Review: United Global First Class Sydney to San Francisco
Fifteen Days in Australia
A Trip to Sydney, Cairns, Melbourne, and Diving the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea
- Introduction
- Planning
- United Global First Class Lounges – Washington-Dulles and Los Angeles
- United Global First Class Los Angeles to Sydney
- Sydney: Days One and Two (Arrival, Walking Tour, Manly Beach, and Darling Harbour)
- Sydney: Days Three and Four (Sydney Opera House, Taronga Zoo, The Rocks, Bondi Beach, Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens, Woolloomooloo, and the Sydney Fish Market)
- New Year’s Eve at Sydney Harbour
- Virgin Australia Economy Class Sydney to Brisbane to Cairns
- An Evening in Cairns and a Flight to Lizard Island, AU
- Spirit of Freedom Live-aboard Dive Trip (4-night Coral Sea and GBR)
- Qantas Economy and Business Class Cairns to Sydney to Melbourne
- Two Days in Melbourne and the Park Hyatt Melbourne
- United Global First Class Sydney to San Francisco
We awoke at the Park Hyatt Melbourne after our last night in Australia, and grabbed a cab to the Melbourne Airport. We were to pick up our United ticket back to the States in Sydney, so we booked a one-way flight from Melbourne to Sydney on Qantas. In order to avoid a misconnection, we allowed ourselves a 3.5 hour layover in Sydney, which ultimately proved to be plenty of time. After having breakfast in the Melbourne Airport food court, we proceeded to the gate to ride our Qantas B767-300 for a short, hour-long flight to Sydney to start out our long, 28-hour day of traveling.
We were luckily able to snag a couple bulkhead seats, so this flight wasn’t bad at all — chalk it up as another good experience with Qantas, similar to what we experienced a few days before.
We arrived in the domestic terminal 2 at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport, but we needed to get to Terminal 1 for our international flight on United to San Francisco. Qantas operates a shuttle between the domestic and international terminals for their international connecting passengers, but they allowed us to access the shuttle with our Untied boarding passes, so that was nice.
After driving the tarmac past some behemoth airplanes, the shuttle dropped us off at a point where we had to go either to the transfer security checkpoint, or to the check-in counters. We went to the United check-in counters, but they were not yet open as it was a tad more than three hours before our scheduled flight time. Though we had boarding passes on our phone, we wanted paper boarding passes and lounge passes, so we waited about five minutes before we saw a United representative. Though they weren’t open yet, she saw were Global First Class passengers, so she went ahead and produced our boarding passes and sent us on our way.
Singapore Airlines First Class Lounge
After going through security, we proceeded to the Star Alliance section of the terminal. Though we had lounge invites for the Air New Zealand Lounge, I figured we’d give the Singapore First Class Lounge a shot since according to the Star Alliance Lounge Access Policy, we should be granted access.
We were, in fact, granted access to the Singapore Airlines First Class Lounge without issue, and were informed that it had just undergone a refurbishment. It was completely empty when we arrived, so we took two seats overlooking the tarmac and several gates.
We enjoyed a few drinks, and a fantastic Thai Red Coconut curry lunch in the lounge. We really enjoyed this lounge, and appreciated the personal service we had during our two hours there, as there was a waiter who kept our drinks and plates full. Though there were ultimately a few other patrons in the lounge, we felt like we had the place to ourselves, making for a very relaxing layover prior to our loooooong flight back to the States. Oh, and the bathroom had one of the more ridiculous signs I’ve seen…
We left the lounge a little after the published boarding time only to find hoards of people by the gate. Shockingly, boarding had yet to commence, so we popped up into the Air New Zealand Business Lounge. And what an insane asylum it was! This was a massive lounge that was quite crowded and very loud. After checking it out for ten minutes, we’d seen enough — we were so glad that we opted to spend time in the Singapore First Class Lounge instead (though I loved the hot dog cart in the ANZ lounge)! By the time we got back to the gate, boarding was well underway.
