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Trip to SFO-Not good so far!
Well my dad was asked by his company to take a trip to SFO for a convention, and my mom and I thought that we would tag along. I also get 5 days out of school hehe....... While he's at the convention center we'll go around the city and visit an old Singaporean friend who is an ex-SIA girl now working for UA. I thought I'd write a little TR on my flight as I had quite an eventful experience so far!
We checked into Cleveland Hopkins yesterday at Terminal B at around 1:45 pm. A man wearing a taxadermy club jacket was complaining about UA telling him wrong info regarding size and weight of luggage. He went on for about 5 mins complaining about his "rights" and everything. finally we got everything checked in and we went on our way to gate B6 if I recall correctly. Boarding commenced and we boarded a Canadair bombardier CRJ-something. It had comfortable leather seats which were quite nice for UA express. A suprisingly quick take-off and we were off! we have a female captain that day and according to my mother that explained her "quick flying and maneuvers!"
I spent the short 55 minute flight staring out the window at the sea of clouds which never cease to amaze. As we reached Lake Michigan I knew that we were close to O'Hare. It started getting turbulent as we neared Chicago as, after all, it is the windy city. When we reached the gate, I stepped off the aerobridge as the zoning FA said repeated "goodbyes" to pax while fixating her eyes on something. It was almost robot-like but it was UA express so I didn't have high expectations. I grabbed some quick and crappy Westernized Chinese food at a food court area and watched as crew loaded baggage onto a UA 777 which was heading to Europe. We reached the gate just as our section was boarding and my mom said, "I have to go to the toilet." Ugh!!!!
Just as our entire section finished and the next one started did my agony dissolve as I saw my mum rushing towards the gate from the restroom.
We boarded on a 767-300 in a 2-class configuration (they're Economy Plus doesn't count as a seperate class on that flight; it only had what looked like 1 in. pitch difference anyway). My seat in Y was a window seat yet again and my mom sat next to me. My dad was on the right aisle seat with the center seat unoccupied. Since I'm not at my full height yet pitch was no problem (I'm 5 feet, 6.5 inches currenly) but my dad who is caucasian, a bit large and 5' 11" was cramped. Even worse, the lady in front of him reclined her seat which crushed his knees and even at take-off the crew didn't notify her to bring it into the upright position!
I saw at least 1 other person in my section of the cabin who did the same. UA 907 took off quickly into the night and during most of the 4 1/2 hour segment we could see the lights on the ground. A 50 year old granny FA was suprisingly the nicest one of all as she actually smiled and was chatty. The rest, no smile, nothing-they all felt very cold and impatient as they collected trash and such. I had a few small cups of water and some Sprite.
I attempted at reclining my seat but it wouldn't budge. Turns out that a lady behind me was getting crushed and her knees were making it impossible for me to recline! And she was only about 5' 9"! I shudder to think of tall people over 6 and a half feet and how they would survive in these seats! But the flight did have a redeeming factor, and that was the movie on the overhead screens which was "Transformers" which i missed at the cinemas. After that, they showed a sucession of NBC programming and "Ugly Betty." On Radio Channel 2, they were playing the latest alternative and hip-hop and one of them was Fergie's "Glamorous." It caught my attention as I looked around at my seat.
The lyrics went: "Flying First class, up in the sky"- I looked at the crushed knees in surrounding seats and my lack of PTV.
"The glamorous, the glamourous, glamorous!"-I looked at my sophisticated entree of Snyder's mini pretzels.
