I am flying to and from China on United from Chicago and returning to San Francisco. Can anyone tell me how comfortable (or should I say UNCOMFOTABLE) the coach section is on United's 777s and 747s. Also, is there a way on the United website to check available seats without going through the whole process of purchasing a ticket? Delta nd American make it so easy to see how full a flight is. Thanks.

On the bottom of the "Purchase" page, before you have to buy the tickets, there is a "select seats" button.

UA has Economy Plus seats with 2-3in more legroom. You can get those pre-assigned to you if you're not a UA "Premiere" FF member, but do ask at the airport to see if they can move you up there.

Coach on United's 747 from China is horrendous. I'm sure 777s are better.

If you have the option to fly 777, that would be better than 744 due to PTV and window seat combinations of only 2 seats.

Economy Plus requires either: Elite level status with the airline (does NOT include elite status with other *A airlines), a purchase of Economy Plus Access (good for one year), a possible buy-up at check-in.

It IS possible to get assigned an E+ seat at the airport, but UA has recently been much better about extracting money for these seats, so if comfort is important to you and $$ not so much, I'd look into ways to insure I could get the seats.

Best, Dave

The thread was started 2.5 years ago. I have no idea why emckeeve revived it.

Anyways, in the winter schedule for 07-08, all US-China/HK flights are on the 747-400.

On a recent cross country flight out of DC on United, the flight attendent made a couple of passengers, who had moved into empty seats in economy plus, return to their regular economy seats. As I had never seen this happen before, I was wondering if United had adopted a new, more stringent policy to generate revenue.