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!

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.

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…

Now I’m in the United Red Carpet Club waiting for other Flyertalkers to join me. Decent view from here. I’ve seen a China Air Cargo 747, Etihad A340, and more.

More to come…