Now back home with a chance to upload photos, we're going to begin at the beginning all over again. We were in the relatively small minority of Flyer Talkers who participated in the Star Alliance Mega Do from beginning to end.
Nov. 3
Chicago United Airlines sendoff party - United Airlines will give FlyerTalkers headed to Newark/JFK and Frankfurt a special sendoff.
•07:30 CST Sendoff party begins
Meet at the T1 C Concourse Red Carpet Club
Graham Atkinson, the UA vice-president in charge of Mileage Plus and Customer Service, spoke graciously to our group. The real star of the show, however, was the legendary Captain Denny Flanagan, United's Goodwill Ambassador par excellence.
We then had an extensive tour of the United Airlines flight operations at ORD. WE visted the UA ramp tower, the pilots area, the flight attendant area, the planning room, and the store and employee lunchroom. The Service Operations Center (S.O.C.) includes other companies, which operate the lavatory service, water supply, and catering. They also are responsible for United Express requests for wheelchair service, zone controllers and four maintenance groups. With the new runway ORD can land 112 planes an hour, 84 with a low ceiling.
Was it impressive to visit this underground and overhead beehive of activity? No kidding!
As we walked through the crew preparation areas we even had the chance to talk with a crew getting ready for an international flight.
The employees were invariably friendly and welcoming, despite our invasion of their work space.
Interesting to see the occasional old fashioned wall chart in a sea of computer terminals...
And now it's time for our ORD-EWR flight...
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