Quick Getaway to Mexico City
Taking a quick break from my MENA trip report, here's a quick report on my mainstay UA. I snuck in a quick trip to Mexico City over Thanksgiving in between crazy months at work. This was a cash fare (because surprisingly there aren't many nonstop options to MEX from DC and the fares were all fairly high).
Flight routing
- 1UA1566 - Business - Washington → Mexico City - Airbus A320
- 2UA1567 - Business - Mexico City → Washington - Airbus A320

United Club (IAD - D Concourse)
IAD was an absolute mess two days before Thanksgiving, as one might expect. I think it would have been faster to go through PreCheck rather than CLEAR. My last several experiences with CLEAR (including this one) have been less than stellar because they're bottlenecked by the number of agents available to walk people through.
In any case, I cleared security eventually and took the train to Concourse C before walking to D (I try to avoid the people mover if I can). The United Clubs were packed, with lines to get in the ones in C, and even the dungeon in D had a line waiting to get in. Luckily, there wasn't much of a wait (each person was processed through), though people with club passes were sent to Concourse C as those clubs were bigger (apparently). This was interesting because the club by C1 had a 25-30 minute wait when I walked by.

Because you are checked in at the door, no need to stop by the front desk.

The United Club is a level down from the main concourse, and just one big interconnected space. Because of how packed this lounge was, I avoided taking many pictures. You can see for yourself what the situation looked like. I was lucky enough that someone stood up from a table right as I got there and I managed to snag a seat with an outlet.




Again, because the buffet line was packed (and I didn't want to hold people up), I didn't take any pictures there. There was a taco bar to the side. Let's just say these were not competitive with the ones I had in Mexico City later that night.

I grabbed a coffee and a single taco.

For what it's worth, the WiFi wasn't bad despite all the users.

UA1566
My flight to Mexico was on N460UA, a 24-years old A320-200.

Around the holidays the gate lice situation gets really bad–this was 10 minutes before boarding was scheduled to begin. Boarding ultimately began a minute early at 5:04pm.

UA has 3 rows of domestic recliner seats on their A320s, arranged in a 2-2 configuration.

Today I was in 2A. I was a little disappointed there wasn't anything like a blanket or bottle of water waiting for you at your seat even though this is a fairly long narrowbody flight.

Plenty of leg space here:

Underneath the faux marble mini-counter is where you can find the outlet. You can see the little pocket beneath wasn't cleaned very well.

The captain on this flight was very communicative and kept people informed throughout. He explained that we were able to push back on time, but that due to tight slot control at MEX, they'll get fined if they arrive too much earlier than their schedule. So we pushed back at 5:42, taxied to a holding area, and waited for about 20 minutes before taxing to a runway. We took at 6:15pm ET.

Service began 28 minutes after takeoff with the purser, Jordan, attending to the front cabin. I had selected my meal on the pre-order app before the flight.

First I had a ramekin of warm nuts and a glass of whatever the red wine was–instant regret as soon as I sipped it.

For my dinner, I had the beef melt sandwich. Let's just say that it did not look like the picture on the preorder and tasted like it looked. The chocolate cake and salad were fine though.

I got WiFi, which United offers at a reasonable $8 for the full flight to MileagePlus members. It wasn't very good, but allowed me to email.

I worked through most of the flight and before I realized it the captain came on to ask FAs to prepare the cabin for arrival.

We landed at MEX at 9:37pm local time and reached Gate 28 9 minutes later.
To my surprise, Mexican customs and immigration was exceedingly fast. It took me 12 minutes from deplaning to sitting in an Uber on my way to the hotel. Offhand the only major international airport I can remember being this fast is SIN. Stay tuned for a comparison with
