Michael flies economy to Atlanta!

From June to September, I actually had very few flights.  I had a short trip to Los Angeles for July 4^th, but didn’t have any interesting flights, unfortunately.  In September, I took a short-notice long weekend trip to Atlanta.  At least the hiatus let me catch up (somewhat) on flight reviews, haha.  The timing of the trip meant that a red-eye made the most sense.  There are a handful of redeye options, including 3 on Delta.  I chose to fly United simply because there was saver availability and so it was the cheapest.  I booked the 4.5-hour flight (in coach) for only 15 000 United miles.  It was actually the first United flight I had intentionally booked and successfully taken since January. 

The United app consistently was offering me an upgrade for only $400, which basically would’ve been as if I had bought the ticket with cash and then used 15 000 miles to upgrade.  If it had been that way around at the beginning, I would’ve snapped it up.  However, $100/hour of flight time seemed excessive to me given that I don’t actually sleep much better in a domestic first class seat compared to an economy seat. 

I was traveling carry-on only, so I proceeded directly through Clear and Pre-Check into Terminal 3 at SFO.

I proceeded directly to the Amex Centurion lounge, as I usually do.

The flight was late enough at night that the lounge was not too busy, but it definitely wasn’t empty.

I hadn’t seen before that there was a wine tasting machine in the bar area, so I think that was new, and it looked fun!

It’s on my to-do list next time I’m in the lounge at a time that makes sense.

I made a small plate of food for dinner and settled in for a short wait.

After brushing my teeth, I made my way to the flight, which started boarding on time. Since I was hand baggage only, I boarded with my group (group 2) to make sure I had overhead bin space.

I walked through first class, which, of course, went out full:

And then through most of Economy Plus:

And finally I got to the exit row of 21C.

Since I’ve dropped to United Silver Status, I’m always near the bottom of any list and could only select the exit row seat 24 hours before departure. But the exit row seat did have lots of legroom!

We boarded efficiently and pushed back on time for an on time take-off (and even an early arrival). I tried to use the bluetooth headphones connection option with the seatback IFE system, but I couldn’t get it to work consistently and so gave up and watched my own content. I slept on and off before/shortly after takeoff and then the in-flight service began after takeoff. Honestly, it had been so long since I had taken a standard domestic redeye that I had forgotten that they’d be doing an inflight service. As far as I could tell, it was just a standard service (but done quickly).

I just went back to sleep though once they passed my seat. I woke up again when we were beginning our decent into Atlanta. The thing that struck me most about the arrival was how I definitely felt like a second-class citizen as a non-Delta flyer, given the state of the terminal building:

Delta to the left. Others to the right:

In summary, I’m pleased with this cheap and easy way to get to Atlanta.  Since I did successfully sleep for most of the flight, the scoring might be meaningless.  The ground experience in San Francisco was good thanks to the Centurion Lounge and group 2 priority boarding (3/5).  The exit row seat was as good as I could’ve asked for in economy (4/5).  They had the standard buy-on-board fare (3/5), and service was good from what I can tell and done as quickly as possible to minimize disruption (4/5).  The IFE was solid as well, but I couldn’t get my headphones to connect (3/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 17/25, which is about as high as one could expect for an economy flight. 

I paid just 15 000 miles for this flight.  I already had 13 000 miles and transferred an additional 2 000 miles from Chase.  Given that the cash fares for the flight were over $400, this was a great value (> 2.6 ¢/pt).  The ticket was automatically “credited” to United, which earned me 150 PQP.  However, PQP are meaningless to me currently because I earn Premier Silver simply from having Marriott Titanium status and I have 0 chance of hitting Premier Gold.