united flies better than usairways

I had to be in Canton, Ohio this morning no later than 8:30am. Seeing how I live in the Bay Area, a plane ride was called for.

To minimize the time away from family, I opted to take a red-eye from SFO to Pittsburgh on a United codeshare flight operated by USAirways and then drive a rental car to Canton (80 miles away).

It's been a long time since I've flown any airline domestically other than United. I've got almost 500,000 FF miles on United, so you know my loyalties.

It only occurred to me last night as I was arriving to SFO: I've never flown any airline BUT United out of SFO (except my international trip on KLM last month). So I've never experienced Terminal One at SFO before. I may never stray from Terminal Three again.

I was a little underwhelmed by the entire Terminal One and US Airways flight experience. Granted, SFO is a hub for United, so things are generally better all around for flying United in and out of SFO, but I didn't expect the drop off to be so steep:

• The check-in process for USAirways consisted of eight electronic kiosks (three of them were open for folks not checking bags), period. No way to approach a ticketing agent directly. You have to interact with the kiosk first.
• The TSA pre-screening tables are configured oddly in Terminal One so that the amount of table space available to stack your stuff in the bins is quite short, and the unload area is quite cramped. Lots of elbowing and hip checking once through the metal detector to get your shoes on and laptop stowed before taking the lo-o-o-ong walk down the terminal to the gate.
• No gate attendants! Wow. If you've got a seating request, I guess you're SOL. Maybe this was due to the late departure of the flight (10:30p), but I was very surprised not to see any USAirways staff until mere moments before the gate opened to usher us in.
• This was my first trip on an Airbus A319 in a long time. Small plane (but not an empty seat to be found). The flight attendants were a little on the bossy side for my tastes, but for the most part, my eyes were shut and ears were plugged to sleep as much of the 4.5 hour flight time as possible.

Oh, and am I the only one who's noticed that Pittsburgh has added terminals to its shopping mall where the airport used to be? Do folks really go to the airport to buy all that stuff? I felt like I was walking through a miniature (only 40 stores) version of the local Valley Fair mall once I got to the main hub of the airport. Reminded me a little of my last trip thru BWI (another mall-turned-airport outside Baltimore).

Oh, and in case anyone in California cares: it's definitely not spring yet along the Western PA, Northern WV, Eastern OH corridor. The buds on the trees haven't yet opened, and it was flurrying as I drove to Canton this morning.

Glad I'm flying United back to SFO tomorrow. How'd I get so comfortable in my flying rut? Oh yeah, by flying 28,000 miles on United so far this year. eesh