Pre-Flight
In the summer of 2024, my mom's brother-in law in Portland passed away after having cancer for several years, but because of everybody's respective schedules, we did not have a memorial for him that summer. It finally worked out that we would have it in July of 2025, so we would all be headed out there at some point. I ended up getting over a week off from work, so I was thinking about going somewhere else solo after the memorial. Eventually I settled on Madison, since my aunt on my dad's side lives there and thus I could stay at her house for free for a couple nights, and maybe escape the DMV humidity some more.
Since I was not going to be flying with my parents coming back, I booked my own ticket on the same flight as my parents going out while they booked roundtrip, on UA via ORD outbound and AA via DFW coming back. My trip back home would be through ORD, with a bus trip to/from Madison (the details of which I'll get into in a different report). All on United, which despite it being a hometown airline for me, I had never actually flown them before.
At the Airport
Our house is about a 30-minute drive from IAD, and with a 6:35 departure, we needed to be there very early. We figured that parking the car in the economy lot at Dulles for four days would be cheaper than taking an Uber at 4:00 in the morning, so that's what we did. Keep in mind, though, that you may be cutting it close with the shuttle–we parked in the Green lot and had to wait quite a bit (and the shuttle made almost every stop out at the lot). We finally got to the terminal at around 5:20 and our flight was set to board at 5:45, but luckily, security was not busy at all, and believe me when I say that it was life-changing to not have to take my shoes off at the checkpoint. Common sense prevailed after 20+ years.
I did make the mistake, however, of taking the AirTrain to the C-gates even though our flight was going from the D-gates (D30 to boot, at the very end of the concourse). Even though they're connected, it is a very long walk and with us cutting it close time-wise, I was out of breath when I got there from speedwalking. While the A/B concourse at Dulles is one of the best terminals anywhere, the C/D concourse is one of the worst. It has very low ceilings, it's extremely dark and the amenities are limited, especially at that time of the morning. The gates don't have a ton of seating either, but luckily our flight was boarding when I got to the gate. Our plane had only arrived from ORD two hours earlier, as weather along the East Coast caused its previous SJU-ORD flight to be rerouted, and was delayed even more due to weather at ORD, but luckily everything was now running on time.
The new concourse can’t get here fast enough
If you like views of the ramp before boarding, the C/D gates are not the gates for you: this was D30 and you don’t see the plane until after you have your boarding pass scanned.
The Flight
Boarding was quite smooth, with two agents scanning boarding passes; one with an iPad and the other with the usual scanner at the podium. I was very excited to be flying one of UA's newest aircraft types, the Airbus A321Neo, but on this first leg across to ORD, I would be stuck in the middle seat, 30B. The seat is about what you'd expect from an economy seat, but I definitely tell that this was a newer aircraft, with larger IFE screens and fun mood-lighting. I settled in pretty quickly and began looking at the IFE selection as boarding was completed more or less in good time. The captain gave us about a 90-minute flight time up to ORD, which would leave us plenty of time to make our connection to PDX. After a quick taxi, we took off at 6:44, just 9 minutes behind schedule.
As I didn't have a window seat and didn't have a great view over my seatmate in the window seat, I just sat back and continued the movie I had started on the ground, Remember the Titans, featuring Denzel Washington. I've seen that movie several times but it's a classic, and would end up being the perfect length for the flight. The service soon began with the choice of snacks, and I couldn't say no to a stroopwafel. DL and AA have the Biscoff cookies, but the stroopwafel is definitely an outside-the-box snack item and I’m glad UA came up with the idea to serve it. I followed it up with some coffee, and the rest of the flight was fairly uneventful. The crew was very good on this flight, as were pretty much all of the UA crews I had on this trip. In not too long, we made the turn west over Lake Michigan and began our descent between Chicago and Evanston. It was a straight shot into ORD, and we touched down right at 7:15 after just over an hour and a half in the air.
Movie of choice on the flight was “Remember the Titans,” featuring Denzel Washington
Snack/drink service: coffee and a Stroopwafel. I really liked the “time remaining” feature in the bottom right corner below the IFE screen—it can be toggled between flight time remaining and time remaining in whatever movie/show you’re watching, without having to exit out of the IFE. You also could double screen a movie and the moving map.
I really liked the mood lighting on the 321Neo—this was as the cabin was being prepared for descent
Fairly direct route this morning
Post-flight
After touchdown at ORD, we had to taxi for about 10 minutes as there was taxiway/runway construction, but we pulled into gate B2 at the very end of that concourse. As we soon found out, this exact plane would be taking us to PDX, so we lucked out as far as connections go. Keep in mind, thought, that not everything at ORD is under one roof so you may have to hustle to change terminals if you have a tight connection. But we said goodbye to the crew and took the couple steps to the seating area at gate B2 for our next flight to PDX.
