Guest post: San Francisco to New Orleans and back!

Today we’ve got a guest post from Valerie, who recently flew from San Francisco to New Orleans (and back) for a long weekend.  On the way out, she flew on United flight 2462, which was a 737-900ER (registry: N66803).  Valerie is not one to spend longer at airports than needed, and so she didn’t bother with visiting a lounge.  It was a good thing too because the line for at least one lounge was out the door.  If she had decided to use a lounge, she would’ve had access to $28 off her bill at the San Francisco Giants’ Clubhouse (restaurant) through her Priority Pass membership.  Her Priority Pass membership is complimentary with her CapitalOne VentureX credit card, which she upgraded to shortly after it came out last year.  The card also offers access to CapitalOne lounges, of which there is currently one (in Dallas). 

Strangely, the TSA PreCheck and regular security lines were of comparable length.  She has TSA Precheck, which means she doesn’t have to take off her shoes or remove electronics from her bag.  These perks are great, and usually it also comes with a shorter line.  The electronic signs were showing 3 min for PreCheck and 4 min for regular security, but the accuracy of those signs is often a bit questionable.  She noted that the airport was much busier than it’s been since last summer, which might explain the extra lines (and people are likely still out of practice when it comes to traveling). 

It wasn’t a problem, and Valerie arrived at the gate around 5 minutes before boarding began, which is basically her optimal arrival time.  The flight was completely full, and they were looking for volunteers to gate check their carry-on bag.  On smaller, regional aircraft, gate checking a bag would mean she’d get it back on the jet bridge upon arrival.  On larger aircraft, gate checking means she’d have to go to baggage claim, which is fine if you already have a checked bag.  She didn’t want to have to wait at baggage claim just for her carry-on, and since she was in group 3 (of 5), she wasn’t at a high risk of having to check it. 

She decided, therefore, to board with her group to guarantee overhead space.  Valerie is very much a window seat person (seat 27F in this case) and has the highly enviable ability to sleep through an entire plane flight.  She also isn’t very tall and so a standard economy seat has plenty of legroom of her.

The seat had relatively standard in-flight entertainment for a domestic flight in the US: streaming entertainment, WiFi, and 110V power plugs between the seats. United has also largely resumed its standard beverage and buy-on-board service.  However, her ability to sleep through flights meant that, like on my flight from DC to London in January, she can’t comment on the service or the food.

Since this report would otherwise be very short, I’m also going to include her review of ‘The Club MSY’, which is part of the Priority Pass network.  In fact, it’s the only Priority Pass lounge at the New Orleans airport.  It had good reviews on Google, and Valerie was excited to use her Priority Pass for the first time. 

She had a bit of a saga trying to get into the lounge at first.  She was told there was an hour-long waiting list to get into the lounge, but she was texted she could enter after only 20 minutes.  The CapitalOne website had indicated that she could just show her VentureX card to get into the lounge (she couldn’t), so she had to get back in line. 

Then the website had said her Priority Pass would be active immediately after activation (it wasn’t).  The check in  person at The Club MSY indicated she’d be able to buy a pass and then contact CapitalOne for a reimbursement given the situation, so Valerie opted to go with that option.

Upon entry, she found the lounge to be substantially less crowded than expected, given the waitlist.  She selected some “spicy” tomato soup and bread pudding.  The tomato soup was creamy and warm, but didn’t really have the spicy kick one would expect given its name (and that it was being served in New Orleans).  She also had a mimosa, because of course.  The bread pudding was definitely the star of the lounge.  It was suitable chewy and tasted of moist mocha.  The caramel sauce had a well-received smoky molasses flavor to it.  All too soon, however, (given the problems she had getting in), it was time for her to go to her gate.  Her flight back to San Francisco was almost identical to the first one: a 737-900ER (N69835) that she napped through.

In summary, Valerie was very pleased with her flights and lounge experience in New Orleans. The seat was a standard economy class seat (4/5), with sufficient legroom for Valerie. Wifi and steaming entertainment was offered, which is pretty par for the course as well (3/5). The service on the flight was also standard (4/5), but Valerie didn’t try the buy-on-board offers beyond the biscoff cookie (2/5). Her ground experience in both airports was reasonably par for the course, minus the lounge access problems, with the main note being how unexpectedly busy airports are again (3/5). Overall, the flight gets a standard score of 16/25.

For these United flights, Valerie earned United miles (5x/$) and CapitalOne miles (2x/$) based on the price of the ticket.  Valerie does not have any status with United or other Star Alliance partners.  The CapitalOne Venture X card earns 5x miles/$ on flights booked through the CapitalOne travel portal and a straightforward 2x/$ on all non-portal purchases otherwise. In total, she earned 1 512 United miles (around 1.3 ¢/mile in value) and 712 CapitalOne miles (around 1.4¢/mile), for a total return of just over 8%, which is a solid return for someone who doesn’t actively chase travel rewards.

If Valerie had access to the same strategy as Michael (United Gold Status, Amex Platinum), she would have earned 2 419 United miles and 1 780 Amex points, for a return of around 16%.