United Airlines First Class - 757 Review

Update: Flat bed 757 seat review and 757 Business First to Europe review.

Domestic First class isn’t what it used to be, even just a few years ago, but it still is far better than sitting in economy.  I decided it would be fun to compare first class on United 757 against first class on United’s website.  A few years ago, Northwest Airlines said that only 14% of people in the domestic first class pays first class fares.  United may have a slightly higher percentage (fewer seats than NW), but I would be shocked if the number is over 20%.  Since about 80% of first class passengers didn’t pay to sit there, airlines are degrading the first class experience to save money.  It’s noticeable and I won’t pay to fly first domestically, but upgrades still create some excitement.

United Airlines First Class Seat 757 

Onboard Amenities

Extra-wide leather seats with expanded legroom.  The seat is the star of the show.  More width, more padding, more recline, and more leg room.  The seat is very comfortable and something you can count on every flight.  There is a wide area between the seats for drinks and to create a bit of privacy. 

Complimentary blankets available onboard for use during your flight.  Not always.  Blankets are only found on overnight flights.  The blanket quality took a drop with the Continental merger too; they are now see through and scratchy.  Don’t look for a pillow day or night, those are gone. 

United Airlines First Class Seat 757 Reclined

Meals and Beverages - (Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Post)

Pre-departure beverage service.  It’s available only if the flight attendants want to serve drinks.  Continental crews will 95% of the time, but United ones are closer to 75% of the time.  Some crews offer water or OJ, other take drink orders.  You can always ask for what you want, wine aside (flight crews don’t like opening bottles on the ground), you should be able to get it.

Complimentary beer, wine, spirits, soft drinks and freshly brewed coffee.  All true.  Same drinks as in coach, but the wine comes in full size bottles.  The new United coffee isn’t very good though and Bailey’s isn’t always onboard to fix the flavor issues.  Drinking contests with seatmates make the flight go much faster.

Hot towel service.  Towels are provided after takeoff.  I like to wipe down my seating area before the meal service.  Towels used to become very dirty after this process, but now they don’t find as much dirt.  This is my unscientific way to see that United is keeping their planes much cleaner than in years past.

United Airlines First Class Seat 757 Legroom

Meal service on flights longer than two hours.  I’ve always liked airline food, even the slop served in coach when I was a kid, so digest this review with that in mind.  United flights offer two items, omelet or fruit plate for breakfast and usually pasta/salad or a sandwich/wrap for lunch and dinner.  Some meals also come with soup, usually excellent (bad lunch review, good lunch review).  A roll or salad is also sometimes offered.  The menu changes about every month.  Desert is a baked on board cookie.  They usually serve a great chocolate chip cookie, but every once and a while mix it up with oatmeal raisin or white chocolate cranberry.  On flights less than 2 hours, a snack basket is passed around with nuts, chips, Clif Bars, and bananas.  Not very inspiring, Lufthansa does a meal service on short flights, United can just as easily. 

Entertainment 

Audio entertainment with complimentary headsets provided on aircraft equipped with in-flight entertainment.  Better headsets than in coach, but your own might still be better.

Complimentary DIRECTV® on equipped aircraft (most 90%+ of the 737 fleet).  Free live tv is standard on JetBlue, while United charges $4 or $6 in coach.  First Class gets it for free and has the same ear buds as in coach.

United Airlines 757 at EWR Sunrise

Complimentary movies on all flights three hours or longer.  This is a standard offering in all cabins.  They did show The Artist on a recent flight, so not every inflight movie is garbage.

A complimentary copy of Hemispheres magazine.  Every seat has a copy, not very special.  Hemispheres is a better read than most inflight magazines though.

Airport arrival and departure

Premier AccessSM check-in, baggage handling, boarding and security lines (where available).  2 free checked bags, short line for check in, security, and boarding.  All nice perks for flying first.  

Today's My Lucky Day

I didn't believe it myself.  I'm flying out of EWR today and right after my ID was checked, an X-ray lane opened up in front of me.  I was first through the line and through in less than a minute.


It's a great day to fly.

