I don’t want to be known as the United Airlines fanboy, but I turned lemons into lemonade earlier this week and had a great flight to London on United’s new 787-9.
Thanks to a mechanical delay out of Burbank, I was able to reroute my trip to Europe to depart from LAX and make Augustine’s first plane ride in business class.
There was a later BUR-SFO flight we were offered that may have allowed us to make our original connection to Frankfurt, but it cut the layover time dramatically and the agents at Burbank did not recommend it. Instead, they advised me to call reservations and I was rebooked on a direct Lufthansa flight out of LAX. But we were within 10-hours of departure, which meant I could not use a Global Premier Upgrade (GPU) to confirm an upgrade to business class. Sadly, there were upgrade seats available.
I noticed that the United flight from Los Angeles to London was wide open and called back to check on flying via London. My request was granted and we found ourselves confirmed in business class for the 10hr overnight flight to London.
Baby’s First Flight
The flight departed at 5:55p, but in order to avoid sitting in traffic we left at 1:30p and spent the afternoon in United’s beautiful new club. Heidi was impressed. I was impressed by the great check-in experience we had.
We had a bassinet reserved on the original 747-400 flight from San Francisco to to Frankfurt but the request was not automatically transferred over to the new flight. Thankfully, a wonderful gate agent gently asked a passenger if she would be willing to move back a row and then assigned us bulkhead seats in the rear business class cabin that have a built-in bassinet.
The LA-based crew was charming onboard and we knew this would be a great flight. Timothy, the purser, introduced himself to each passenger and Gil took great care of us for most of the flight. No one gave us even an evil eye because of the baby.
The Polaris dinning menu gets an A for effort, but the soba noodle salad was disgusting. The main course, however, was delicious — my first time ever having duck on a plane. Heidi and I split a cheese plate and ice cream sundae as well.
Flights that leave in the evening for Europe are perfect for fighting jet lag: we slept well and awoke just in time for breakfast prior to landing.
CONCLUSION
My review of this flight will be different than most — it will be from Augustine’s perspective. I will say this: I am so proud of my little man. He did not make a peep the entire flight. Several passengers came up to us upon landing in London and congratulated us for having such a wonderfully quiet baby. We were just relieved he puts on a good act in public! He slept for over nine hours.
The cabin pressurization on the 787-9 certainly makes a difference and the internet was fast. We felt good upon landing. I recommend a Dreamliner if you can get on one.
“I don’t want to be known as the United Airlines fanboy”
Too late. 😉
Please continue to be a UA “fanboy,” or at least continue your coverage of UA. As a UA 1K as well, I am so sick and tired of reading all these other blogs (aka Lucky, Gary Leff, TPG) who bash UA all the time. I get it – it isn’t the best airline but it is MY airline that I chose to fly, for better of for worse. I have recently started following your blog because you are a UA flyer as well. Please continue your coverage of UA (the good and the bad), and I will continue following you as well. Thank you! From a new reader – DCDan
I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m DC-based as well so United is the obvious choice for frequent business travel. I still get a sideways glance every time I tell a client or coworker I fly United. Especially given the significant improvements over the last few years, United gets a lot of undue hate. Matthew, from one fanboy to another- keep doing what you’re doing.
P.S – how was row 1 on the 787? I’ve got this booked a little later in the year, and while the footrest is wider, is it too close to the galley for noise? Not sure if the tradeoff is worth it…thanks!
Very comfortable — no trouble sleeping and FAs were careful not to make too much noise from galley.
But I was in the first row of the second cabin, so row 6.
Sort of funny – guessing the author hasn’t done too much international business class? I just flew a 787-9, same exact configuration, from SFO-CDG and was pretty disappointed.
1. Only thing making this Polaris is the word “Polaris” on the menu – the configuration is the same tired one they have always had. Zero privacy between you and your neighbor – if you’re in the window you have to crawl over your neighbor to use the bathroom. This is very much unlike the common herringbone that Cathay Pacific offered first on their 777 business class flights starting around 7 years ago. For some reason, even with that option available, UAL decided to put this lousy configuration in brand new jets.
2. About zero personal storage space – most business class lie flats now have a small spot to stick an ipad and a cabinet to store your iphone – see the AA 787 and 777 configs or Cathay’s. Here you have a very small spot on the UAL 787 that is literally up and behind your neck making it virtually useless. In addition, this is where your plugs are located – so you can wrap that AC power p lug around your neck and your headphone wire will use just about every inch before reaching your heads. Poor design.
3. Movie selection good but no music – only audio were podcasts and a rather awful “relaxation” track.
4. Movie screens although big, cannot tilt at all. Keep in mind with that zero privacy I can literally see every other movie screen in my row. Wonderful.
5. Food was very mediocre – on the poor side when compared to DAL or AA. Cold rolls and cold nuts, a salad that seemed like it was more or less cole slaw and very limited wine pourings.
6. Here’s a big one, even if you are 1K with United, you can not get access to their first class lounge on an intl business ticket. I was on a $4800 ticket in a jet with no first class – 90% of their intl jets have no first class, yet I couldn’t get into the first class lounge – unlike AA or Cathay. So the lounge in SFO – p retty God awful but h ey they had free cheese cubes and floor space.
Overall UAL was disappointing. This was my first intl flight with them in years and I decided to try them out. Not worth it and markedly worse than the other domestic carriers.
It was little Augustine’s first trip, but his father has flown 2M miles around the world on all the top carriers. He still likes United.