Trapped in a Flying Metal Tube

Before I start, I should apologize for not posting in a very long time. Other things have kept me distracted.

Today I’m flying ALB-IAD-ORD-IAH. When I checked in this morning, the agent was very nice (she usually is, although she’s a self-admitted non-morning-person). Seeing her at about 5am, she was very curious as to my routing today and suggested a single connection as opposed to my 2-stop itinerary. Double EQM (the current United promotion) was all she needed to hear. Understood.

The flight was totally uneventful. It was quiet, as most 6am departures are. Of note was the gate agent for the Chicago flight (which is on a mainline airbus these days). The Chicago flight leaves at 6am, followed by the GoJet 6:10am to DC. She was very forceful in her gate announcements. Everyone was to check their carry on dimensions prior to boarding. She let everyone know that 5 people yesterday had to gate-check because their bags were too big. She also made sure that everyone knew that if they had to check teir bags on the plane that eeryone qould be staring at them, and would even get mad if they delayed the flight. All of that may be true, but where did professionalism go? C’mon! In fact, she stopped 6 people this morning for trying to board with “illegal” bags. (They were perfectly fine for the airbus!) Overhead bins wouldn’t have been full. The flight certainly wasn’t. She did mention that she’s never seen so many passengers in zone 4 (she likes the PA system a lot!) If you’re curious, United has two gates in Albany on the main concourse level with a counter in between the two gates.

Our FA for this flight was very by-the-book…down to reading (verbatim) her announcements. She was the FA serving First for this particular trip. Blah blah blah. Same stuff different day I guess. I find that these GoJet crews tend to be more rigid and formal (maybe boring) than mainline or TransStates or SkyWest crews. Oh well, by the book service and a smooth touchdown in IAD.

IAD-ORD is next!

Hello from Dublin! I’ll make another post at some point later on about the flights. They were good – nothing spectacular…and BMI charges for everything!

At least we made it! …more to come soon

So it’s 10pm ET and I’m sitting in the RCC waiting for the IAD-LHR flight. I have no idea what nasty food we’ll be served, but I’ll be sure to take an iPhone picture! 14A&B are the seats. It’s a UA 777. No fancy new seat, but at least there’s some entertainment. From there we’ll take BMI from LHR to DUB. No frills there. The upgrade was supported via promo, and the double EQM promo was extended to previous ticketed dates. Bonus! Work will be happy!!!

A lot has happened today. It started in Hoosick. Went to Troy. Went home. Went out for beverages pre-flight. Went to the airport. Had a nice crew on a CR7 from ALB-IAD…and now it’s time for the long haul IAD-LHR. I’ll post a full report once I’m in the hotel. That should be tomorrow mid-day (ET).

Until then….
-Chris

Well…I headed back to work a little earlier than expected, so flew TPA-ORD-ALB a day early. TPA-ORD was ok. Typical crew, typical Ted plane, typical “go to sleep” early morning flight crew attitude. I especially love when they close that little window in the forward bulkhead to (in my opinion) discourage interaction. We all know you’re busy reading your magazine!

Now I’m on UA 656 ORD-ALB after sitting in ORD for almost 5 hours because I didn’t make standby on the earlier flight. Let me tell you…it doesn’t even matter. As a whole, this flight crew is hands down the best I’ve ever had the opportunity to fly with. The captain has pointed out landmarks of interest. Our purser, Glen, is positively fantastic. I lost my upgrade since I did standby and first was already full, but it doesn’t really make a difference on this short hour and a half flight. No drink trolleys, but the crew still did an amazing job (and way more efficient than expected) with drink service.

Back to Glen for a minute. Captain Flanagan would be proud. He distributed business cards with personalized notes to elites (not sure if 2Ps got them or just 1P and up), but this guy is first class all the way. This is the purser! Not the pilot. I’m gonna have to write this one up on FlyerTalk for sure. Glen needs to be an in-flight manager or trainer or something. Every FA should be just like him! My guess, however, is that being in the sky is where this guy wants to be. And it shows!!! Even his announcements were top notch with some changes in voice instead of the typical monotone computerized voice that we’ve all become accustomed to.

