Booking the Trip: Skyteam-ing it to Europe and Back
Review: Turkish Airlines Lounge Washington Dulles
Review: Etihad Airways First and Business Class Lounge Washington Dulles
Review: Air France 777-300ER Business Class Washington DC to Paris CDG
Review: Air France Business Class Lounge Terminal 2F Gate F30 (Schengen)
Review: Air France Business Class Lounge Terminal 2F Gate F50 (Schengen)
Review: Air France JOON A320-200 Business Class Paris CDG to Rome
Review: EasyJet A321Neo Economy Class Rome to London Gatwick
Trip Photos: A Brief Re-visit to Italy & London with a bit of Oxford
Review: Premier Inn London Heathrow Terminal 4
Review: SkyTeam Lounge London Heathrow
Review: KLM 737-800 Europe Business Class London Heathrow to Amsterdam
Review: KLM 747-400 World Business Class Amsterdam to Toronto
Review: United Airlines 737-800 Business Class Toronto to Chicago
Review: United Airlines 737-800 First Class Chicago to Santa Ana
YOUTUBE: Air France: Washington DC to Paris CDG
YOUTUBE: Air France JOON: Paris CDG to Rome
YOUTUBE: EasyJet: Rome to London Gatwick
YOUTUBE: KLM: London Heathrow to Amsterdam
YOUTUBE: KLM: Amsterdam to Toronto
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Toronto to Chicago
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Chicago to Santa Ana
This will be a relatively short review since the flight was mostly short and the service was as such. Unfortunately, due to the delay on my inbound flight from Amsterdam, there was no time for Air Canada’s lounge and I had to head straight to my next flight.
YYZ-ORD
Boeing 737-800W
1/8/19
Boarding through the forward door I turned right into the business class cabin. Now, the seat photos were taken from my Chicago to Santa Ana Flight, but I didn’t have space or time to take photos on this flight.
Let’s talk about the seat. The seat itself was very wide. That was a good aspect of it but otherwise, the seat is pretty ancient. The seat cushion was pretty hard and so was the back padding. I wouldn’t want to sit in this seat for a longer flight than I had to. This is the same seat I had back years ago on a flight from San Francisco to Seattle.
The only difference is that since my seat for this flight 1F was a bulkhead, there’s a little bit more legroom and no under seat storage but everything else is the same.
There’s a central console large enough for both of your drinks and power ports underneath the console.
And I rotated the remote picture so you could see the controls better but this remote is sideways on the central console on either side for each passenger.
Each seat also had individual air nozzles at every seat along with lights which I value greatly especially because I was feeling hot on this flight given that I basically was rushing for 1 hour straight transferring terminals and clearing security.
It happened to be a rainy day but there were decent views of other widebody Air Canada aircraft as well.
The purser of this flight was Elan and he was awesome! I mean, at least by domestic premium cabin standards but if I had him on a long haul flight I’d be perfectly happy. He took great care of everyone in the cabin. Boy it was my lucky day because he was my purser on this flight and also on the next flight to Orange County. I even had the exact same aircraft on the next flight!
Anyways, Elan came around and took our orders for pre-departure beverages. I went with sparkling water as the usual.
We had an on-time departure for the most part and taxiied out for a long takeoff roll down runway 23 and departure.
Sorry for the bad photos, it was dark and I was the sleepiest on this flight that I’ve ever been on a plane in my entire life and I was incredibly groggy with given my early start in London, the delays, the running, etc etc.
Within about 10 minutes of takeoff, Elan came around taking drink orders for everyone in the cabin. Now this flight was blocked at just under 2 hours, and under domestic first class conditions, that would be just a beverage and snack. The same applied for “business class” or transborder flights.
So like at the start, I got sparkling water with lemon. Elan always had a smile when he came through the cabin and definitely made the service personal even though he was servicing a total of 16 people in the cabin.
Then he brought around the usual snack basket after. This consisted of cinnamon cookies, popchips, pretzels, etc. There were fruits as well like bananas and apples.
I can’t really say much about the snacks because, well, they are packaged snacks. I’d be lying if I said United chose their snacks well, but in either case it was good enough for what it was.
After this, I crashed for the rest of the flight without even realizing it. When I woke up, I did notice that not only did Elan clean up my glass and wrapping but he also put away my tray table for me which I really appreciated.
I was so out of it when I woke up that I saw a glass on the central console and thinking it was my sparkling water, I almost drank out of it before stopping myself at seeing the stirring rod and the bottle and seeing it was some kind shot mixed with some soft drink. The guy next to me even told me laughingly that I was completely out. Well, at least he was very nice about it.
Otherwise, the rest of the flight was pretty uneventful.
Eventually we began our descent into Chicago over Lake Michigan and it was quite a bumpy descent. But we did get good views of Chicago coming in.
We also had a bumpy approach, but smooth touchdown into Chicago. We taxiied to our gate and well…..how convenient, since I was on the same plane to Santa Ana, I did, of course, get off the plane, but didn’t need to go too far. I could’ve gone to a nearby United Club, but didn’t have enough time for a full blown review
Overall, this flight was mostly good and what you’d expect overall. The soft product was business as usual with the drink and snack basket, the seat was not that great except for the fact that it’s the widest domestic first class seat you’ll see, and the purser Elan was great! Thank goodness I’ll have him for a longer flight now and the last flight of this trip. Stay tuned for the rest and thanks for reading!