Review of United flight from Koror to Manila in Economy

A lot of the background for this flight is in the London-Taipei report but to recap:
After many other plans, I briefly looked at Palau. Qantas Koror-Brisbane-Perth was quite expensive and the dates didn't work well, while Philippine via Manila was even more expensive. However, I came across a United mileage fare from Koror to Manila for what was actually a very good price at just 15k miles.
The cash fare was over $400, quite extreme for such a short flight and more expensive than Philippine Airlines, which no doubt would have provided better service.

This worked out to 2.9 cents per mile which is great for an economy fare. Also…
a. for some strange reason there were no taxes or fees, it was just the miles
b. I had 10k miles off with United.

The week after booking United brought in another discount for cardholders and since with miles it was flexible, I was able to cancel and rebook.

It wasn't perfect - I wasn't looking forward to an ancient Guam-based 737-800 with no doubt very questionable meals* and poor entertainment, but the price was unbeatable (PAL was still well over $300) and it gave me a chance to use some of the large amount of United miles that have been piling up without being used since 2022. And in all my travels and searches since then I only remember them even looking useful once, for getting from Amman to Kuwait on my 2024 Jordan trip  - and even there I ended up going with Emirates instead.
More importantly, of course, it let me travel to a country that is not easy to get to and that I can't imagine I would have visited for a while otherwise.
*(they offered a meal service on this flight, but special meals weren't available to select on my side, which I did know before booking, and after a long chat with a United agent who assured me they could select from their end they admitted it wasn't possible and they weren't sure if there would be any vegetarian meals on board. They put a note in my reservation for it which, spoiler, didn't have an effect also as I expected)

UA193 is an interesting flight; it's a sort of mini island hopper. It can't compare to the long island hopper, connecting Guam and Honolulu with over 12 hours of flying time across the central and northern Pacific, stopping in small towns across the Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands - Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Kwajalein, Majuro - but it does still hop a bit.

The flight begins in Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, near Hagåtña in Guam. It then travels two hours to ROR International Airport which serves Babeldaob (Babelthuap) island and the town of Koror in the Republic of Palau before continuing on to Manila.
I'm not sure if Continental Micronesia operated this exact route though I expect they did, but the general Koror service was certainly inherited from them, as were the aircraft that operate the route which are part of United's Guam-based 737 fleet. Most are 737-800s that once flew for Continental but they are being replaced by newer 737 MAX 8s, which have just recently started operating this flight a few times a week. While I wouldn't have minded having the improved product on my flight this is a chance to fly something which won't be around for much longer.

ROR is a nice little airport.

The check in area was in a walled room with one gate, and there was a huge crowd of people outside who weren't flying. Maybe they were all waiting for the Guam passengers but I'm not sure why they were in departures then.
Inside there was no wait and plenty of counters open.

It was interesting checking in to United in Palau, of all places. They've been one of my most flown airlines but that was mostly domestic travel in the US; I've checked in to United flights in Sydney and Guatemala City, plus some Asian cities a long time ago, but this was a totally new experience.

During my check-in they announced counters would be closing in 15 minutes. For some reason they do it 90 minutes before departure (well, they were meant to, anyway - at the 90 minute mark it was announced that it would be in 5 minutes, then after that passed in another ten the announcement came that they were actually closed. I could hear them from the gate).
The check-in lady was nice. ROR has so few flights she knew arriving yesterday from Taipei was that China Airlines flight. After hearing the eventual destination after Manila was Australia she started to mention Qantas which flies nonstop to Brisbane but corrected herself and said how it was just once a week.
She also said it was only around 60 passengers getting on in Koror but the flight was full because of Guam traffic. If that’s a standard number then I wonder how Philippine Airlines will make the route work, they probably don’t have very high loads even with connections via Manila, and their flight is just between Manila and Koror so they don’t have the benefit of Guam passengers that United does.

There was no one else at security or immigration. It was pretty relaxed, the security agents were chatting to each other and waiting for people to come. You could take 100 mls through and I had full water bottles, but she said to just drink a little so it’s not too full and it’ll be ok.
Immigration was also chill. It was just one relatively small room for both that and security.
I was through everything in just 10 minutes, 5 for check in and 5 for security and immigration.
The gate area was upstairs, and the path there passed over the area outside check-in.