Not to go into negative territory, but I need to rant real quick. Just because you fly a lot…you don’t get to be an asshole. The Premier who boarded right before me (during Prem Ex boarding might I add) stormed down the aisle with his 2 bags which were clearly too large to roll down the aisle. So he picked them up, grunted, and shoved them rather hard into the overhead. In doing so, he came within inches of smashing another passenger in the head and totally violently shook the guy’s seat. Anyone who travels with me knows that my number one pet peeve (well I guess I have a few) is when people use my seatback as their handrest/footrest and shake my seat. Drives me nuts. Anyways, as you can probably imagine, the violator in this case didn’t so much as acknowledge he did anything. Rude people like this need to grow up and get lives. You fly 30 times or 25000 miles in a year and suddenly you own the joint? I don’t know how FAs put up with these people.

Back on track…smooth air most of the way. Top notch crew. I’m totally a happy flyer!!! Glad to be back on United.

Only a day trip or two for the next week. March 25th is departure day for Dublin! The current itinerary is Albany -> Washington Dulles -> London Heathrow -> Dublin. Last leg is operated by BMI (if I recall correctly). A new airline for me!

Until next time,
Chris

Wow. What a difference a change of crew makes! Not to mention it’s a normal time for me to be awake right now.

So I was completely wrong about the crew probably remaining the same. My guess is that ALB-DCA was a reserve crew given the overnight and short hop prior to being done for the day. That aside, this crew is great.

Same pre-departure beverage service. Anything that’s available. Please UA, for the love of your passengers, give up the water or oj crap. Too much oj destroys my stomach, and water is boring! I had a cup of coffee (US serves disgusting coffee compared to the “starbucks” special blend that UA serves).

Taking off from DCA, as usual, is absolutely terrible. They seem to use 2 runways…one of which is always available for express planes only. That means only 1 runway for departures and arrivals for mainline aircraft. Annoying! After a 25 minute taxi/hold, we took off towards Tampa.

It was noon somewhere, and in true FT tradition, it was time to have a cocktail. I noticed service starts as soon as we reach 10k feet instead of cruise altitude…which is a welcome change from UA. Since it’s so early, I chose my normal early morning beverage, cranberry and vodka. The great part about the first class FA on this flight was that she insisted on providing me a mini whenever I finished the previous. There were only short periods of time between when I crafted my own cocktail and when another cranberry juice or vodka was delivered. These are the time when I wish I could use my GTEMs on US.

The flight was great. Very little turbulence, nice crew, and nice flight pattern for takeoff and landing.

Some random thoughts…

The sodoku in the US magazine (which has to be the worst I’ve seen as far as the articles are concerned) is much more challenging than the UA equivalent. Much appreciated.

The uniform options for both in-flight and ground crews for US employyes are extensive. Some wear what I’d call fleece shirts. Some wear proper uniforms. And others need some help! I would normally say that this promotes laziness (I’m a suit and tie kinda guy)…but the friendliest and most customer-service oriented employees I’ve met are wearing the fleeces.

That’s all for now. We’re on final. Not a bad trip all-in-all!

So it’s off to Tampa for my annual trip with my dad to spring training. I’m flying down from Albany via Reagan. They are flying US nonstop from Philly.

Typically I’d fly UA through ORD and IAD on a trip like this for some extra miles and an extra segment. Unfortunately, that’s not an option today since this (gasp) 1-stop flight is my only option to arrive around the same time as my dad and the crew. Now, let me briefly touch on the horrors of a 1-stop flight. Most importantly, mileage isn’t computed for each segment. Instead, I’ll get mileage as if this was a non-stop from Albany. Terrible, really. Second, and not so important, is that I’ll probably be stuck with the same crew DCA-TPA. As we found out on the FlyerTalk 1 trip recently, a crew change can be for better or worse!