United Going Retro

United Airlines launched a retro livery A320 two years ago.  It looked pretty cool, but now they have one upped themselves with faxing boarding passes.  I guess the assumption here is that people own stand alone fax machines that do not double as a printer.  So very retro.

United Fax Ad

United Airlines 777 Business Class Seat

I had to fly to White Plains, NY, for work last week. And had a full day to travel, so I picked the most interesting flight I could find.  I was able to book an international configuration 777 with the new lie flat beds in business.  My upgrade cleared (I wish I could book business directly) and I was flying 6A to Chicago. 

United Airlines 777 Business Class Flat Seat

The United 777 business class seats are set up with five rows of 2x4x2 seating.  The middle seats don’t have a lot of privacy and the cabin felt a little crowded. 

United Airlines 777 Business Class Flat Seat

United Airlines’ business class seat is one of the best in the air.  It is about six feet long is truly flat (parallel to the floor).  There is a good AVOD system with a great selection of movies, new and old.  I watched Wall-E on my trip and a bit of Toy Story 3.  There is no under seat storage with these seats, so I grabbed my Bose headphones and Economist and tossed my bag in the overhead bin.  The seat controls are easy to understand and there is a myriad of comfortable positions for the seat.  The window seat has a good feeling of privacy, but it is not impossible to have a conversation with your seatmate either. 

United Airlines 777 Business Class Flat Seat

United does not have the best food in the air, usually their good meals can be described as edible.  Breakfast was an egg McMuffin and yogurt.  Not bad, but not filling or exciting either.  Continental has a much better breakfast spread and I hope the new United keeps what Continental serves.  The Bailey’s and coffee was ok, United switched coffees and I am not a fan of the new blend (United Club coffee is unpalatable).  Increasing the ratio of Bailey’s to coffee fixed the taste problem. 

United Airlines Business Class Breakfast

The flight went quickly and the service ended early due to turbulence over Illinois and Wisconsin.  It was a pleasant flight staffed with a senior crew that was very professional and enhanced the experience. 

Rainy day at ORD

It was raining in Chicago and my E170 flight to HPN was canceled.  I lost my first class seat, had an extra three hours at ORD (I wasn’t the only one with an extended stay, there was not a single open seat in the F gates United Club), and was stuck on a CRJ.  Still, could be worse, I could have been in the office.  

Thoughts on Around the World Travel

I was discussing around the world travel with my friend Mary at Pies Etc. the other night and an interesting contrast came up.  Mary sees round the world travel as a month long journey to explore several continents, make 8-12 stops, and fulfill romantic travel dreams.  I see it as a way to follow in the footsteps of aviation pioneers.

Mary views RTW travel as one Atlantic crossing, one Pacific crossing, and many stops along the way.  Something like New York to Africa to Europe to India to Southern Asia to New Zealand to Polynesia, then back home.  Airline alliances sell tickets for these travels (Star Alliance, oneworld, Sky Team) that give you a certain number of segments and miles flown for a fixed price.  They can be a very good value, especially if you are going on some expensive flights.  The websites are also a fun way to play at work.  Airlines also offer RTW tickets with miles, but they offer far less.  United for example allows 5 stops (but unlimited segments) and 24,000 miles flown on their RTW ticket.  The pricing is also steep, 200,000 miles in coach, 300,000 in business, and 400,000 in first.  There are award seat limitations like a normal round trip.  Depending on your trip, it may be cheaper to assemble a collection of one way award tickets.  The ease, flight availability, and value provided from the Star Alliance RTW ticket makes paying cash look very tempting. 

My view of RTW travel is based on the International Air Sports Federation, FAI, the final authority on setting aviation records.  They define Round the World as a course beginning and ending in the same location, the course must be a minimum distance of 27,000 kilometers (16,778 miles), and the course must cross all meridians.  I can accomplish that in a few days using a few airline miles, 90,000 US Airways Dividend Miles for business class actually.  Mary decided she would not want to travel in my style and lost interest in my idea, but not before laughing after thinking of me as an aviation pioneer, wearing goggles flying over a corn field.

