After spending hours (upon hours) trying to come up with an interesting way back to Los Angeles, I ended up booking “boring” United Airlines. That turned out to be a great choice.
Sometimes boring is a good thing. Sometimes we just want to sleep. After a couple of sleepless nights, I just wanted to come home. But it wasn’t for lack of options…
Neither Air Italy nor TAP Air Portugal have begun West Coast service. Air Italy’s Milan to LA service starts early next month so I missed out on it by a few days. I look forward to sampling both of those, but this was not the time.
Etihad space was wide open…even in first class. A diversion via Abu Dhabi would have made for a fun ride home. But I figured that was imprudent when there is so much work to be done and my wife and son were waiting for me.
I considered AA first class, a product I have never reviewed, but of course, there was no saver space. No space on British Airways either…I’d like to review the new business class soft product.
EgyptAir is not operating its new Dreamliners yet and I did not feel like a Montreal detour on Air Algerie or Tunis Air. It is still too cold for Greenland.
So I just decided to fly United from Frankfurt to Los Angeles via Washington Dulles. It would give me a full workday in Germany before the 5:00 PM flight. I had to book FRA-IAD nad IAD-LAX separately because there was only a one-hour connection between flights. But I knew the international connection would be a breeze at IAD and it certainly was.
> Read More: Why I Love International Connections at Washington Dulles
The United flight featured the old eight-across business class seats, but I honestly find these seats to be so comfortable and had no issues spending the majority of the flight sleeping.
Service was excellent on both flights. I had a bad sore throat and a FA mothered me…I so appreciated that. My connection to Los Angeles featured an even more wonderful old-school flight attendant whom I will describe in detail next week. I’ve flown with her before and she is amazing.
CONCLUSION
So a boring return…I won’t even write up a flight report. But a good return. After the Lufthansa flight over, it was so nice to stretch out once again.
image: Alan Light / FLICKR
Hi Matthew,
Just for curiosity, how often do you fly with FAs who you remember/recognise from previous flights?
Clearly you fly a lot on UA but also it is a large airline so I have no idea what the answer would be.
I usually fly UA from LAX or from FRA, my two home airports…plus SFO. So I see familiar faces often, though most are not on a first-name basis.
I actively avoid EWR and IAH if I can and don’t fly through DEN, ORD, or IAD often enough to build many relationships, though I do know a handful.
Why avoid IAH? I can see avoiding EWR, but avoiding IAH seems odd to me. I get they can have bad t-storms at certain times, but it’s still a much safer connection most of the time than SFO and ORD. Do you just not like IAH?
As a rule, IAH has the worst FAs in the system (there are definite exceptions, but they have the exCon attitude I don’t care for). I do like the Centurion Lounge in IAH.
What would you have done if the transatlantic flight were delayed? Do you think United would have put you on a later flight to LAX for free?
Spent the night in DC. I have friends there.
This was a 10pm departure, the last of the day. Flight from FRA arrived at 9pm.
Would you have any penalties to pay? Or just same day change to a flight the next day for free bc of status?
Free change.
Did 4 UA flights recently. First ever. It was dramatically more pleasant than AA.
You should definitely try the new BA business soft product. If you haven’t used the BA lounge at IAD, that is pretty nice, too. Anyway, UA is better than AA. I fly a lot of UA, domestic and international, because they have the routes I need. But I’d never pay a premium for them, and the F&B is not very good (though usually better than AA).