Flight #3 to New Mexico!

We’ve finished day 8 and are almost done with our field work!  And I’m just now getting around to part 3… just in time in 2 days to travel back to the UK and have 3 more flights to review… My bad. Good news though, my complimentary upgrade for the flight from El Paso to Chicago cleared today! Anyway, back to the trip that’s already happened…

This flight was UA 6314 from IAH to ELP.  After the flight from Newark to Houston, we had a 3.5-hour layover, so we headed to another United Club.  Annique and I both liked it better than the one in Newark; the space was a lot bigger, and since we were there so late at night, it cleared out and we ended up staying until closing (9:15 pm).

Since the flight didn’t leave until nearly 10 pm, we headed to the gate a bit early.  The terminal was pretty empty as there were only a few flights remaining that day.  Our flight also wasn’t very full, so the gate area had plenty of empty seats.  I’m not surprised, as at the 48-hour mark, there were about 20 empty seats in economy and 12 (all) of first class.  So, my complimentary upgrade to first class cleared automatically at T-48, which was cool.  It also meant my name wasn’t on the upgrade list on the flight status screen because it only shows day-of-departure upgrades.  But from looking at the upgrade list, the entire A column was taken by premier members (and those in 2A, 3A, and 4A were therefore premier silver members).  When boarding was called, I got a lot of stares going through the group 1 line, like on Krister and my flight from Oslo.  I’ve always loved the Embraer E-jets (especially their first class) because of the big windows and the 1-2 configuration. 

The flight boarded relatively quickly, and soon the manual safety demonstration was completed by the two friendly flight attendants.  I asked for (and was happily given) a blanket because I’d hoped to sleep through the entire flight again.  And I pretty much succeeded.  I fell asleep during taxiing and woke up when they turned on the (obscenely) bright lights to get ready for landing.

For this 2-hour regional flight, I got lounge access (from the gold status) (3/5).  I fell asleep promptly after takeoff, so I didn’t have a chance to sample the ‘refreshments’ on offer on this flight.  For purposes of comparison with intra-European business class flights, serving only refreshments on a two-hour flight gets a rough 2/5.  The service was friendly (4/5), and I always enjoy the single seat on regional aircraft (4/5).  In-flight WiFi and video streaming was available, which gets a 3/5.  Overall, the flight gets a 16/25.