So onto the first leg ALB-DCA. On the ground, I found US to be on par with UA (at least in Albany). United has the red carpet, but most of the gate agents don’t enforce the rules regarding it…so basically there is no point. US hasn’t picked up on the special boarding. Another interesting difference in boarding is that US boards special needs passengers and families with young children first (no difference here). Next, they board first class and all elite members of their frequent flyer program (dividend miles) at the same time. Even in Albany, on a small 737-400, the number of folks who qualified for this round of boarding (zone 1) had me waiting in line for several minutes. Having a first class passenger “read the boarding zone” off his or her boarding pass seems so boring. Just put “first class” like United does. So much classier!

Upon boarding I was met by two flight attendants. Both extremely friendly given the 5:45am boarding time. One seemed a little too friendly…if you know what I mean

So far, so good. I settle into my seat. Wow! How ugly, dirty, and uncomfortable. I definitely prefer the United first class seat! United has cloth seats with adjustable headrests, whereas US Airways uses hard leather with absolutely no headrest. Plus the US gray seats just make everything so dismal looking. As was the case a few years ago when US was my carrier of choice, there are pen marks all over the seatback in front of me. Also par with the course a few years ago…the seatback pocket is so old that it no longer stays firmly attached to the seat…and almost touches my legs. Pathetic.

Next up is pre-departure beverage service. US has UA beat here. Any beverage is fair game. Coffee is served similar to UA – in styrofoam cups. All other pre-departure beverages are served in plastic cups. The thing is that US has cups that are almost triple the size of the UA 2-sip cups.

Pushback was 10 minutes early and liftoff was right at scheduled departure time. That never happens!

I don’t really have anything to say about the inflight service on this hour flight…except I never did get my coffee!!! We’re about 15 minutes away from DC now, so it’s time to go!

Ciao for now!

Wow. What can I say? Absolutely, positively, fantastic! That being said…issues abounded, but the spirit of everyone onboard more than compensated for the issues in my opinion.

If you don’t mind, I’d rather address the issues first…and then get on to the good stuff. In the spirit of being thankful, I’ll attempt to keep the negative dialogue as brief as possible. The one major issue with our flight, “United FlyerTalk 1″, aka United 153, was the catering. As I will discuss later, the flight was downgraded from a domestically-configured Boeing 767 to a Boeing 757 within a day of our departure. This significantly decreases the number of first class seats and would have been an absolute disaster for our trip. More explaination to follow, but what ultimately happened was that our (now reinstated) 767 flight was catered as if it were, in fact, a 757. That means catering for about 10 less people than actually existed in first. To me, being one of less than 5 first passengers not holding 1K status, this meant no meal choice, no warm nuts, no metal silverware (I believe I received a crew plastic silverware/napkin combo…the kind fast food places give out), and :gasp: a lack of Tanqueray! I seriously hope the FAs still had the opportunity to eat something! The purser on our flight offered whatever my seatmate wanted from her meal as his special meal was not loaded.

Now the only thing my lack of status (I’m only Premier Executive) deprived me of was real silverware. The lack of alcohol and nuts was due to the wrong catering. Nuts were served front to back and I was in 5H. The crew was 100% apologetic and it was obvious they were embarrassed by the mistake. No biggie. My issues today SFO-JFK, or now SFO-ORD to (maybe IAD-JFK tomorrow or LGA take the cake)…but I’m a FlyerTalker and the extra segment(s) and EQM are good, right?

Enough with the negativity…because the entire day was absolutely fantastic and so many people need to be acknowledged for the time and effort they put into affording us FlyerTalkers a day we will never forget!

