The gate agent scanned my boarding pass and as I hit the Jet bridge, I had this line waiting for me:
To me, one of the biggest perks of status is early boarding rights. Getting on without waiting around the terminal, settling into my seat, and having no issues with overhead bins is a huge perk. Passed a Polaris ad on the way to the plane. I’d be taking my first international Polaris trip to Japan on the new 77W plane at the end of the month. I wondered how different it would be than what I was about to experience.
I boarded and headed to my seat at 6A. I got a peak at the Global First cabin in what seemed to be quite spacious and comfortable seats. I was able to move from the 4 middle seats to a premium bulkhead window seat shortly before the flight. I noted that these seats featured a built-in massage feature that felt pretty good. The seat was pretty comfortable, but I wonder how I’d feel if this was my seat for 8 hours on a TPAC flight. As I settled in, I was offered a pre-departure beverage and asked for orange juice.
The doors were closed right on time and I got a perfect view of us pushing back from the gate. One thing I noted while pushing back was how high this plane was from the ground, much higher than the 737s I’m used to.
As a noob AV Geek, I love the plane spotting during taxi and takeoff. On this particular flight, there was a lot of traffic at EWR due to the 8AM flight time. I got a bunch of cool pics:
United 767-400:
Line of aircraft:
United 737 landing:
Port of Newark:
Our takeoff took about 25 minutes due to the traffic, but with clear skies, it was quite smooth. After we reached 10K feet, the FA came around to offer coffee and other drinks in preparation for Breakfast. As simple as coffee is, I quite like it in the mugs they offer in Business. Even though NYC – Chicago is about a 2-hour flight, full meals are offered as it’s one of the exceptions. I find United’s dining rules very confusing and not customer friendly. Figuring out what you will get is up in the air. Now, I don’t usually eat the meals since they don’t offer a special meal on short flights (they changed this policy after my trip). For breakfast, I asked for the fruit and oatmeal option since I’d at least be able to eat the fruit. It came with a small Chobani that I enjoyed as well. All in all, the presentation and quality of the meal was quite good for such a short flight.
After breakfast, I put my feet up and reclined the seat, which was quite spacious and comfortable:
I did some reading, some Torah learning, and enjoyed the views. As the weather was perfect after the storms that had come through earlier that week, I snapped some incredible photos of the views:
Clouds:
Lake Michigan:
Chicago coming into view:
After a smooth landing, I headed toward the exit. ORD had setup a very nice relaxing space. They had a Titos stand, Powermat charging station, and some cool lounge chairs. Quite relaxing and not very official airport like. In this space was the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Edward O’Hare. I charged up my phone on the mat and headed out to an Uber.
At ORD as many airports do, they send you halfway across the airport if you want to use Uber/Lyft. Quite annoying, but surly by design to help the taxi situation.
I took the quick ride to Rogers park where I spent the day with my sister and kids.
Jogging at Lincolnwood Park:
After eating lunch, I headed out to Dunkin doughnuts with the kids. Then it was off to The sandwich club for (Shallots was closed for renovations :-( ) some food for my flight. I also had to make a stop over at Romanian for some excellent hot dogs and sausages to take home with me. Then it was back to ORD for my 4:05 flight to NY. I find ORD to always be crowded and not pleasant to get through. There are throngs of people all over the place.
Soon enough I made my way to C16 where I was greeted by this sight:
Instead of waiting on line, I simply went to the front and took a seat. I figured that I’d just wait and group at the end of group 1. In the end, the flight got delayed when the plane developed an issue pulling into the gate. Glad I didn’t stand on line for 1 hour!
The plane (which was coming from Rome) needed to be ferried over to our gate from the international terminal (where passengers go to the customer area). There was some trouble they had with the getting the plane to raise itself up or get the jet bridge over to the plane. I got some great photos of the plane and this cool shot:
My seat on the way home would be 6B in the aisle.
I settled in as we took off from ORD. My sandwich really hit the spot as I was starving by the time we were airborne as we were delayed by about 2 hours. I enjoyed some beer and a gin and tonic which hit the spot, and capped off a busy, but enjoyable trip to Chicago.
