What's the lounge for?

One of my biggest peeves about lounges is their silly hours.

Here I am in the PHX RCC (Red Carpet Club) waiting for my 7:35pm departure flight back to SFO but we won't start boarding till well after 8:30pm due to late incoming aircraft (I hope it's incoming, it hasn't left DEN yet though!). Yet the official hours of the RCC here is till 7pm, so that's when they are going to throw us out of here. Nice!

First thing to do in a hotel room

Unless you're in a Hilton family hotel, first thing to do is to head for the alarm clock radio and unset the alarm clock which the previous knucklehead left set to 4:00am and 4:30am.

And if it's a beautiful Marriott Butte Resort in Phoenix Arizona, forgetting one's swimsuit is definitely an EV- play, since their shop only has suits in two sizes (8 and 18) and in any case they want $82 for one and since it wasn't made out of gold, I drove to the nearest Target and bought one on clearance for less than $20.

Unfortunately the water in the gorgeous pool felt like it was about 98 degrees, so it was not quite as refreshing as I was hoping it would be.

How long can it take to get a car?

Apparently, Hertz in Phoenix has a major car shortage. After reserving a compact there through my corporate travel site for 10:30am arrival on a Wednesday, I show up around 10:35am at the desk (plane gets in early but shuttle to rental car center takes forever). No line but she has to get on the phone to find me my compact car. 12 minutes on hold and she says they are bringing the car for me and it'll take 10-15 to get the car the loading area.

In retrospect, maybe the shortage of compact cars is related to the price of gas. You think?

One more flaw

Lie-flat seats are great.  But why isn't there a partition that can be raised (like AA F seats have) because with the guy next to me sleeping on his side his face would have been inches from mine if I also wanted to sleep on my side but facing the other direction. 

Use your own damn bathroom

On a 763 the one F bathroom is in the front of the plane.  The two C bathrooms are between C and Y and the four Y lavs are in the back of the plane. 

There is nothing that annoys me more than Y pax that queue up for the C bathrooms, especially when Y is mostly empty and their lavs are all available and C is full.  I also hate when the FAs say they'll make an announcement and they don't and they don't use the curtains between cabins.

As far seat selection, other than the forward vs rear facing, the only decision is window (view but have to step over someone to get out) or aisle.

Some minor glitches with my video - no worst than the typical DVR experience, occassional pixilation and image freeze-up.

Overhead bin on the side wouldn't stay closed.  But the fixed the second C lav at least.

little things

Nowhere to put any trash... Or shoes. 

The seat is super comfy even in T/O position!

More on the new 763

Five empty seats in C.   None in F. This is because it's Saturday, I guess.
Every open seat is a backwards facing one.

E+ looks identical, so no updating there, sadly.

This plane came from SFO. So it's not clear to me how new it is, I thought this was its second day but maybe not.

 

It *is* the new plane!

It's too cool. 

The C seat is possibly the most comfortable seat I've ever sat in.   Very nicely padded and comfortable as a bed or as a recliner. 

The magazines are in a strange place and it's not clear where one can stow junk for take-off.  And being UA something is already broken - one of the two C lavs are out of order. 

But who cares, this seat is AWESOME!!!

Karma?

It's been almost two weeks since my disastrous flight to Newark where after I switched seats with someone across from me so that they could sit with their travel companion I ended up sitting next to the jerj who didn't MHOB, and I ended up leaving my brand new earphones and iPod on the plane. At least I think that's where I left them, after using them most of the flight, I reached for them a few days later on an Amtrak train and didn't find them. In addition to the annoyance of realizing I probably lost them, I had to listen to the way-too-loud volume of the person sitting next to me, taking little satisfaction in the fact that she's sure to go deaf soon.

I mention the seat switch, because no good deed goes unpunished and even though the seat was an even swap, if some honest person happened to pick up my iPod/earphones, they'd have no way to return to me as my name isn't associated with the seat I left them on, but the seat across the aisle from it. Oh well, live and learn.

Other bad karma was last Xmas when coming back from NY we had confirmed seats in F (first) on UA's p.s. service from JFK (three class international quality service and seats on JFK-SFO and JFK-LAX routes) and the nice-seat-p.s. 757 was swapped out for an international 767. Which is nowhere *near* as nice in F or C.

Well, last night I went to check in online for my p.s. flight today (confirmed in C on an upgrade) and realized OMG it's a 767 but the new, reconfigured one that United has made so much noise about since last summer, but since there are just a handful of them still, they've mostly been on international routes I don't fly. The closest I came to flying one was when my disaster abortion of a flight 75 SFO-HNL went mechanical and they were trying to get us a new plane and we almost ended up with the reconfigured 747 but no luck (and then they misfueled the plane we did get and we had to go back and then spend the night at the airport and they ran out of vouchers for hotel so we had to do our own, and then they left us off of the manifest for the extra segment replacement flight the next day but we got 17,500 miles for our troubles each).

Anyway, they had me in one of the backwards facing seats so I quickly switched myself to 6H, front row foward facing and have been holding my breath and keeping my fingers and toes crossed since then, hoping this really will be true.

I'm now sitting at the JFK RCC and sure enough the RCC matron even said "Oh, it's the new plane, I should go take a look at it" and I'm so excited I'll probably go to the gate an hour in advance to take a look and get in line to maximize my time on it!

Luckily I have my camera with me and it even seems to be charged, so I'll try to take some pictures even though lots of pictures have already been taken and posted all over the place.

This doesn't make up for lost iPod and earphones, but it sure makes up for the lost p.s. F opportunity last December!