As we approached SFO it was very cloudy and rain was coming down. Soon after leaving the clouds did we touchdown. I'm a strange guy and I love rain so it was kind of a nice welcome to SFO for me
When we reached the gate we had to wait for about 15 minutes as they were locating a jetway driver to hook us up to the terminal. Another ugh moment as I was very fatigued even though I had caught about 45 minutes of winks after Transformers. We went to baggage collection and we retrieved all of our bags. We waited and waited for my checked-in bag to appear but nothing happened. It turns out, out of the whole aircraft, mine was the only bag to be checked-in on the wrong flight, or so the lost luggage dragons said. Yes yes, frequent F/J pax have lounge dragons but N. American Y pax are stuck with LLD's
My bag contained all my clothing, toiletries, and school material. My mom also stuck in her make-up kit as I had spare room. In all, about 250 USD worth of stuff. We went to Departures area to catch the shuttle to our hotel. We booked the Holiday Inn Express Airport-South for the first night as today we are switching to the San Francisco Marriott in downtown. We went to the bus station, rain pouring down, and went into the small waiting bench area. We saw many hotel shuttles, some even 4 times! After 25 minutes of waiting in the cold, tired and hungry, we called the hotel. Turns out that the driver was out of view and was waiting to be called by the hotel to keep circulating! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!
A middle-aged Italian man who spoke in broken English helped with our luggage. After 3-minutes we were at the Holiday Inn. We walked into the lobby when we realized, where's the camera?! The hotel called the driver and he could not find it. We believe it was left at the SFO shuttle stop and was most likely stolen............In a frustrated mood we marched to our temporary room and put our things down. We walked outside to grab a bite at a local restaurant called "Max's" nearby. I wasn't hungry for anything particular so I decided to get a slice of Apple Pie. Service was slow and we barely saw the waitress, not a good way to start after going through this whole ordeal. the apple pie was very nice tho lol
We walked around the corner back to the hotel; I stopped and asked the service manager on duty for a toothbrush as mine was in my lost bag. I had to wait as I stared at him chatting with a friend on his hand phone in Arabic. After a minute of him joking away in front of me, he put the phone down and asked "What do you want?" I said I needed a toothbrush and at first he thought I said toilet but he then said "Ah, toothbrush." He went through a small door seperated with a blue drab curtain and I heard the noise of drawers opening then closing. "cha-chung, chung, cha-chung, chung, cha-chung, chung." He literally opened every single metal drawer until he yelled from within the little room "We have no more." In an even more agitated mood, I walked away. Right now, I'm sitting in the room and my dad took a shuttle back to the airport to check on the lost luggage piece. They were supposed to deliver it late last night/early morning to the hotel but it's not here.........This trip isn't going well so far; at least we're visiting that stewardess friend I mentioned today
and we're switching to the other hotel So, I'll write more later on how the trip's going!
We checked into Cleveland Hopkins yesterday at Terminal B at around 1:45 pm. A man wearing a taxadermy club jacket was complaining about UA telling him wrong info regarding size and weight of luggage. He went on for about 5 mins complaining about his "rights" and everything. finally we got everything checked in and we went on our way to gate B6 if I recall correctly. Boarding commenced and we boarded a Canadair bombardier CRJ-something. It had comfortable leather seats which were quite nice for UA express. A suprisingly quick take-off and we were off! we have a female captain that day and according to my mother that explained her "quick flying and maneuvers!"
I spent the short 55 minute flight staring out the window at the sea of clouds which never cease to amaze. As we reached Lake Michigan I knew that we were close to O'Hare. It started getting turbulent as we neared Chicago as, after all, it is the windy city. When we reached the gate, I stepped off the aerobridge as the zoning FA said repeated "goodbyes" to pax while fixating her eyes on something. It was almost robot-like but it was UA express so I didn't have high expectations. I grabbed some quick and crappy Westernized Chinese food at a food court area and watched as crew loaded baggage onto a UA 777 which was heading to Europe. We reached the gate just as our section was boarding and my mom said, "I have to go to the toilet." Ugh!!!!
Just as our entire section finished and the next one started did my agony dissolve as I saw my mum rushing towards the gate from the restroom.We boarded on a 767-300 in a 2-class configuration (they're Economy Plus doesn't count as a seperate class on that flight; it only had what looked like 1 in. pitch difference anyway). My seat in Y was a window seat yet again and my mom sat next to me. My dad was on the right aisle seat with the center seat unoccupied. Since I'm not at my full height yet pitch was no problem (I'm 5 feet, 6.5 inches currenly) but my dad who is caucasian, a bit large and 5' 11" was cramped. Even worse, the lady in front of him reclined her seat which crushed his knees and even at take-off the crew didn't notify her to bring it into the upright position!
