Family Vacation in canada
This is the fourth leg of my recent family vacation in Canada. After six wonderful days in Montreal and Toronto, it was sadly time to go home. I also included in the bonus section a review of the newly rennovated Air France/KLM Lounge at Dulles since I figure people may want to see what that's like (without an accompanying report of a 35-minute ERJ145 flight).
Flight routing
- 1UA4997 - Economy - Roanoke → Washington - Embraer ERJ145
- 2UA4963 - Economy - Washington → Montreal - Embraer ERJ145
- 3
- 4UA6198 - Economy - Toronto → Washington - Bombardier CRJ-700
- 5UA4908 - Economy - Washington → Roanoke - Embraer ERJ145
Air canada transborder maple leaf lounge
We left for the airport roughly 2.5 hours before departure because of the morning traffic. Conveniently, Toronto has preclearance facilities. There was some sort of a premium line available to Amex Platinum cardholders as well as various elites. Both my Amex Plat or Star Alliance Gold would have qualified me for the line. However, it didn't feel like it saved much time (though I suppose the rush would come later).
The Transborder Maple Leaf Lounge was located right after preclearance with a nifty sign outside that let you know how many minutes it would take to walk to your gate from there. Our gates were about 10 minutes away, so we had roughly half an hour in the lounge. It was a fairly large lounge and not very crowded. The majority of the seating is to the right side, with an interesting elevated area in the center. There was also a quiet area tucked away in the corner. Like the previous Maple Leaf Lounge, there was lack of outlets.
There were also a children's room, some sort of theater room, and a business area.
The food spread was rather mediocre. Just some cold items. The only hot item was toast. I helped myself to a few scones and yogurt. Despite the odd shade from the lighting - that's orange juice.
The bathrooms were okay - I'll let the picture speak for itself.
UA 6198
We left with about 10 minutes until boarding, but boarding actually started a few minutes early. At some point, my dad had been upgraded to the last seat in First. Leaving me once again the next-person on the upgrade list. Here is our ride: N509MJ, a 16-years old CRJ700.
Here's my dad's seat:
Here's my seat (an Economy Plus); you can see it's not that much of a difference on the CRJ-700. I was in 8C, the starboard aisle seat in the second row of Economy Plus (which we got to select for free thanks to United status). The legroom was more than enough (or have I just gotten shorter?).
Boarding was complete fairly early - at 10:08am. The captain then let us know it would be a fairly short, 40 to 50-minutes flight. Doors closed at 10:15am and we pushed back exactly at 10:21am. We taxied for a little more than 10 minutes. There was some decent planespotting along the way.
Air Canada 777-200LR bound for Hong Kong later.
Emirates A380
Korean Air 787-9
UPS MD-11
We took off at 10:34 and service began 15 minutes later (slightly delayed due to turbulence). First class got their choice of drinks and a snack basket (my dad said it was worse than the one Air Canada offered in domestic economy) and us in the back got a cup of water plus a stroopwafel. That said, I am really happy that United brought back the stroopwafel. I really enjoy them and find them better than any other snack options on U.S. airlines. For the most part, service was bland and utilitarian.
We began our descent at 11:08am and touched down at 11:25am. We were at our gate about 4 minutes later.
