United Airlines First Class B737 Seattle to San Francisco

United Airlines 1497
Seattle (SEA) – San Francisco (SFO)
Boeing 737-800
19 February 2015

The long day began with me waking up around 03:00 and I left my house at 03:30 and drove to the airport where I parked my car for a daily rate of $28 USD, which isn’t too bad. There was already a massive queue at 04:00 at the United check-in counter, but of course I skipped that and proceeded to the Premier Access check-in area and printed my boarding passes from the kiosk (I always like to have a paper copy for two reasons – smartphones aren’t reliable and I love to collect boarding passes).

There was only one security area open and of course the queue for the normal screening was huge, however no one was in the TSA Pre-Check line, so I literally passed everyone and was airside about 30 seconds after printing my boarding pass. Boarding was scheduled to begin at 04:45 and it was currently 04:05 so I went to the United Club where I had to wait for ~25 minutes before they opened the lounge at 04:30… I guess I could’ve slept longer (and checked when they open it). I met up with Patrick from AirportBliss.com and we both waited to get into the lounge and it turned out we also flew on the same flight to SFO and then spent a couple of minutes in the Centurion Lounge there.

Since I only had a couple of minutes in the lounge, I got some Orange Spice tea and a raspberry pie (which was delicious) and this was my breakfast for the day.

I left the lounge as boarding was scheduled to begin and made it to the gate shortly where group 3 was already boarding. The flight was operated by a United Boeing 737-800 with DirecTV and WiFi, I actually had some things I needed to work on so I connected my laptop and phone to the WiFi as soon as we departed.

It was a busy Thursday morning at the airport, there were several flights departing and I don’t think I’ve seen that many people at such an early hour at SEA before.

I think most of the First Class passengers stayed a bit longer in the lounge and boarded last because group 5 was boarding and First Class was wide open.

This B737 also had power, so I connected my iPhone and later my laptop.

I switched the IFE to the Airshow as soon as I took my seat so that I could avoid all of the commercials on the TV.

Shortly after taking my seat, I was offered a pre-departure beverage of my choice and had sprite.

We left the gate about 10 minutes late as we were waiting on the final paperwork.

Scheduled departure time was 05:20 but we actually took of a little later and were airborne around 05:35.

As soon as we reached 11k metres, drink orders were taken and warm scones were passed out to everyone.

For the remainder of the flight, I decided to watch the sunrise as I love the morning flights down the coast mainly because of, well, this:

We began our descend into SFO and, not surprisingly, low clouds in the area. The view during descend was amazing, just look at how beautiful the low clouds look and how the tips of the mountains show.. and mixed with the sunrise, just breathtaking. This is why I fly.

This picture is so cool, literally the tips of the land are surrounded by the clouds and I could actually see people driving on the streets at the top, above the clouds. This picture is so amazing, it is my new phone background:

We landed on runway 28L 10 minutes behind schedule and made it to gate 65 shortly thereafter. I had under an hour to visit the new Centurion Lounge at SFO and I think it just may be my new favourite domestic lounge from all of the ones I have been to.