency.

I was close enough to the window to look out at the desert on a very clear day, one of my favourite views in air travel. A beverage was served by the sole flight attendant before we came in to land. The pilot got to show off the taxiing capabilities of the CRJ200 as s/he raced along what must have been close to a full circuit of LAS before we finally found our gate. Finally, it was time for a well needed shower and a nap before indulging in what Las Vegas has to offer.

 

[jetlagger]

Thanks for the update... Clear & concise with a spice of humour.. Have fun & keep us updated!

 

[seanpodge]

Well, after having a nice couple of days in Vegas dining at Flava Flav's chicken restaurant, the ever delightful Bellagio buffet and getting sunburnt, it was time to head to New York. For those wondering, Flava Flav's chicken isn't bad, but there's still a bit of work to be done before the restaurant becomes a chain. Also, why does the Flava Flav restaurant need to download clips from rage to play on the television?







Some photos to pad out the report and distract from the fact that I didn't take any on board photos for this section of the trip.

US1778 LAS-CLT
Aircraft Airbus A321-200
Cabin Economy Seat 21E
Scheduled departure 2250 Pushback a few minutes early
Scheduled arrival 0601 +1 Actual Also a few minutes early
GCM distance 1916 Credited 1913x1

After a couple of days in Las Vegas, it was time to make my way to New York on two US Airways flights which made use of its Charlotte hub. After getting good value from the Bellagio buffet, I made my way to LAS. Sadly, except for the exception on the checked in bag charge, my *A Silver status wasn't going to get me very far this time, with me stuck in my booked seat. Managed to make it through security and made it to gate. I decided to take advantage of LAS' free wifi and make a couple of downloads and made contact with some people back in Australia. Boarding was on time as was departure. A slight change in the safety briefing routine, where it was discovered that one could pull up the seat base and use it as a floatation device in addition to the standard life jacket was about as interesting as it got. The seats were fairly comfortable for the four hour journey which most on board, including myself, decided to spend sleeping. Being an overnight flight with no onboard entertainment facilities, everyone seemed keen to drift off into the land of nod, which even I managed to do (I think I'm slowly improving in this department as I age). One of the most ho-hum flights I can remember. We managed to touch down and reach the gate just ahead of schedule in a rather routine flight. Time for breakfast!

 

[seanpodge]

US1620 CLT-LGA
Aircraft Airbus A321-200
Scheduled departure 0800 Pushback On time
Scheduled arrival 0951 Seatbelt sign off As it says on the tin
Cabin Economy Seat 14F
GCMiles 544 Credited 538 x 1

Following a delightfully routine flight from LAS, the self loading cargo of US1778 made their way into terminal B of US Airways' Charlotte hub. Pleased to find that my transfer would involve making my way from gate B8 to gate B12 within 110 minutes unencumbered by check in or security procedures, I decided to settle down for breakfast at the Stock car theme cafe between my two gates. There I had a reasonable enough fry up to get my cholesterol levels back up to their optimum combined with a coffee with strong hints of International Roast. Service was a bit over the top by Australian standards (the waitress came up to me so often early in my meal that I think she thought I didn't know how knives and forks worked). Still, for under $15 including tip, it was doing just as well as Cafe Vué back in MEL T2, in my opinion.

After checking up on the football thanks to CLT's free wifi (is it really so hard, MEL!?!?!), US was once again kicking goals by making their operations actually reflect the timetable. Boarding commenced with the obligatory statement (in the US at least) about space issues with the overhead bins and we were soon on our way to Queens. Service consisted of a complementary soft beverage for us up the back (I assume those up front got something with solids). I chose something beginning with g and ending with inger ale and settled in for a bit if sightseeing out the window. Sadly it was a bit cloudy as we came in so the view of New York wasn't as magnificent as it could've been. Still, we promptly made it into LGA and were out of the plane before ten. After a bit of a trundle to get our luggage, the bus to connect to the subway was just a few steps away from the belts. The bus is a convenient service and includes luggage racks, all for a standard bus fare. Where it lets itself down is a lack of information on buying tickets, let alone facilities to buy a ticket at the airport (at least not any that I saw). After finding out that I need $2.25 in quarters, dimes and nickels, I managed to find a rather anonymous change machine back at the luggage belts, then get back to the bus stop to find that I was now waiting for the next service. Of course, when one puts their change in the bus, they don't get a ticket to transfer to the subway for free that holders of proper metro passes are entitled to, meaning that effectively one has to pay twice for the same service. A problem that has a obvious solution, i.e. put a ticket machine at the bus stop! The M60 bus made its way through Queens and Manhattan, where I alighted at 125th St in East Harlem to get the subway to the Bronx, where I'd be based for the next few days. With my hotel mercifully close to the station, I put my bags away and ended up having a longish nap.......