Review: United BusinessFirst Buenos Aires To Houston

Can you follow up with what happened with your phone? Did UA replace it? Offer to repair it?

This was one of the first stories that I had read from your website. Thanks.

https://onemileatatime.com/asia-on-a-whim-introduction/

thanks for the review and sorry about your phone. Must be nice to have to many miles that spending 150k miles on a one way trip is even an option.

Your comment about not being able to find European wines in BA is not accurate. Elena restaurant at the Four Seasons has Moet for ~$160 USD which is lower than most high end restaurants and bars in LA would charge. Even the trendy Faena hotel has champagne at lower prices than LA.

Whenever Barclays has the 50K promo for the Lufthansa card I get it ($79 fee) and use it for United flights to Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo.

Good report. Although I would disagree on the fact that there are plenty of excellent local wine produced in Argentina, including Chandon Argentina, so why insist on European wines? It would be like asking for a Bordeaux in Napa.

Lucky, I know that you do not live in Argentina, but you said "all of our expectations were exceeded by a country mile". According to the argentinian people, the airline losses 2M USD every day, so you should not be impressed by the quality of the service. Otherwise, without the money the service would be quite different. I think it is one of the few airlines that serve a snack in such a short flight.

Hi Nick,

Nice review, but I wanted to tell you what you missed when you canceled your TAM first class tickets to take this flight.

I was in the same predicament as you. I immediately jumped on the opportunity to fly TAM first class within hours of hearing about it and booked three first class seats for my family JFK-GRU-SCL and return for Xmas week.

Imagine my disappointment when I learned through this blog that there would be no first class and that the seats in the downgraded business class cabin would be sub-par. However, we decided to rough it and maintain the itinerary.

I was a little surprised when we checked in at JFK and an additional agent started talking to us and seemed to know all about our itinerary. However, I didn't think much of it. The outgoing flight was an an A330 that still had the old first class cabin and they changed our seats to put us in there. They also gave us access to the AA First Class Lounge. We were very happy at that point.

At GRU, we were met by a TAM Special Services escort, which was another surprise. On our connection to SCL, we were driven to the plane and got to board it ten minutes before everyone else. The entire rest of our trip involved escorts.

On the return, SCL-GRU, we were finally on the 777 with the four-seat first class cabin that was like a living room. They again changed our seats to put us in that cabin and we had it all to ourselves. The highlight was the three of us having lunch together at a table for four. The seats in the middle section enable you to do that! (like the bed for two Ben loves to talk about). Although there was no table cloth or fancy china or first class food, we were at least in first class. The FAs closed the curtains to ensure we had privacy. I felt like we received first class service. Three FAs served our business class lunch.

The real surprise was when we were about to land at GRU to connect to our JFK-bound flight. I took a short nap after lunch, knowing I had just under an hour before landing at GRU. However, I slept for over two hours, wondering why we hadn't landed, and then heard some kind of announcement in Spanish containing the word Rio de Janeiro.

Apparently there was a major wind and thunderstorm over GRU and the entire airport was closed down. Our flight had circled the airport hoping it would clear, but when it ran low on fuel, we were sent to Rio.

At Rio we refueled and then headed back to GRU. It was nice to be in the spacious first class cabin but I was sweating bullets that we would miss our connection to JFK. I tried making cell phone calls to rebook our connection while on the tarmac in RIo but couldn't get cell service.

When we finally landed at GRU, perhaps four hours late, the plane pulled onto the tarmac and we were told there was no gate for us yet. However, almost an hour later, they wheeled up some stairs, and a special agent came aboard, grabbed us, told us not to worry, said that they had rebooked us on a flight leaving in a few minutes, said we were given the best seats on the plane although there was no first class cabin, said that they already taken our luggage and retagged it, and then drove us to the gate at a different terminal, where she escorted us onto the flight! Everyone on the plane that we left thought we were celebrity VIPs. We were the only ones who deplaned at that time. I never had any kind of service like this before! Those TAM special service agents were incredible!

No one else on our delayed flight could have possibly made their connections and would have had to overnight at GRU. If that was us, we would have had to pay the reciprocal visa fee to leave the airport for a hotel, so we were very relieved. (The flight we got on left about midnight). The flight we missed would have had us sitting in the first class cabin again, but we were very happy to just have an immediate connection in business class, which at least was 2-2-2 in a modern cabin (could have been 2-3-2), although with slanted flat seats.

Overall, I was very happy we stuck with TAM. We received the essence of first class service for the most part, received some incredible customer service and escorts, and received a refund in points for the difference between first and business.

Pro tip: keep your phone in the cubby with the chargers. It's not too hard to reach back there when you need to take a pic.

Similar thing happened to me on a Delta flight with their business class seats only with prescription glasses. Fortunately we landed on a weekday in London and there was a dispensing optician within walking distance of my hotel where I was able to get new lenses and frames within 2 hrs. I still have yet to be compensated from Delta even after repeated attempts. Good luck with United.

Have very much enjoyed your reviews from this trip! I am scheduled to fly United First from IAD to Sao Paulo in March while my husband will fly business (he's cheap with miles). Do you know if either of these are also angled flat?

@Kate: all international "businessfirst" seats are lie-flat on United. But the seat pictured in this review is from a 2-class, Continental style plane, whereas 3-class planes (that used to be United planes before the Merger with Continental) have a different seat, narrower but longer, less privacy but perhaps better sleep for some people. Neither seat is the best in the world, but United Businessfirst is a solid product and in many ways superior to TAM, Lufthansa, Air France, KLM or any other airline that still uses slanted seats. I find the food to be just ever so slightly better than on Delta, and much, much better than on AA.
But, domestically United is not a very good airline unfortunately.

Aren't iPhone photos backed up automatically to your iCloud account?

