Cheap United Flight
A few months ago Miki and I went down to the Torrance area to get the hard top installed on the Geo Tracker, after the install we headed to the Japanese market, while walking about we found JTB was selling round trip to Japan for $299 each. After inquiring at travel desk we confirmed the rate and found there was also about $200 in taxes, fuel surcharges and airport use fees... Still round trip to Japan for $500 was hard to pass up.... We jumped.....
So, we looked over the calender and figured the best time would be the middle two weeks in November and booked it on the spot.
The day finally came and we headed off to the LAX for our cheap flight to Japan on United. The ticket was an E-Ticket, so we bypassed the majorly long check-in line (more then 200 people) and walked directly up to the self check-in followed the prompts and finished in a few minutes. It worked fairly well, it would not accept my mileage number and to the counter at the gate, and the upgrade options were not presented well and it told us to talk to the counter at the gate. It did prompt us to upgrade to something called Economy Plus about five times.
Once to the gate we got some Starbucks coffee and waited for the counter to open....... About 30 minutes from boarding the counter at the gate finally opened and they were able to update the information for us, but only after waiting almost to the boarding time in the very long line to talk to them.....
Once on the plane (an old 747, that should have been scheduled for retirement a few years ago) we found and squeezed into our seats. With two inches of space from my knees to the seat in front of me, and that is with the seat in front of me not reclined. The padding on the seat had been compressed to death and felt like I was sitting on a rock (with textures).... And thus opens the next 11 hours of hell.... No personal entertainment device that we had grown accustomed to on JAL and Thai air... The movie screen was a little 10" monitor about 15 feet away. We did get to watch 4 movies (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, A Prairie Home Companion, and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) and that killed some time.
The staff was really nice and served drinks, water, snacks, and two lunches ( The food was edible and reasonably fresh and hot ).
All and all the fight was ok and we got to Japan, but we found they now have 5 different classes on the plane, and what we had been used to as Economy Class was now a upgrade to Economy Plus.