Welcome all to the continuation of my trip last march in the US.
After a long-haul on Air France, a first domestic trip on AA, it's time now to test United with one mainline flight and one Express flight. Commuting airport will be IAH Houston this time, a first time for me.
The beginning of my journey is already online.
Enchainement de vols
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
If I have the highest status on both Oneworld and Skyteam, I'm almost a no name on Star Alliance that has no good frequent flyer programme to get easily a status. So with my just Silver status (Lufthansa M&M) I was reviewing the benefits I have… it's simple: N O T H I N G. No free bag, no preferred seating, not even the possibility to reserve a seat for free at time of reservation. A crappy alliance and I'm happy to not give 20k$ plus in airline tickets on that alliance to get the Gold status!
So it's 24h before departure that I do my checkin and select my seats. I was lucky enough to get windows seats at the very back of the cabin: row 28 on my A319 and row 17 on my E175.
Car rental return was easy and quick. I could spot as well a car that makes all french flight reporters be more existed than… well you know!
Checkin looks crowded but it was not. It's a kind a semi-manual process. You use the machine and print your bag tag but an employee comes at that time to put it correctly and transfer the bag to the belt behind. Very efficient.
Today's remaining departures for United and American both in that terminal. Dallas is number 1 it seems.
My gate was B5 and directly next to the United Club.
The Denver flight was boarding. They were looking for volunteers to take another flight and at the end offering even 1300$ to do so. We don't see that in Europe as we have a regulation protecting passengers. Of course your can be removed of an overbooked flights but will get in that case a fix compensation (250-600€ depending on the case), a rebooking as in the US but (and that's the difference) full assistance with meal vouchers and hotel room booking. The compensation is in cash also.
Well fortunately or unfortunately my flight was not full and no such offer for me.
The WIFI was not connecting me so I could not finish what I had planned to do for work. We'll see in Houston.
I therefore spent some time exploring the United app which is the greatest I've seen in the industry. Even much better than Delta or AA.
You get all details about your trip, how to go from one gate to the next, how much time you have, if your flights are on time, where your airplane is coming from, and can follow your luggage through all the checks and processes. Impressive!
Soon it was time to board. UA has only 5 boarding groups + pre-boarding which is much better than AA and the ridiculous 7 groups. With my expensive coach ticket I was on group 3- and not due to my *A Silver status as I was unsing here my MileagePlus account to collect much more miles than on M&M (revenue base and expensive fare…^^).
Boarding was slow and welcome standard.
The seat pitch is good on the A319 (tighter on A320).
There is a 110V power socket on each seat.
We were lucky to have one a the few empty middle seat on this flight.
I prefer though the AA seats with tablet holder and USB socket. Airbus aircrafts are wider though which is appreciated in Economy.
Pushback was perfectly on time. Our neighbor is a B737.
Interestingly there is a parked BA A321 in SAT.
And some interesting freight conversions.
Powerful take off
SAT is a town with just a few buildings. It is known for the famous River Walk.
SAT has a V runway alignment. Next to SAT you get the famous Randolph AFB military air base. The installations are all between the runways. You have more than 1000 people living there.
The United network in Texas and surroundings.
Back to the app. It is used as well as entry portal to the in flight entertainment system or to connect to the WIFI. Once again pretty cool implementation and content.
Soon we were approaching Houston the 4th largest city and 4th largest agglomeration in the US.
No service was made on that short flight.
I switched on my phone again and was greeted by a FlyUnited SMS summarizing the next steps for me now that I was in Houston. You may activate or deactivate these notifications in your booking.
We parked next to other United aircrafts. I'm a huge fan of the new livery… and I hate the old one ;)
The app home page was already updated to the connection part of this trip. More on this very soon.
Wow, mixing 3 different carriers and alliances! I wasn't expecting to see UA too.
I don't know if I'm a fan of this concept. When I did it flying LATAM last year I hated it, but that was because their check-in kiosks were SLOOOOOW. I guess if it's fast I wouldn't mind. My parents recently flew UA in J and I was kind of surprised they even made F/J pax do self check in and put on their own bagtags in the Premium Access section. Flying in Y fine, but I don't think self-service is great when flying F/J.
Yeah, AA is so crazy in this respect. When oneworld Emeralds end up in Group 3 of 7 or 8 on AA it's just nonsensical
I prefer Airbus if flying Y whenever given a choice as well.
It's a shame they didn't even offer water on this flight. AA even on 45 minute DCA-LGA/JFK flights will usually make an announcement that they will serve water on request or sometimes come through the cabin with a bottle of water and cups.
Other than that, it's a pretty standard short domestic flight and having streaming IFE is definitely a plus.
Thanks for sharing!