Some back-story…United’s Captain Flanagan has always been known (both inside and outside the FlyerTalk community) as one of (if not) the most customer-focused Captains at United. Before every flight, he visits with customers in the gate area and discusses the flight, answering questions, and reinforcing the crew’s focus on safety, etc. When was the last time you had a Captain come speak to you prior to boarding? Onboard, he continues his customer-focused enthusiasm by answering questions during boarding, and even invites anyone to send questions up to the flight deck via any FA so he can answer them. This man is first class all the way! That being said…

About half of our group, including myself, arrived from Richmond on a TransStates (United Express) ERJ145. Can’t pass up an opportunity for more segments and EQMs, right? During normal operations, this flight would arrive into the F concourse, but this was no ordinary day. Thanks to the amazing folks in United Operations, we pulled into a C gate. Little did we know (at that point) how much thought goes into each and every aircraft movement at Chicago’s O’Hare airport – at least at the UA-managed gates.

We were met by a group of FlyerTalkers who were joining us in Chicago for the “main event”…Captain Flanagan’s ORD-SFO UA153 flight. Ben, a very frequent traveler (and the FlyerTalker who organized this event), had informed us a few days before the flight that we had a special tour at ORD planned to see some of the behind-the-scenes action. I was excited, but little did I know how many aspects of the operation we would be able to see…let alone all of the amazing folks that we’d have the honor and priveledge of meeting on this very special day.

After we said hello to the group of FlyerTalkers who met our flight, and after making a quick stop to ensure all our gifts for the crew were in order, we met up with a couple fantastic United Public Relations employees. Let me tell you this…if these two ladies were the faces who everyone associates with the airline…no one would fly anyone else. The sheer energy, honesty, and love they have for United speaks volumes for the company they are apart of. It almost felt like family.

They led us downstairs at ORD to the employee areas where we entered the flight ops conference room. There, we were met by Captain Flanagan himself, our amazing First Officer, Luke, and a slew of other United employees who had essentially donated their time to take us on tours, to answer questions, and to insure we had a great few hours at ORD. To all the employees who donated their time, thoughts, and effort on this day…I (and everyone who visited) thank you whole-heartedly.

Four different tours were setup for us. The order was dependent on our group number, so I’ll go in the order that my group went. On a side note, groups were 4-5 people so we all had an opportunity to ask our questions and really got a sense of life at United ORD. It was fantastic!

First for our group was a visit to the United tower. This is the tower that is tasked with assigning gates and managing aircraft movements within the gate area. Wow! It’s a lot of work, but let me assure you that this group is in control and absolutely knowledgable in regards to what they do. Besides the work they do, I was very impressed by the personal stories I heard on our tour. United seems to promote from within. 3 employees are in charge of different sections of the ramp. The career stories included starting as a CS agent, then becoming a supervisor, then working up to tower control. Amazing! Way to go UA!!! On a side note, the technology (some fairly new) that the controllers utilize is fantastic. Given my IT background, I still am fairly unimpressed with the system-to-system communication…but this is a reality in our evolving age.

Next up was a trip to United ORD Operations. WOW! Imagine a corporate setting where people manage thousands of flights with the unknown occuring without warning at a moments notice. Be it a storm, onboard medical emergency, or maintenance issue…this group gets to deal with the issue (and the fallout). Utterly amazing. More awesome technology here. If only all of the consumer systems were updated in real-time…but I digress. Cheers to all the employees in ops who work 24 hours a day (selflessly) to provide a seamless travel experience for UA flyers!

The next stop for our group was the UA company store. It’s located off to the side of the cafeteria. It is small, but has pretty much everything a flight crew might need. TravelPro luggage, luggage tags, shirts, and other United goodies. I picked up my token shotglass and was happy

The final stop on our tour was baggage. I wish I could remember the name of the lady who conducted the tour, but she was fantastic! Baggage ops at ORD are truly incredible. 6 miles of baggage lines, sorters, and automated technology. Of course, it’s still up to humans to deliver your bags to your flight…but wow. I will definitely think twice about having a fit the next time my bags don’t make it. I wish every traveller had the same opportunity to visit the operation. One word: massive!!!

So that concluded our stay at ORD, and it was time to head upstairs to board our domestic-config 767 for the 4 1/2 hour flight to SFO. We made it to the gate at the same time Captain Flanagan was doing his pre-boarding talk. Following his talk, we did our group picture, received handouts of our flightplan, and boarded UA 153 (as we knew it at the time) ready to settle in on our relatively short mid-con adventure. 4 1/2 hours was the scheduled flying time…and usually that would be a decent amount of airtime…but today it would pass before we knew it.

