Mileage Running
First mileage run of October 2026 ended up a bit of a mess. UA 152, LAX-HKG, was fine, usual mediocre food, although the ice cream is still good, and to be fair, the sticky miso salmon pre-order wasn't too bad at all. Wifi turned out to be broken tho, and as excellent as the crew was, they didn't realize wifi was broken til long after we had taken off.
Normally no wifi on a flight isn't awful, but in this case, it became a major mess, since the return flight three hours after arriving in Hong Kong, UA 821, HKG-LAX, was actually having issues. Something happened to two pilots because both of the day's return flights to LAX, UA 153 and also UA 821, ended up operating short, with only three pilots each, and consequently both diverted to Honolulu to change crews and continue on to Los Angeles. Just for good measure, UA 152, the early departure (~12:30pm), left quite late, only a few minutes before UA 821 (the evening departure) left, so when both planes go to Honolulu about the same time, it was quite a lengthy delay.
United originally said a laughable 20 minutes to refuel and change crews, but with that, plus the flight time difference, I still would have made my original second set of flights for the second half of my double turn. Instead, the HNL stopover became 40 minutes, which would have made it dicey... then we sat on the ground for nearly 2 hours (something like 1hr 40min) instead, which meant that the second half of this weekend's mileage run went straight out the window. Fortunately with so much time on the ground, was able to call customer service and bump my flights by 12 hours, from the original flight 3 and 4 (UA 820, aka 3 hour layover then fly LAX-HKG, then UA 153 HKG-LAX back home), to another UA 152/UA 821 combo.
At least I got to try the mid-flight tapas on the first return from Hong Kong to Los Angeles? The cucumber salad with bean curd and mushroom is pretty okay, as is the crab e-fu noodle. And the congee out of Honolulu is quite generous vs. Los Angeles or Hong Kong. The 3 hour late arrival into LAX also meant that much of Terminal 7 was closed, so they bused us to Tom Bradley International Terminal. Which is great for tarmac views but awful for, well, anyone else trying to make a connecting flight...