While I don’t usually combine flight posts, it seems to make sense in this case since these flights blended into each other. Economy flights aren’t that exciting to write about, but they do form an important part of any trip.

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This post is one chapter in our trip to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and the Maldives on United Airlines and Etihad Airways. This trip was booked and credited to Aeroplan and Etihad Preferred Guest. For more information on how this trip was booked, please see our trip introduction here. For other parts of the trip, please see this index.

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Review: United Airlines, Washington Dulles – Los Angeles – Vancouver

After the longest concourse walk from one end of Dulles Terminal C to Terminal D with some noticeably absent moving sidewalks, we boarded onto a full plane. 

United Airlines
Economy Class
IAD-LAX (Washington Dulles – Los Angeles International Airport Terminal 7)
UA 431 – Economy Class ( W )
9:38 AM – 12:00 PM
Oct 22, 2012
Booked: Boeing 757-200
Flown: Boeing 757-200

Aside from an entertaining incident with some older senior citizens not finding any overhead bin space for their bags (because they were in boarding group six) this was another pretty uneventful flight. We pretty much slept this whole flight back to the West Coast.

By this time, my tail was getting seriously sore from being seated amid all the economy travel. It had been probably about 21 out of the last 36 hours that I had been crammed into an economy seat- after taking into account all the ground delays in DOH and all the ramp time. 

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Stopping by the United Club – Los Angeles:

On arrival at LAX Terminal 7, we wandered over to the familiar United Club. It wasn’t super busy during our visit. We stocked up on some of the usual Copper Ridge wine and I grabbed some Angeleno magazines to read for the plane ride home. 

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United Airlines
Economy Class
LAX-YVR (Los Angeles International Airport Terminal 7 – Vancouver International Airport)
UA 976 – Economy Class (L)
2:31 PM – 5:14 PM
Oct 22, 2012
Booked: Canadair CRJ – 700
Flown: Canadair CRJ – 700

Heading over to Terminal 8, we headed for the usual gate 80 where the Vancouver flights usually depart from. We mananged to volunteer for a seat substitution when they needed to move a family from the emergency exit row. 

At only two and a half hours, the flight went pretty quickly. Before we knew it, we were arriving back at our home airport, some 25,869 miles after we started. 

Our First Trip to Qatar, United Arab Emirates and the Maldives summarized:

Overall, the trip was a wonderful experience in exploring a region of the world which I hadn’t made it to yet. The experiences at the Park Hyatt Maldives and the Qsar al Sarab desert resort were fabulous stay experiences that we won’t forget for a very long time. 

Concluding this report, the Maldives and the United Arab Emirates were complete jewels of areas that really resembled buried treasure. The discovery of resorts in the middle of nowhere, gradually sinking atolls on prisine islands, and the wonders of the underwater world in the Maldives, found our fair share of truly awesome experiences. Although it wasn’t the full Sex in the City movie Experience, it was pretty close. I can’t wait until it’s out next time to visit the Maldives. It’s a fantastic place and well worth the time it takes to get there.

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