Chicago Trip Report

I decided to visit the rents this past weekend for Easter. Since we had Friday off, I hopped on a 7pm United flight to Chicago out of LAX. To my delight, all 3 of my flights were automatically upgraded to UA First Class. All 3 legs were flown on ancient 757 metal that were almost as old as me.

A note for future bookings, to increase upgrade chances on United, I recommend flying on these 757s because they have 24 seats in 1st class compared to the 8-12 1st class seats available on A319 and 320s.

So, I got done with my work appointment early so I made my way down to LAX at around 3:30. Since I was quite early for check in, I decided to make my way down to the In & Out by LAX.

For those of you who don't know this unique spot for aviation enthusiasts, there is an In & Out right by runway 25R at LAX where you can get a great view of Terminal 2 and of planes taking off from 25L and landing at 25R.

My Favorite In & Out

You can see part of Terminal 2 and 3 here. I think I saw a KLM and Air France bird parked at Terminal 2.

And the Piece de Resistance...

I caught the SQ all business class configured A340 on final approach

What a beautiful sight, I would have missed out on this shot if it were not for a fellow aviation enthusiast and his live Air Traffic Control feed. We knew something big was coming when he rushed from one end of the parking lot to another passing up a Speedbird(British Airways) 747 take off roll on Runway 25L.

I decided to leave on a high note and proceeded to LAX Park to park my car. I love this little parking lot on Bellanca Ave. First of all, it is dirt cheap, $7 a day I believe and they park the car for you. The shuttle service is almost always reliable to and from the Airport.

The check-in and security at LAX Terminal 6 was pretty lax and I was in the terminal by 5pm.

As expected, with United's new upgrade policy, 1st class was completely packed with Elite flyers. I took my 5C seat and observed the 1st class boarding process. The aisle was completely cluttered with people and the overheads were completely full.

Service was slower than usual for 1st class due to the cluttered aisle, and I only got my pre-takeoff OJ 20min into the boarding process.

Pre-Takeoff OJ with the Hemispheres Magazing

After takeoff the CA's quickly went into the galley to prepare our dinner service as well as drink service. They came around to take drink and dinner orders. To my disappointment, they did not call me by name. The dinner choices on the flight were either chicken or pasta. I went with the Chicken, typical International Economy choices IMO. And for my drink, I went with a gin and tonic.

The drink came out first with the hot nuts. The hot nuts has to be my favorite part of the entire 1st class experience. Nuts just taste sooo much better warmed up.

Gin and Tonic and the world famous United Hot Nuts

My chicken dinner came out 10min later and on a scale of 1-10 I give it a 4. The chicken was moist but lacked flavor, and the cous cous and salad was disappointing. However the Lemon cake for desert was quite tasty.

Dinner service-Chicken breast with couscous, salad and lemon cake

The CAs were pretty attentive with the drinks and whenever my glass was nearly empty, I got my refill.

For the remainder of the flight, I decided to pop open my chinese book to memorize some characters...I know I am a nerd.

I reached Chicago around 1am and the airport was nearly empty. I quickly made my way home and went to bed. The next 2 days, my parents put me to work and I cleaned the garage and did some yard work. No Chicago trip ends without Chicago style pizza, and I got my dose this time around from Lou Malnatis. Now that I think of it, I haven't had Malnati's since high school. Lou Malnati's is owned by our High School Basketball coach's brother, therefore it was our only catering option for events at my high school. IMO the pizza quality is second to none. We ended up getting our deep dish with sausage, spinach and pepperoni.

A word of advice: spinach is a must have on Chicago Style pizza.

And the sausage is a nice complement to the crust. They basically stick a hamburger patty underneath the cheese.

Malnati's Pizza with Spinach, Sausage and Pepperoni

We also went to a new Korean BBQ restaurant my family was raving about, Arirang. I gotta admit, their marinated rib pieces deserves a big thumbs up from me.

The Gigantic Rib Pieces

The delicious meat and some banchan

On Sunday afternoon I made my way to O'Hare for my flight back to LA. For the return leg, I had to make a quick 1hr stop in Vegas.

I took my seat at 2B and once again, the 1st class was filled with Elites going to Vegas. I decided to pass the pre takeoff time by listening into the cockpit on Channel 9. Channel 9 is the one unique thing that I love about United, I can listen to the cockpit's interaction with the ATC. Although most of the conversation is gibberish, I am starting to understand more and more of what goes on between the ATC and the cockpit. And its always fun to hear the conversation between the ATC and Asian airline pilot. I love listening to their accents. On this flight I was able to listen into the ATC directing a British Airways flight to takeoff. The ATC referred to the plane as Speedbird 20, and I got a kick out of that. Speedbird is probably my favorite call sign.

During this time, it began to rain and I realized from channel 9 that the taxing process was going to get hellish. As I feared, we ended up taxing for over 1hr, and I was getting nervous that I would miss my connection in Vegas. To make matters worse, my connection was the last flight leaving Vegas for LA and if I were to miss that, I would be stuck in Vegas. I knew the only way to make the flight was that the Las Vegas-LAX flight was on the same plane I was sitting on from ORD-LAS. There was a high chance of this because Vegas does not get much UA 757 traffic and also both legs of my flight were on 757s. So I crossed my fingers as we made our way to Vegas.

The service on the plane was decent, better than the LAX-ORD leg. Although the Orange Chicken I got for dinner was absolutely disgusting. It was so bad I even forgot to take a picture. I ended up getting another gin and tonic and enjoyed my hot nuts : )

Gin and Tonic and Hot Nuts

After an extremely bumpy flight, we landed in Vegas over an hour late, and to my delight I got an email from United saying that my LAS-LAX leg was also delayed for 1hr. I was right, they were going to use the same plane. So I walked around Vegas airport for about 20min and took a pic of the slot machines.

Slot machines at LAS

We hopped on the short 1hr flight from LAS-LAX and to my surprise, 1st class was only 1/3 full. The flight must have had very few elites on it. Since I had to drive home from the airport, I decided to order a Seagram's Ginger Ale instead of an alcoholic drink. To my disappointment, we were not offered hot nuts and only got pretzels.

The Vegas skyline on takeoff from seat 3D was magnificent, a close second to landing and making the deadman's turn at the old Hong Kong airport.