Once onboard, we received 767 trading/business cards. We received a mainline set earlier in the day too! I settled into 5H amongst a ton of excitement. Shortly after settling in, the United PR representative who joined us on the flight (she was fantastic) passed out United trivia sheets for us to complete. I ended with a pathetic 9 out of 15 questions correct. Hey! They were tough! We never found out who won. Maybe it’s posted on FlyerTalk…but I haven’t had a chance to check yet.

First Class was almost entirely full with FlyerTalkers, so the cabin felt more like a lounge than a aircraft cabin. FAs were attentive and friendly without getting in our way as we milled about. The few folks in F who weren’t FlyerTalkers were great sports and I think they got a kick out of us. I’ll try to come back and fill-in more details later. I have a bunch of pictures too that I’ll get around to posting (after I go through them myself).

Cheers for now!

Only on a FlyerTalk adventure does the cabin erupt in applause after the safety demo…and after the “beer, wine, and liquor is available for $6 line”…and when the FA pokes her head out of the galley to make sure we are still paying attention. Little does she know there are more 1K drink chits than opportunities to use them onboard Gene even inquired about the catering for our flight and they only board 50 minis + beer. Does United seriously think this is enough booze for a large group of FlyerTalkers on a 2 hour express flight? I think Randy would be proud! Oh yes, the flight has just begun!

We’re in the same E145 that brought us into Richmond. They even changed the Hemispheres magazines for us. Woohoo. They do realize that about 1/2 the plane flies over 100,000 miles a year on this airline and they’ve already read this month’s issue 10 times, right? Even I have.

The flight crew changed. It was previously discussed as “for better or for worse”. Nothing against our last FA, but it was definitely for the better! Our new FA is definitely funner (my iPhone obviously doesn’t have legally blonde vocabulary because funner was a difficult word for it to allow).

So the first beverage service has begun and it is painfully slow. Not because our FA is slow, but because we’re quickly depleting the liquor supply. She’s made 3 trips back to the galley to restock and she’s only made it to row 14. At least UA is making a large group of 1Ks (and this humble 1P) very happy. Not to mention this flight has to take the record for most 1K drink chits collected on an express flight. It certainly holds the title of most 1Ks on an RJ!

So return trip 4 was just made. I’m assuming it’ll only take 1 more round for this flight to be dry. It’s probably for the better since we all need to be functional for the tour we have been priveledged enough to have been invited to at ORD. No climbing into the overhead bins folks

My g&t is almost gone…so it’s time to figure out how that is going to be replenished. I’ll be back at some point.

Well…what can I say about a 25 minute flight? Oh…ask Ben where the emergency door goes!

Blogging from onboard a flight is fun. Really Currently somewhere between NY and DC. The CRJ200 has to be the worst plane in the United fleet. At least the ERJs have a single seat side.

The very nice lady next to me has a young daughter as a lap child. Woe is me. Since the start of our flight (about 20 minutes ago) she has managed to be a pure terror. Besides the coke that she spilled all over her mother, she seems to have a face fetish. I finally asked her mother to not let her touch my face. (I think my suit avoided the spill thankfully!!!) Wouldn’t want to go to a DO with a stained suit. I don’t think that’s what Capt Flanagan meant by flying with class. OTOH I have quite a mess of animal crumbs all over me that will require some brushing off. That aside…

Our next two flights are DC to Richmond and Richmond to Chicago. Both are on ERJs. 5 of us started the trip at JFK and a bunch more are joining us in DC (the technical start of the pre-party).

OK…time for some sudoku now. Damn United for changing Hemispheres. I had to download sudoku on my iPhone.

P.S. I never knew how strong window shades are! If one was ever going to break…this brat would have done it already. Yes, they are sitting right next to me at the moment.

Next stop IAD…