OMG, 8 hours in United Y

O-M-G. Friday morning.  Finally.

After a week with the grandkids, Mrs. SFO finally gets some peace and quiet and a day to herself, while I'm shuttling two grandkids to Honolulu.

And just as we said last year, the words "never again" were mentioned.  LOL.

 

Not the best flight options to Hawaii, especially when I need three seats.  Crappy United has a daily DEN-HNL nonstop but, it is United and they wanted $1,100 for Y.  ROTLMAO.   With sparsely filled cabins and a pattern of releasing award seats at T-7, I figured that they would eventually release award seats on the nonstop.  In the interim, I booked "just in case" refundable F tickets on an Alaska Airlines one-stop via Seattle.  Ultimately, United indeed released award seats, F at 50K and Y at 22.5K.  I initially booked three FIrst seats, but cancelled them within 24 hours when I couldn't actually select seats and the reality of "how do I control two kids when we're not really sitting together" set in.  So I opted for Economy Plus seating, even getting one free E+ seat when UA.com couldn't process credit cards and I had to call web support.

 

With an 11:30A departure, I gave myself plenty of time with the kids and arrived at the airport two hours before departure.  Even with PreCheck and using the Priority (Star Alliance Gold) counter, it took 45 minutes to get to the B concourse.  Just in time for lunch at Elway's and a far better meal than any of the F or J pax ate on our flight, or any other United flight, today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived at nearby B36 just as Zone 2 was starting to board.   Boarded thru 2L and a right turn thru a pathetic looking J cabin....

 

 

 

 

 

... to Economy Plus.  Really? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pleasant enough DEN-based crew.  Not there is anything for them to do... a pass of the beverage and BOB carts just after take-off, and another pass of the beverage cart at T-2 hours.

The only thing that made this survivable was a pretty good IFE system with 100+ movies, including a few recent Bollywood releases.  Not that I'd want to do this again anytime soon, but 34" pitch and IFE made Y survivable.  Including a fuel truck delay, we were on board for eight hours, and the kids were absolutely amazing.   Between their ipads and the IFE, they were great travelers.