US Airways charges 90,000 miles to fly business class from North America to North Asia (Japan, China, Korea, and some -stan countries).  They will let you fly via the Atlantic on one leg and Pacific on the other.  You also get a free stopover at a Star Alliance hub.  This award will meet the FAI requirements, be a fun way to see two cities, and a chance to experience different business class products.

I’m thinking of Tokyo and Warsaw can be my stops.  I was booked to go to Tokyo last year, but my trip was to start the morning after the earthquake, so I took United’s refund offer (the ticket was only $700 round trip from Denver through ORD, unmatched since).  My second stop has to be a Star Alliance hub and I’d like it to be in Europe (Star’s Europe hubs are Ljubljana, Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Rhodes, Larnaca, Vienna, Helsinki, London Heathrow, Brussels, Zagreb, Warsaw, Frankfurt, Munich, Duesseldorf, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Lisbon, Porto, Istanbul, Ankara).  I’ve already seen a few of the cities listed and want to go somewhere new.  Warsaw works well because LOT has quite a few flights into North America with outstanding business class availability.  Austrian Airlines has good availability from Japan and to North America, but I’ve already been to Vienna (It’s amazing and I recommend it to all).  Istanbul is tempting too with almost 100% business class availability from NRT to IST, but almost nothing onward to North America (United announced a new EWR-IST flight, but no business awards yet). 

I’m using Continental’s website to find availability and piece this trip together.  Once I find the flights, I’ll need to call up US Airways to book it.  I’ve heard that I should allot an hour for that call.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Travel Tip - How to Turn Off Your TV on the Plane

Personal TV's are becoming more and more common on airplanes, great news for most, but an annoyance for some.  Let me explain.  United / Continental has personal TVs in most of their 737 fleet and charge coach passengers $4 (flights less than 2 hours) or $6 (flights greater than 2 hours) for the service.  Some people who don't buy want to turn them off and sleep.  Most people do this by pushing and holding the OFF button, lower left in the picture (it also adjusts the brightness).  Some people on my last flight didn't know about that button and tried to cover the screen up with airsick bags, notebook paper, or safety cards.  Others were staring at a Lincoln car commercial run in a loop for three hours. There is an easier way.

In Flight DirecTV control on Continental 737

Routine Flying in 2012

I’d like to think that I frequently fly foreign carries to far away destinations, but over 95% of my flights are domestic hops.  Also, thanks to the glut of elite flyers trying for upgrades, I’ve sat in coach on over 90% of my flights this year.  This is routine flying.  The basic Denver to Chicago for work type flights that generate the miles needed for grand adventures. 

US Airways Jets at Boston Logan

So how do I do I fly 22,000 miles in coach in two months?  Business trips are the foundation.  Denver to Chicago, White Plains, Newark, and White Planes again help build miles at no cost to me.  Also I booked two weekend trips just for the miles.  I found some cheap fares (about 2c a redeemable mile) and booked the flights to build my mileage balance, for a little vacation, and get a head start on elite status. 

United 757 Night Landing at EWR

The United and Continental merger has also made upgrades much more difficult to obtain.  There is the same number of first class seats on each plane, but now an entire extra airline worth of customers trying to grab the seats.  It used to be easy to clear upgrades a few days out on bigger planes like 767s and 757s, but now they are clearing at the gate if at all.  It is also taking some of the fun out of flying; airline food is quite decent these days.  At least the lounges have plenty of space (thank you JP Morgan Palladium card).

US Airways Lounge in Charlotte 

So how do you make the best of a suboptimal situation?  Relax.  That is the most important key to traveling.  Calm down and go with the flow.  My next key is to grab a window seat.  I feel like they have more space and as long as I think that; they will (I also believe in the power of extra strength placebos).  Some good reading material helps, so does a pillow, blanket, and eye mask for overnight flights.  Stay hydrated; the air in planes is very dry and you should be actively counteracting that.  Lastly, try to enjoy the magic of flight.  100 years ago, a nonstop flight from coast to coast was just a dream.