Sunday, April 15, 2012

Star Alliance Mega-Trip 2012: United Club at DFW and First Class on United DFW-SFO

Star Alliance Mega-Trip 2012  
a.      Introduction/Preface
f.       Exploring Frankfurt
t.        Conrad Tokyo
u.      Exploring Tokyo

United Club at DFW and First Class on United DFW-SFO

The trip started off very bright and early for me as I had about 2 hours of sleep after getting up at 4:45AM.  I stayed up too late on a wild goose chase for a good airfare and packed my bags into the wee hours of the morning.  After weighing my 2 checked luggage suitcases, coming in at 48 and 54 pounds each, I was off to the airport at 5:10AM with an arrival time of 5:25AM to Terminal E.  The United counters were pretty empty and I had to wait a while for an agent to help me print luggage tags, take my bags, check my passport and print out my boarding passes after I used the self-check-in computer.  I got 2 boarding passes: one for United to San Francisco and the other for Lufthansa to Frankfurt.  The computer advised me to obtain a boarding pass from Thai Airways when I got to Frankfurt (I assume due to the fact that I have a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt).

Security line was not too bad and I have not seen the waiting area have long wait.  I got to use the metal detector this time and not the nude-o-scope again.  I stopped by the President’s United Club to chat with Jean, my favorite agent, and also to have a quiet place to make some phone calls.  

At about 6:10AM, I made my way to gate E2 to prepare to board and we started the process at 6:20AM with a schedule departure of 6:45AM.  Before we boarded the plane, the captain greeted the passengers and shook our hands (a first ever for me).  The flight attendants greeted us, helped with finding overhead space, and offered us pre-departure beverages.  One of them kept on hawking the Salvadore’spre-mixed margaritas.  I passed on her generous offer and enjoyed a cup of water while the rest of the passengers were boarding.

United 837  DFW-SFO   Airbus 321 
Wednesday
, January 28
Depart: 6:45AM  Arrive: 8:45AM
Duration: 4hr00min
Seat: 2B (Domestic First Class)

After takeoff, the captain came on the overhead system to let us know that our flight time would be 3:38.  The meal service began promptly after and interesting enough, I got the same exact meal as I did last week on the same flight/aircraft type.  My breakfast that consisted of: corn flakes, 2% milk, banana, sausage, egg omelet, cherry tomato, and broccoli/potato cake.  The sausage was not well done again and I felt that the temperature was not hot enough.  Oddly enough, we did not have any table linens or croissants this time, but strawberry jam was placed on our trays.  



For the inflight entertainment an episode of Mike & Molly was shown followed by the movie, Dolphin Tale, which I skipped.  The rest of the flight, I worked on catching up on my blogging and then watched episodes of various TV shows on my laptop.  We did encounter some turbulence during the middle portion of the flight but it was not too bad.  Overall, the service was great and the flight attendants were very attentive with service.  We started out good from the beginning with the handshake from the captain and the greeting from the flight attendants.

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