Hello and welcome to my America Trip of 2017.
Planned flights:
TLV (Tel Aviv, Israel) -> IST (Istanbul, Turkey) TK Y B77W TLV-IST, Tap It
IST (Istanbul, Turkey) -> BOG (Bogota, Columbia) TK Y A332 IST-BOG, Tap It
BOG (Bogota, Columbia) -> PTY (Panama City, Panama) TK Y A332 BOG-PTY, Tap It
PTY (Panama City, Panama) -> SJO (San Jose, Costa Rica) CM Y B73G PTY-SJO, Tap It
SJO (San Jose, Costa Rica) -> EWR (Newark, NJ, USA) UA Y B738 YOU ARE HERE!/VOUS ETES ICI!
EWR (Newark, NJ, USA) -> TLV (Tel Aviv, Israel) UA Y B77W
The check-in at SJO wasn't the nice one. I had to pay more 25$ to send my luggage. even this flight is an international one! (More than 5 hours).
Duty-Free area:
My flight is on time!
2 Copa Airlines (Embraer E190 and Boeing 737-800). Both of them will fly to PTY. Copa operates up to 7 daily flights in this sector!
A320 of Avianca will fly to San Salvador, El Salvador:
My plane arrived! Reg N14249, EX 1999:
Starbucks is must before "Full service" flight:
Time to board! Group 3 out of 5 today:
Gate 3 for today:
Cabin by boarding:
Cabin:
Wing view:
Pitch was average but tight for 5 hours flight:
The next 5 hours will be boring!
Volaris A320 will fly to Guadelajara, Mexico:
We are on the radar:
The captain announced that the flight time will be 4 hours and 55 minutes.
Taxi:
AA Boeing 737-800 from Miami:
Take of was exactly at 11:30AM!
Beautiful view of Alajuela area:
Clouds:
Drink service and snack:
Flying over Nicaragua:
Lavatory:
Cabin:
Leaving the Mexican coast over Merida:
I was hungry so I bought this snack flat for 7 USD:
over the gulf of Mexico:
Entering into the US land over Florida:
Cabin once time again. The streaming hadn't worked for all the flight:
Over South Carolina:
Starting our descend to EWR:
First glimpse of Newark area:
Landing!
With heavy rain we taxied to Gate C135:
Bye bye my 738 for 5 hours!
There wasn't a queue at the Imigration so I was out of the airport after 30 min at all:
Quick move from Central America to the Northern America:
Our flight path for today with total 4:45 hours of flying:
N14249 is one of the few 737-800s in United's fleet that doesn't offer seatback DirecTV entertainment (which costs from $4.99-$7.99). This is a former Guam unit, and is currently based in the United States (meaning that United had refurbished the cabin and removed DirecTV). It only offers personal device entertainment, which requires you to connect to the wi-fi network and stream movies/TV shows on a phone, tablet, or computer.
I really don't like how airlines are removing seatback entertainment because it "saves weight." The cost cutting nowadays has gotten out of control.
Thanks for this report! Even though this is an international flight, it looks like United treats it like a domestic flight. I'm betting you ran into the same issue I did this summer with United's streaming entertainment -- on the 737 fleet, it does not work on Android 6.0 or higher. Supposedly that was supposed to be fixed this year, but clearly it hasn't.
Hi Yonatan!
Thanks a lot for this report, especially for the beautiful aerials. Costa Rica seems to be a wonderful place! I MUST visit some day!
Sorry to hear you didn't have a nice experience. I agree with you. I won't fly United (or any legacy airline) on low cost routes either. Some LCCs are doing much better than many legacy airlines.
Best ^^
Thanks for the well-written and detailed report. What a shoddy state of affairs for a legacy carrier on a mid-haul international route! Might've been bad luck with the IFE/streaming but no meal on such a service really is stingy. How far does one have to fly on United to warrant some free food!? Quite a contrast to the TK onboard experience I'm sure. All the best.