The gate area was of course fairly small, there were three gates though I think it’s very rare that they’d use even two simultaneously. There were more shops than I expected. Compared to the other small Oceanian island airports I’ve been in, it was definitely nicer than Apia or Nadi, and Port Vila can’t even begin to compare. While mine are the first reviews of ROR on the English flight-report site, there are two from 2016 on the French site and it seems like the airport has improved a lot since then.

The Guam flight was actually the next day, but this Manila flight and Guam in the early morning of today were the only flights of the day out of Koror.

Less than five minutes after the plane - N73283, an ex-Continental 22.3 year old 737-800 - landed from Guam those passengers were coming out. Those continuing to Manila had to come into the airport before getting right back on.
By the way, I need to mention here that the United app was pretty good, with lots of helpful information although some of it was quite wrong.
In a little while preboarding started and they moved through those groups pretty fast before starting the general boarding. I was in group two but I think a lot of people from the other groups went while group one was boarding. I still got on before most of the flight.
And there's our plane. This airport isn't the best for planespotting.

Wipes were handed out at the doors as people came onto the plane.
A look at the economy seats. Some of these are from after the plane arrived in Manila.

Including mine.

These are the wipes that were given out.

As you probably saw, there was a blanket at every seat.

Each seat also had a safety card and an airsickness bag.

And another card which was on one side a drinks menu…

…and the other a route map. Some of these routes are quite interesting, and I didn't know they had so many routes to/from Japan.

Pretty old.

Headrests were adjustable.

An ancient entertainment system on these 737-800s. They’re replacing these with 737 MAX 8s that have new interiors which is good, I really dislike this DirectTV style entertainment. 

The screen was fully controlled by the buttons in the armrest.

On the plus side, it’s easy to photograph the whole selection!
Only the movies & events section actually worked and that too with very poor audio quality.

The map was pretty bad as well.

 They did also have a few games on the United app but that’s always there including off of flights. Wi-fi wasn’t actually available and as I expected there wasn’t actually personal streaming entertainment despite the app saying it would be available.

There was no in-seat charging.

After the safety video (which seemed to believe we were in the USA)

…and an ad for the United credit card, the crew handed out earbuds

… then the lights were dimmed, and we were in the air only around half an hour from when boarding started.

The snack service started soon after departure. The options were vegetarian or chicken sandwiches with pasta salad. I took the vegetarian but I couldn’t really be sure if it had eggs or not, and I have some other dietary restrictions which I couldn’t be sure about either.

(it didn't look that great either)

 It was just the Ferrero Rocher for me, that’s always good at least.

It’s great that they give food and for a flight at this time something small light this is decent, but I do wish special meals had been available and I wouldn’t have minded a few bites to eat myself. I’m not sure if it’s a United issue or a Koror issue as Qantas doesn’t have special meals out of Palau either but there are also other United Micronesia and Japan flights that don’t have them. The weird thing is that there’s no clear information about this on their website and their own agents don’t even seem to know what the policy is, I feel like it wouldn’t be that hard to have a little note on their website that special meals aren’t available on flights out of xyz airports.

But anyway, back to this flight! Drinks came soon afterwards and I got a lemonade of which I was given as much as could possibly fit in the cup, which was nice.

 Water was offered a few minutes later, still during the meal.

The crew were pretty indifferent during the service and generally.
The lavatory was normal enough and clean. I was going to ask if they had any snacks but the galley was curtained off.
Cabin view:

Eventually I used the call button to ask for cranberry juice. I was going to ask about snacks or if they had any more chocolate but the lady left before I could and when she came back she was muttering (very) angrily about someone who’d ordered a drink and then left so I thought it might be best to avoid doing anything that might make her more annoyed.

I got the drink just in time as only a couple of minutes later they started preparing for landing.
At that point we were some 45 minutes ahead of schedule. It ended up being much less, but we still landed in Manila around half an hour early.

I was curious what would happen when a movie ended on a channel, with just a few seconds remaining before the screens shut off at the gate in Manila it seemed they restarted from the beginning. The channels showed times which I think was US Central time.

It was a bit of a walk to immigration and that was busy, but it moved fast, and bags were already arriving when I got to baggage claim downstairs.

Most of the paths through customs were closed off and everyone had to go through the non-citizens, goods to declare channel, but nothing was checked or anything like that.
Past that it was chaos with lots of people waiting to receive arriving passengers.
I had a hotel in Newport City which is connected to MNL by a small pedestrian bridg, it was easy to get throuh and a very convenient location.

And I'll leave this flight report here, thanks for reading.