@ptahcha - Chandon Argentina was everywhere. I personally didn't enjoy it. It tasted about on par with (but different from) a $12 bottle of U.S. Chandon.

@Luis, so you got me, I guess the Four Seasons serves French champagne and probably the Faena, too, for a price. I'm not a Krug-obsessed champagne snob (sorry, Lucky!), but on New Years' Eve it would have been nice to toast with something other than Chandon. I just meant to convey that Chandon and a couple of other Argentine brands (e.g., "Baron B.") were ubiquitous and anything else was difficult to find. As far as red and white wines are concerned, I quite enjoyed the Argentine and Uruguayan wines we tasted, and wasn't missing out on imports.

@Craig - your experience with TAM sounds amazing. Seems you really lucked out and they took care of you despite the change in class of service, at least on paper. For us, personally, the TAM leg GRU-JFK was out of our way anyway (since we were really trying to get from EZE-LAX) but something I thought would be fun for the value in First, and in the end I'm glad we had the direct EZE-IAH-LAX routing back rather than a convoluted AEP-GRU-JFK-LAX itinerary. I'm certainly very jealous, though!

@r - That's what I'd typically do, but these particular seats didn't have netting or a cubby that would hold my phone.

@Kate, if you're flying either GlobalFirst (which you're doing) or BusinessFirst (which your husband's doing), you should both definitely have fully lie-flat seats. You'll have a bit more width and a lot more storage/personal space around you. It's a solid product.

Based on my understanding (and reasonable folks will disagree), I'd rank the legacy carriers' international business class as:

1. Delta -- good lie flat seats and IFE, great bedding/pillows, and very good food
2. United -- good lie flat seats and IFE, decent bedding/pillows, good to very good food
3. American -- either great lie flat seats or mediocre angled flat seats (for now), good IFE, decent bedding/pillows, mediocre food

Some people will put the most value in American's upgraded reverse herringbone business seats and rank that the highest, but the food/beverage and service are inconsistent to bad, and the fact AA is still running many routes with the old business class seats for now brings it down a couple notches. Personally, I'd put as much value, if not more, in service and food/beverage, where American is lacking.

Hi Ben,

You're reviewing your South America trip now ? What happened to your EY 388 Apartment review ?

I am checking your blog daily or even more frequently very much looking forward this write up, if I've somehow missed it can you please link me to it. I remember you said that the full EY 388 Apartment write up was coming after you finished writing up your dads trip but that's been done for a while now.

What's the go ? If its not done yet can you please kindly advise when can we expect it

Thanks

Nizar

Absolutely. Argentine wine is world class and no need to drink imports when you are there. Hope you had some of their famous beef to go along with the red wines.

Did United end up helping you out with your iPhone?

Also flew in one of these exCO biz seats last week, a pleasant change from the exUA sardine cans that pass as business class seats. Service too was exemplary vs exUA. I did want to mention that in the same area where the electoral outlet is, there's a webbed pocket that holds the headphones. In future when charging a device, just set it in the pocket where it will remain safe and secure. (Not that I haven't suffered the pain of a destroyed iPod touch myself under somewhat foolish circumstances.)

Nice article!

Nice to see United reviewed! We all know we won't see one coming from Ben. 😉

@Nizar: this is Ben's friend Nick writing a review about his South America trip, see top of the page

Can people not read the introductory section at the top that's completely italicised? Or is it selective blindness?

This is one of those sugarcoated reports that misses out on some crucial information especially referring to United airlines.

Although you mentioned you got screwed over on the miles, you left out that Jeff he has a policy of bringing value to shareholders before bringing value to flyers. One of the secretaries told me the same.

What exactly does this mean for the flying public? The answer is as a frequent-flier United is no longer a value in any dimension. In the old days one could justify spending a little extra on a revenue ticket in order to earn United miles to then use them for premium class travel, nowadays that "benefit" is gone. What's taken place is quite probably one of the least generous carriers which has over optimized their product to the point of being a very poor value for the flying public.

You left out the relatively poor dinner, poor wines, and all the seats in the back of business class that sit next to a very loud refrigerator. I'm glad you thought you got good service, that's really the exception on that flight. Over the past few years United has removed two of the three flights off the city pair and this flight at a very high revenue, yield management basically is optimizing to the highest extreme level every single seat on board.

At least in this market I don't think united airlines is competitive with any of the American carriers, obviously they beat the Argentine national airline…

@UA MM+ -- I was in the back of BusinessFirst on that flight and didn't hear any noise from a refrigerator. I also thought the food was very good and the wines completely quaffable and enjoyable. I was reporting my experience with United flying BusinessFirst EZE-IAH, and I had a very good flight. Seems like you have some issues with United that run far deeper than I do; then again, I'm not a United frequent flyer much anymore.

Also, to those who asked, I submitted a claim online but have not heard from United. I haven't been very proactive about it because I have phone insurance. There's a deductible, but frankly I'm not sure I want to go through the long, bureaucratic process of trying to have my deductible reimbursed from UA when I feel it was just a preventable accident on my part. I'm sure that this has happened before and that a case could be made that the seats have a design flaw / defect because the armrests don't have a lip, but I'm not a litigious type by nature.

@Daniel 'Can you follow up with what happened with your phone? Did UA replace it? Offer to repair it?', On the other side, I hope his 700$ phone didn't break the 10,000$ seat system. And we always take good care of our phones.

I have lost 2 Apple products to United premium seats.

A then-new iPad to an old PS first class seat. It's now a beautiful piece of art in my living room.

A brand new iPhone 6 during launch week in the same seat you broke your phone. Similar display damage. Apple let me pay the cheap $100 or so display replacement cost for it.

Wait a minute, do my eyes deceive me? Is that a foot rest in the E+ seat, in the background of the seat picture??