I saw at least 1 other person in my section of the cabin who did the same. UA 907 took off quickly into the night and during most of the 4 1/2 hour segment we could see the lights on the ground. A 50 year old granny FA was suprisingly the nicest one of all as she actually smiled and was chatty. The rest, no smile, nothing-they all felt very cold and impatient as they collected trash and such. I had a few small cups of water and some Sprite. I attempted at reclining my seat but it wouldn't budge. Turns out that a lady behind me was getting crushed and her knees were making it impossible for me to recline! And she was only about 5' 9"! I shudder to think of tall people over 6 and a half feet and how they would survive in these seats! But the flight did have a redeeming factor, and that was the movie on the overhead screens which was "Transformers" which i missed at the cinemas. After that, they showed a sucession of NBC programming and "Ugly Betty." On Radio Channel 2, they were playing the latest alternative and hip-hop and one of them was Fergie's "Glamorous." It caught my attention as I looked around at my seat.
The lyrics went: "Flying First class, up in the sky"- I looked at the crushed knees in surrounding seats and my lack of PTV.
"The glamorous, the glamourous, glamorous!"-I looked at my sophisticated entree of Snyder's mini pretzels.
As we approached SFO it was very cloudy and rain was coming down. Soon after leaving the clouds did we touchdown. I'm a strange guy and I love rain so it was kind of a nice welcome to SFO for me
When we reached the gate we had to wait for about 15 minutes as they were locating a jetway driver to hook us up to the terminal. Another ugh moment as I was very fatigued even though I had caught about 45 minutes of winks after Transformers. We went to baggage collection and we retrieved all of our bags. We waited and waited for my checked-in bag to appear but nothing happened. It turns out, out of the whole aircraft, mine was the only bag to be checked-in on the wrong flight, or so the lost luggage dragons said. Yes yes, frequent F/J pax have lounge dragons but N. American Y pax are stuck with LLD's My bag contained all my clothing, toiletries, and school material. My mom also stuck in her make-up kit as I had spare room. In all, about 250 USD worth of stuff. We went to Departures area to catch the shuttle to our hotel. We booked the Holiday Inn Express Airport-South for the first night as today we are switching to the San Francisco Marriott in downtown. We went to the bus station, rain pouring down, and went into the small waiting bench area. We saw many hotel shuttles, some even 4 times! After 25 minutes of waiting in the cold, tired and hungry, we called the hotel. Turns out that the driver was out of view and was waiting to be called by the hotel to keep circulating! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!
A middle-aged Italian man who spoke in broken English helped with our luggage. After 3-minutes we were at the Holiday Inn. We walked into the lobby when we realized, where's the camera?! The hotel called the driver and he could not find it. We believe it was left at the SFO shuttle stop and was most likely stolen............In a frustrated mood we marched to our temporary room and put our things down. We walked outside to grab a bite at a local restaurant called "Max's" nearby. I wasn't hungry for anything particular so I decided to get a slice of Apple Pie. Service was slow and we barely saw the waitress, not a good way to start after going through this whole ordeal. the apple pie was very nice tho lol
We walked around the corner back to the hotel; I stopped and asked the service manager on duty for a toothbrush as mine was in my lost bag. I had to wait as I stared at him chatting with a friend on his hand phone in Arabic. After a minute of him joking away in front of me, he put the phone down and asked "What do you want?" I said I needed a toothbrush and at first he thought I said toilet but he then said "Ah, toothbrush." He went through a small door seperated with a blue drab curtain and I heard the noise of drawers opening then closing. "cha-chung, chung, cha-chung, chung, cha-chung, chung." He literally opened every single metal drawer until he yelled from within the little room "We have no more." In an even more agitated mood, I walked away. Right now, I'm sitting in the room and my dad took a shuttle back to the airport to check on the lost luggage piece. They were supposed to deliver it late last night/early morning to the hotel but it's not here.........This trip isn't going well so far; at least we're visiting that stewardess friend I mentioned today
and we're switching to the other hotel So, I'll write more later on how the trip's going!
! Can't wait to see what further strange incidents will occur!
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