Well, my apologies for running out of time. I was going to write about Sunday’s adventure to the Northeast of Thailand with Stuart, a combination train ride and bike ride that was a lot of fun. The good news is, I have the photos and video and the memories, so I’ll write about it upon my return.
Meanwhile, I’ve been rushing around getting loose ends tied up for the trip to Tokyo very early tomorrow morning. I still have to pack (14 hours before departure – plenty of time!) and to top it off, a couple from Hong Kong arrived this morning so we’ll try to meet for an early dinner tonight.
Biggest excitement besides just being on holiday in Tokyo for eight days? The opportunity to try United Airlines’ new business class. You’ll recall that I got a bit of a run-around with them in booking these mileage award tickets. Thanks to a helpful UA representative, a few strings were pulled and the situation was resolved nicely.
So I was especially pleased when I checked seat assignments this week only to discover that we are scheduled to fly both ways on the new business class configured planes. I was surprised as these are in only about half the fleet right now and BKK-NRT isn’t on the list.
The seats are lie-flat, which United’s researchers determined was the number-one criteria for business travelers: the ability to sleep on the flight.
The potential downside: in planes that competitors have in a 2-3-2 or 2-2-2 configuration and a few competitors (Singapore Airlines for example) have in a 1-2-1 configuration, United has optimized in a 2-4-2 seating arrangement. For business class! Considering that they usually charge quite a bit more than many competitors, I’m curious to see how they’re going to really make that work, but we’ll see.
The other unusual aspect is that the seats face different directions. Unlike most airlines where all the seats face forwards, or even British Airways that uses a “herringbone” pattern in which individual seats are nested in opposite directions, each row on United’s new business class faces the opposite direction. Ostensible this creates a greater sense of privacy. We’ll see.
I’ll try to keep postings as up to date as possible. Apologies in advance as I know I’ll fall behind on my subscriptions. Happy Songkran and Easter to those of you who celebrate them!
christao408 
Have an awesome trip. Looking forward to your pics and posts!
cool!!!have a fun trip!!!
Have a wonderful trip! Look forward to reading your blog on the new UA business class experience, and of course, whether your timing for Cherry Blossom viewing. Have fun!
Have a great trip! I’m looking forward to all the food pics 🙂 Will you be meeting up with Taro?
I flew in the UAL new business class from LAX to HKG (and back) in February. I was in a rear-facing seat both times. It’s not really too disorienting most of the time, but the takeoff and landing experience is definitely something different.I couldn’t quite figure out why UAL used the front-back pattern until my second flight. It actually has *nothing* to do with privacy. It is, of course, about squeezing in more seats. If you see the little brown “shelf” at the end of the fully-extended seat (first picture above), that is where your legs go when you lay down (if you’re over 5’6″). What you can’t see is that that brown shelf area is a cutaway half-size space in the console, and the person in the seat in front of (or behind you, depending on which way you’re facing) has her shelf right next to yours, on the other half of the cutaway space. So, by having people’s feet go into the smaller shelf area, they can save an extra 8-12″ of seat-pitch space and squeeze in an extra revenue row or two of seats on the plane.I thought the seats were an improvement over the old ones, of course, though it is still a tight squeeze for a person who is 6’0″ or taller. It was nice to have regular power outlets (not emPower) and USB ports for charging devices. The video screen is large, but not overpowering.Have a great trip! I look forward to reading about your travels.
Have a great trip!!
Why do I feel so poor whenever I read these kind of blog posts?
Have a safe trip! I can’t wait to hear all about it 🙂
Safe travel. Sorry we missed you this morning…at the gym, then food kitchen. We’ll be reading about your trip as you post. Dad will be interested, especially, in your comments about the new business seats.
@mike august – Actually, they didn’t really squeeze in any additional rows by the clever shared foot space – they just avoided losing another row. Their total count of business class seats actually is lower after the remodel!
I thought the seats were comfortable, a little narrow for sleeping comfortably, though. Especially at the feet end of things! The biggest problem is that console between the seats. It is really difficult to get around that gracefully. If it didn’t extend quite so far out, it would be fine.
@Wangium – Well, Jason, you’re just a young man. When you reach my age you’ll have the same breadth of resources I have. LOL Actually, we’re just very fortunate to be able to take advantage of various free and low-cost things. Redeemed miles for the tickets because UA offers a promotion between Bangkok and Japan, for example. Otherwise, couldn’t have afforded it.
@jandsschultz – @TheCheshireGrins – @alextebow – @stevew918 – @yang1815 – @Dezinerdreams – Thanks, we’ve made it safely to Japan and had a great first full day.
@Mabel – Yes, we had dinner with Taro last night and will see him (and HP Mendoza and his partner) Saturday night.
@christao408 – yay!