Review of United flight Los Angeles → Houston in Domestic First

check in and security

I arrived at LAX much earlier than expected, at around 5:45 a.m., about 3 hours prior to my scheduled departure time of 8:20 a.m. I took the complimentary shuttle from the Sheraton Gateway LAX.

United is the exclusive airline out of Terminal 7 at LAX, so that’s where you’ll need to arrive ahead of your flight. Check In has a few different zones: Premier Access, Polaris, Premier 1K, Global Services, and Economy. So, be sure to join the correct line. There are also self service kiosks that you can use if you’re not checking a bag or want to self-tag your bags.

Because I was connecting onward in Houston to London in Polaris, I utilized the Polaris check in lane. The agent asked me to confirm that I was flying in Polaris and asked to see my itinerary, which I thought was a little unnecessary and time consuming. In the time that it took for me to pull up my itinerary and show it to her, and have her review it, I could’ve had my boarding pass printed and been on my way.

I wasn’t checking a bag, so I quickly printed my boarding passes and was on my way within a minute.

LAX Terminal 7 has four different lanes for security. There’s a Precheck lane, a Clear lane, a Premier Access/Star Alliance Gold Track lane, and then an Economy lane. I went through the Clear lane and was through security within minutes.

lounge: Polaris lounge lax

Ordinarily when flying domestically in First class, you do not have access to any lounge, solely based upon your first class ticket alone. However, because I was connecting onward in Polaris to London, I had access to the Polaris lounge this morning. You can find the full United Lounge access policy here: https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/airport/lounge-access.html

 The LAX Polaris Lounge is located in between gates 73 and 75. The LAX Polaris lounge opens later than some of the other lounges, the LAX lounge opens at 6:30. So, when I arrived at 6:05 a.m., I had to wait a bit before the lounge opened. So, I went to the United Club until the Polaris lounge opened.

After spending about 20 minutes in the United Club taking a few phone calls, I headed over to the Polaris Lounge, which was a less than 5 minute walk from the United Club. The lounge was still closed, but I waited next to the elevator. A few other people arrived to wait outside of the lounge. Right at 6:30, a lounge employee came by to move the sign from in front of the elevator and let us up.

Once you take the elevator up, you enter the lounge by scanning your boarding pass, you then proceed into the lounge through an entryway with some art on the walls.

Immediately upon entering the lounge, you are greeted by the bar, which is massive. You then notice that you have two directions to go in- right or left.

If you proceed left, you’ll find the lounge’s main seating area with armchairs and the typical Polaris workstations. There is a center to the seating area with a Polaris Star on the ceiling.

If you proceed to the right of the entrance you enter a rotunda that goes around the rotunda for the terminal of LAX, where you’ll find the buffet, the restrooms, the shower suites, some tables for seating, and the dining room. There is also a wine wall that reminded me of the Star Alliance Lounge in the not so nearby Tom Bradley International Terminal. 

I decided to check out the dining room, which had no wait as I was the only one in the dining room this morning.

I was seated in the dining room which is a small room in the interior of the lounge. Immediately upon being seated, I was offered my choice of still or sparkling water and something to drink. I went with still water and a cup of coffee with some cream. 

I ordered both the Parmesan Arugula Toast and the French Toast.

Not too long after, the Parmesan Arugula Toast came out. It was very tasty, but it did not have any arugula on it whatsoever, so that’s was weird.

Once I finished my Parmesan Toast, my French toast came out. It was not overly sweet. It was dusted with cinnamon sugar and served with fresh whipped cream and berries. The cream and berries were fresh and that really made a difference.

My entire meal service was completed by 7:00, most likely because I was the only one in the dining room this morning. Once finished, I headed over to the seating area near the window and got some views of the ramp until it would be time for me to leave the lounge and head to the gate. The seating area had excellent views of the tarmac and offered me a decent view of the 737 MAX 9 that would be flying us to Houston this morning.

boarding

This morning, we were departing from gate 71A, which was about a 5 minute walk from the lounge.
 
Boarding began right on time at 7:40 a.m. with pre-boarding starting with customers with disabilities, then global services, then families with children under the age of 2, and then 1K customers. Then group 1 was called, which is the group that first class and star alliance gold members board with.

Upon boarding, I was greeted by a pair of friendly flight attendants.

cabin and seat

The First Class cabin on the 737 MAX 9 is arranged in a 2-2 configuration. It consists of 5 rows, with 20 total seats. Each seat features the newer style overhead bins that are larger, and if bags are placed in the bins properly, then there should be room for every bag in the cabin.

Each seat features a seatback IFE screen with a lot of options. In my opinion, United has one of the best IFE systems. It offers a broad range of options, but offers quite a few new releases, which I think is really nice. I find that Delta doesn’t update its IFE selections as often as United does.

Each seat features 37 inches of pitch, 20 inches of width, and 5 inches of recline.

I quickly found my seat, 2F, the window seat on the right side of the aircraft, in the second row of the aircraft.

This seat in particular features 2 windows. 

In the right armrest, you’ll find your seat recline button. In the left armrest, you’ll find a center console with a small cocktail table. Located inside of the armrest is a tray table, and underneath the cocktail table is a universal power outlet and a headphone jack for the IFE.

pre-departure

At 7:57. a pre-departure beverage offer of water or sparkling wine was offered. I went with water, as usual.

At 8:07, our female captain came on to announce our flight time of 2 hours and 46 minutes this morning.

At 8:08, boarding was completed.

flight

The safety video began playing at 8:22.

We waited for quite a while for our pushback because of other traffic in the alleyway, a common problem at LAX in my opinion because of the pier terminal layout. We pushed back at 8:30.

At 8:38, we began our takeoff roll on runway 25R. I always love the view when departing westbound from LAX because you get some nice views of the beaches and the coast. I got a nice view of Santa Monica Pier on the upwind.

At 8:43, we reached 10,000 feet and we were well on our way to Houston.

At 8:50, a flight attendant came by to confirm meal choices. She confirmed my meal choice. You can preorder your meal with United beginning 5 days prior to departure, and ending 24 hours prior to departure. Today, I went with the Yogurt and Granola Bowl.

At 8:57, the meal service began with the distribution of a hot towel.

At 9:17, my meal was served. The yogurt with granola was delicious, and exactly what you would expect- yogurt and granola.

At 9:40, my meal tray was taken from me after I finished, and I settled in to watch Kingsman for the remainder of the flight.

The flight attendants came by several times during the flight to see if we needed anything!

descent and arrival

At 12:30 Houston time, we began our initial descent a bit early because we were going to be encountering some turbulence on the approach into Houston.

We touched down on runway 8L at 1:14 pm local time, and began our taxi to the gate.

We parked at our gate C11 at 1:25 pm, about 11 minutes ahead of our scheduled 1:36 pm arrival time.