United Airlines (UA) 870
Sydney (SYD) – San Francisco (SFO)
Aircraft: Boeing 747-400
Seat: 1A (Global First Class)
Thursday, January 9
4:20PM – 10:50AM
Duration: 13:30
We boarded through door 1L, hung a left, and were seated in the same two seats that we had on our outbound flights a few weeks prior: seats 1A and 1K in Global First Class on board a United B747-400. Again, I can’t say enough about the awesomeness of these seats. They’re somewhat private, they have a ton of storage, there is no foot traffic, and they’re very spacious. Overall, it’s an extremely comfortable seat in which to spend 13+ hours, and is great for pairs traveling together.
Once we took our seats, the friendly flight attendant fulfilled our pre-departure beverage requests and brought us our amenity kits, which I really do like. We pushed back pretty close to on-time and taxied out past another United B747-400 that was running an extra segment due to a cancellation the day before. We taxied all the way to the end of runway 34R and took an extra-long take-off roll before turning north. The view of Sydney out my window was fantastic!
Dinner service began about 30 minutes after takeoff. The appetizer was some sort of a pork won-ton, and was actually quite good. The soup was a cream of asparagus, and it was probably the highlight of the dinner. The salad was pretty standard — fresh and tasty. Due to both of our awful entrees on our outbound flight LAX-SYD, I decided to play it safe and order the pasta. The Pasta dish on this flight was a butternut squash ravioli. It was relatively tasty, though dominated by the sauce. The traditional ice cream sundae topped off this slightly improved meal.
At the end of the day, the dinner service was a bit better than our outbound flight, but it still just doesn’t compete with other airlines’ food in international first class that I’ve experienced. You shouldn’t have to go with a “safe” choice when flying international first class.
After dinner, I had a few more drinks and watched another movie. I started getting sleepy, so I went to change into something more comfortable. When I came back to my seat, it was made into a bed. Once again, I slept wonderfully on this flight. I find the Global First Class seat on United to be great for sleeping, as it provides plenty of room for even me to stretch out (I’m 6’4″)!!
I awoke about 90 minutes outside of San Francisco and the flight attendant promptly brought me the breakfast menu. I elected to try the eggs with hollandaise sauce. The whole breakfast was served on one tray — the fruit, yogurt, croissant, eggs, and sausage. Everything was pretty decent, though the eggs tasted like they were cooked 12 hours prior — and they looked like plastic. It still wasn’t a terrible breakfast, though I do prefer my eggs to be freshly cooked, and these were most certainly not.
Service throughout this flight was perfectly adequate, but nothing overly memorable or special. The flight attendants were friendly enough and provided solid service. When I needed something, it was taken care of quickly, but not necessarily with a smile. Though it was good, I found the service to be better on our outbound flight from LAX.
Upon landing, I breezed through Global Entry and took a quick shower in the United Arrivals Lounge at SFO — a most welcome freshen-up after the long day of flying. After that, my dad and I parted ways as he went off to catch his US Airways first class flight back home to Tampa via Charlotte and I went to catch my non-stop United flight to Washington-National airport in first class.
This was a non-eventful, domestic first class flight, and I slept through the entire flight! I arrived in DC ahead of schedule, ending one of the most memorable few weeks of my life — and a trip with my dad that I’ll remember forever.
Bottom Line
United’s Global First Class is a very comfortable way to get to and from Australia. The catering is what sets this product from being anywhere near first-rate in the industry. Catering would qualify as okay to decent for business class, but it’s certainly not first class catering. At the end of the day, the thing I value the most in a first class seat is the comfort of the seat, and I really do find this seat truly comfortable. Though it lacks the privacy of some other airlines’ first class seats, it’s certainly a good way to cross the Pacific.
How I booked it…
As mentioned in my previous post, I booked this trip for my dad and I using United miles. United charged 80,000 miles each way (160,000 miles round trip) for each of us. Note: As of March 2014, United no longer flies the Boeing 747-400 on its Australia routes. Instead, the airline operates a three-class Boeing 777-200 on both its LAX-SYD and SFO-SYD routes. The B777-200 has four fewer Global First Class seats than the B747-400, so I expect it to be somewhat more difficult to find first class award space on United flights to Australia. Starting in late 2014, United will operate their brand new, two-class B787-9 Dreamliner on nonstop flights from LAX to Melbourne. This flight will only offer BusinessFirst class, similar to what I experienced on my flights on the B787-8 Dreamliner from Denver to Tokyo Seattle, Seattle to Tokyo, and Tokyo to Denver.
