Annoying Delays and Other Fun on United Express to Monterey (Trip Report)

I try to do a “Dad Adventure” with each of my kids every year. The last one I wrote up here was two years ago when I let them pick from the then-brand new Avelo’s route map. (We ended up in Ogden and Eureka.) This year, my daughter really wanted to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and my son wanted to go to Catalina Island. Today, we’ll talk Monterey.

We couldn’t start planning this Monterey trip until just a week before travel thanks to some sports scheduling uncertainty. With that kind of time, I figured there was no way Monterey would be doable, but then… magic! There was low level award availability from LAX up to Monterey on United. Even better, there was a transfer bonus from Amex to Air Canada Aeroplan, so I was able to spend just 10,000 points plus about $40 per person for the roundtrip. That was a great deal. [Note from points and miles bloggers: Insert highly-lucrative credit card sign-up links here]

I wasn’t quite sure how to prepare for travel the day after July 4th. Would it be busy or not? I decided that road traffic would probably be lighter on the semi-holiday week but the airport would be a complete mess. So, we left home a little before 2 hours prior to departure and found ourselves at South Bay Airport Parking within half an hour. It then took us more than half an hour to get from there to United’s Terminal 7. The horseshoe was stopped in multiple places. I’m convinced that being a shuttle driver at LAX is the worst job in the world.

We had a little under an hour until departure when we arrived, but I wasn’t particularly worried. The TSA Precheck line was short, but it was messy. There were two lines for two machines, but they closed one and just left the other line to fend for themselves. There were no agents guiding people, and tensions got heated as people fought for a spot to put their bags.

After doing my best impression of Robert Stack walking through the Trans American terminal — I kid, I kid — we made our way through and walked to the very last gate in Terminal 8. I don’t know that I’d ever been that far down before, but it has a great panoramic view of the airfield. There’s no seating to speak of, but we didn’t really care.

The agent said boarding would begin shortly at one point, but he then came on and announced there was a problem with a flight attendant jumpseat on the airplane so they’d have to hold off on boarding.

Boarding eventually began just 15 minutes before scheduled departure.

United 5310 (operated by SkyWest)
July 5, 2023

There was no trouble getting people in their seats and ready to go on time. The airplane was clean inside, though the windows were dirty. We sat there for awhile, and that’s when I noticed a mechanic up front. Apparently they hadn’t actually finished up all the jumpseat work, but at that point it looked like we were waiting on paperwork. After a few more minutes, the mechanic was gone and they prepared to shut the door.

They actually did shut the door and… we sat there. What now? We had no idea. After another 10 minutes or so, one of the pilots came on saying we were waiting for wind information in Monterey. Apparently the “automated system” (as he announced it) wasn’t working so they had to call dispatch to call the tower to get the info. We’d be on our way shortly. Except we weren’t. Eventually the info did arrive, presumably by carrier pigeon, and we pushed back just over 40 minutes late.

You’d think that being at gate 86B would have its benefits. After all, you can’t get any closer to the threshold of the south runways, so it’s a short taxi… if you’re using the south runways. We, however, had to go to the north side, so we taxied all the way to the west, past the midfield satellite concourse before heading to the north side and taxiing all the way back to the east. It took more than 15 minutes. Fortunately there wasn’t a long line for takeoff and we were airborne quickly.

There was no service on this flight, though the flight attendants did come through and collect trash a couple times.

I’d never flown to Monterey before, and wow is it a beautiful approach. We shot northwest up the Salinas Valley (which parallels to the west of the much larger and better known San Joaquin Valley). It looked like we were well below the coastal range mountain tops, though I was on the right (er, wrong) side to see that view well.

Eventually, the mountains ended and we flew over rolling hills before finally touching down under a low, breaking overcast.

It took us no time to get off the airplane and into the small and bustling terminal. I particularly enjoyed the old-school tower which is perched up on a hill.

While my daughter and I were visiting the aquarium, Cannery Row, Fisherman’s Wharf, and an unsettling number of crepe restaurants, the airplane that brought us in was heading back to LA, up to Redding and back, and finally up to Fresno for the evening while we had a good meal on the municipal pier.

The next morning, while we were at yet another crepe place, the airplane flew down from Fresno to LA and then headed up to Monterey to pick us up once again. It’s always fun when you get the same plane in both directions.

We got to the airport an hour before departure and quickly realized that was a mistake. It was empty. The only thing keeping us from having too much time to sit at our gate was an over-zealous TSA agent.

I will never understand why security at these small airports seems to take everything far too seriously. First, my belt set off the metal detector, something it didn’t do at LAX the day before (or anywhere else I’ve traveled in recent memory). Then, they flagged my bag because of a suspiciously large can of liquid. It turns out, as the agent told me, “that shaving cream can looked bigger” on that image on the screen. Ok.

Through security, you turn left to go to gates 1, 2, and 3 or right to get to 4 and 5. We were down at 5, the same place we arrived the day before.

At the gate, I asked the agent if we could move to the left side since I figured it’d be a better view. She said it wouldn’t be a problem but she had to do something else first. We took a seat, and sure enough, the new seats showed up in the app soon after.

Boarding began roughly on-time, but it was a very pokey and non-rushed affair. Though the agent scanned our boarding passes, she told us to keep them out because they would be scanned again just before getting on the airplane. I’m not sure why, but maybe they’ve had a problem with ground boarding people on the wrong airplane?

United 5658 (operated by SkyWest)
July 6, 2023

Onboard our old friend from the day before, we took our seats further forward and on the left side. We were ready to go, and then the delay was announced. This time, the pilots told us there was flow control into LA, and despite our 10:28am scheduled departure time, we didn’t have a wheels-up time until just after 11. We were told we’d taxi out and sit there, hoping for an earlier time. It wasn’t to be.

At 11:01am, we took off and rapidly climbed into the low marine layer. I’m not sure if this is for noise abatement or terrain, but shortly after departing, we took a right and headed north toward the middle of the bay before looping back around to head southeast a couple minutes later.

It was again a short flight, but this time the flight attendant came through with water for anyone who wanted it. We didn’t, but we did enjoy the view out the left side as we came down the coast.

It was a normal approach from the north where we headed east to downtown LA and then looped around to land back west. We lined up abeam a KLM 777 which was a nice twist on the usual arrival.

It’s a shame we couldn’t have switched places with KLM, because we passed each other way at the west end of the field when we each had to go to the other side of the airport to park.

We pulled into the gate just a few minutes late despite the lengthy sit in Monterey. Clearly they plan for these annoying flow control delays. After waiting for awhile, we finally got the bus back to the parking location, and then we were on our way home.

For such a short hop, these delays and long schedule block times are rather annoying, but let’s put this into persective. I have not to had to fly to or through New York this summer, so… I’ll just stop complaining.