A Throwback Experience with Modern Luxury?

Lucky enough to be booking a flight on United Airlines’ domestic first class? You’ll be even more fortunate if that flight is on one of its aircraft equipped with luxurious, lie-flat seats. On select routes around America, spacious, transforming bed seats replace the boring, non-fancy first-class recliners. Here’s my full United Domestic 777-200 first class review and thoughts on whether it’s worth the price.

But some front-of-the-plane travelers are dismayed when selecting their seat – some of United’s 777s have a curious-looking layout. Instead of the typical 1-2-1 Polaris class layout found on most of United’s widebody fleet, you may see a much denser 2-4-2 configuration… with seats facing each other in a forward and rear-facing setup.

These are frequently called the “old United First,” “dorm-room first class,” and even “coffin seats.” They are on the United 777-200 aircraft with domestic routes, including to and from Hawaii. When deciding to pay a premium for these seats, many travelers wonder: are these seats worth it?

I was recently faced with that decision, and besides wanting to be more comfortable, the avgeek in me knew I had to try this classic, rare product. I upgraded, and to summarize the conclusion, I would do it again in a heartbeat, and I’ll highlight why. I wasn’t pleased with the reviews available, so I made one myself – read on to see my experience.

Booking and/or Upgrading

My flights from Las Vegas to Honolulu were already booked in economy, and I had been watching United’s upgrade price for a few weeks. When it dropped from around $1,300 to $399 per person, I knew that was as good as it gets, and I grabbed an upgrade for both my wife and me. This was on the LAX to HNL leg of the trip, operated by the United B777 with the old first class seats.

If you’re wondering how to identify this plane, it’s not hard. This type of domestic first class is on the 777-200, and you can easily look for the 2-4-2 seating arrangements. You can see the rear-facing rows more closely, like in the screenshot above.

Only the middle seats were left when I upgraded, but I took them anyway. Important pro tip: check the seat map again two or three days before departure. As you can see above, seats 1A and 1B don’t appear at first because they are blocked as crew rest seats – but on most domestic flights, that isn’t necessary, so they release them. 

I managed to switch to those!…