Pandemic Travel – The Great Escape to Canada (and back, we hope!)

[pauly7]

United international catering in Y+ certainly is how I remembered it - awful.

Lunch was some gristly chicken slop - inedible and some pretzels, mini tim tam and some spinach leaves.

One bit of the chicken slop and it was set aside

The flight attendents were good enough to be embarrased to serve it, but thankfully they had loads of small sandwiches and antipasto QFlink style tapas boxes which we were basically given as much as we wanted, and litres of litres of water. So we survived just fine!

 

[pauly7]

Fatty chicken slop



Actually quite a nice antipasto box. We were given as many as we wanted.



Edible sandwiches were also provided to supplement the slop

 

[pauly7]

Arriving into SFO we arrived to a busier than Sydney terminal, but still very quiet.

We had the luck of arriving at the same time as a flight from India, so we were very careful about social distancing and our PPE was at its maximum game!

Although not busy, SFO immigration was operating at its normal snail pace speed, not helped by the fact all of their e-gates were turned off (COVID....).

After 60 minutes of queueing we finally got through, then the usual non-existant US customs which took 30 seconds and we were landside.

We quickly dropped our bags off to be checked onto our Embraer service up to Vancouver then headed outside immedietly to escape the heaving masses.

Now I said that the staff on the first international flight were amzing, second 'international' leg into Canada was quite another story.... One of the worst flights I've had in a whilw!!

 

[Mattg]

Thanks for the trip report. Looking forward to reading more.

Now I said that the staff on the first international flight were amzing, second 'international' leg into Canada was quite another story.... One of the worst flights I've had in a whilw!!

Reminds me of a United trip I took just before the pandemic. I flew AMS-IAD and the crew was surprisingly excellent. Towards the end of the flight, one of the FAs asked me when I was returning to AMS. They checked on their ipad to see who would be working the return flight, and apologetically informed me that "you're not going to have a good time". They were right...

 

[pauly7]

Long time between posts.... a very big project came up that vampired all my time away!

So, the United Express Embraer service from SFO to YVR. A big come down after a lovely flight across the ditch from Sydney that's for sure.

First of all, the US was a big shock. People paying no attention to social distancing, honestly if you didn't have to get temperature checked and provide all the Covid paperwork and people weren't wearing masks, you would not even know there was a pandemic raging around them.... Anyway we bit our tongues and just stayed away from people as much as we could.

We flew on the Y+ seating up to YVR and apart from one emergency flight on an EasyJet Airbus with brand new 'slimline' (aka concrete) seats installed in it, I've never sat on such hard uncomfortable seats.

No service due to 'Covid', but funnily enough first class still received service. Clearly 2 feed in front of Y+ there was no pandemic!

The biggest let down though was the blase crew. Yes I know they are contracted out to SkyWest but they still represent United and anyone who didn't know the business arrangement United has with SkyWest would assume they were United crew and a United aircraft).

They giggled through the safety announcement, you couldn't hear a thing through the peals of laughter, then after slamming down a few refreshments in First Class, they came and sat directly in front of us in Y+, took their masks off, had a good old chat for an hour and ate and drank in front of everyone.

Now normally I would say something, but I was jet lagged, irritated by the SFO experience and didn't trust myself to remain polite. So instead we took photos of them and sent them when we landed to United 'Customer Care' who did not care at all when they got back to us a couple of weeks later.

So a very average flight, I was happy to get off into a completely deserted YVR terminal!

 

[pauly7]

Coming back from YVR to SFO a couple of months later was thankfully a much nicer experience.

Same aircraft, much nicer crew and we were flying F (then Business on the SFO/SYD leg back home).

Nothing much to add, apart from the Embraer First seats were much more comfortable than the concrete Y+ seats! And thankfully the pandemic was over so we got a modest snack in F, which honestly we didn't care about.

 

[pauly7]

Sorry for the lack of pictures on the Embraer flights, we had quite a lot going on and the trip was quite hectic!

Boarding the 787 back to Australia we were happy it was their new Polaris J config which got switched onto the route at the very last minute, we had resigned ourselves to the old product so it was a nice homecoming treat!

Again, deserted plane and we were fussed over by the crew who were very interested to hear 'how we escaped and got back in so quickly' as per usual! There were only 13 people on the entire flight and in our section of J there were only 3 other people (pic below of the deserted cabin).

The 'new' Polaris is ok, I would just flag that the cubby hole for your feet is really small - and that meant turning over when sleeping was a bit annoying. Some seats have much smaller cubby holes than others - we were allowed to move but honestly I couldn't be bothered I would highly recommend people with larger feet to do your research and pick the 'bigger cubby hole' seats or you will be in for a slightly less comfortable ride.

Catering in J was very average so barely ate, the United staff helpfully boozed us up 'to help the food taste better' so they clearly knew what was going on with the food! Certainly helped us sleep until we hit turbulence - was one of the bumpiest flights I've been on in a while... The crew were great, gave us heaps of PJ's, amenity kits etc which went straight to charity.

 

[pauly7]

Hardly a J class breakfast but what can you do!



Another day another empty airline cabin!

 

[jakeseven7]

Congrats on making it home sounds like an epic journey…

I’ve found the same issue with UA J class as well, from memory it’s alternate rows that hav issues with tight foot space.

So glad you are back on AFF too @pauly7 ! We desperately need your ‘insight’ on a few threads