Well it’s been over a month since I did my last post, where we were on our last day in Tokyo. Since we have gotten home to Orlando, we’ve been extremely busy, as well as needed a few days to rest up! More on our adventures since we got home in the next posts; but for now, here is our experience flying home from Haneda Airport to Houston Intercontinental (IAH), and connecting to Orlando.
We checked out of our hotel, the Royal Park Hotel Haneda Airport, located adjacent to Terminal 3, and headed over to the terminal and check-in around 8am. We each had a cart of luggage which we pushed via the trolleys we had gotten the day before; I know, despite all our efforts, we never pack lightly!
Check-in at the ANA counter at Haneda Airport was quick and efficient, and our bags were checked all the way through to Orlando (MCO), although as with any international flight to the US, we had to clear customs in Houston, and then re-check them to MCO.
By the time we got thru the check-in, security, and immigration (leaving the country of Japan), we only had about an hour left to utilize the ANA Lounge in Haneda Airport, Terminal 3, before boarding our flight. The ANA Business Class Lounge was quite large and busy at this early hour, but offered several sections of seating with a couple sets of restrooms located inside the Lounge (near the entrance and at the back section of the lounge). The food was mostly Asian food with some Westernized items such as croissants and yogurt, and offered the standard mix of complementary beverages from juices and sodas, to wine, beer, and cocktails. It was a bit too early for alcoholic drinks, so we settled for a couple Coke Zeroes, while Steve (DOS) had a bite or two to eat. I settled for a yogurt, knowing we would have a meal on the plane in a little while.
The Lounge had large windows, which was perfect for viewing the planes coming and going. There was even a robot in the lounge to assist with carrying the dirty dishes back to the kitchen!
Our flight from Haneda Airport to Houston was about 12 and 1/2 hours, about the same distance (6,700 miles) as it was from New York (JFK) to Tokyo (Haneda), although the JFK flight was and hour and a half longer at 14 hours due to heading west against the jet stream, vs flying east with the jet stream.
We had a 10:25am flight on ANA Airlines, utilizing a Boeing 787-900 wide body jet, and we were seated in Business Class window seats 3A and 5A. The flight ran about a half hour late, but was otherwise uneventful which is a good thing.
We had comfortable Business Class seats, aboard the Boeing 787-900 flying on the return portion to IAH, although our outbound flight aboard the ANA Boeing 777-300ER configured as “The Room” was much more spacious and luxurious. Unfortunately “The Room” wasn’t offered on the 787 as of April 2026 ,when we flew them, although supposedly it’s in the works to upgrade the 787 fleet to “The Room” which offers a long padded bench-like seating, with lie flat bed and private door for privacy. The 787 also offers a 1 X 2 X 1 configuration with lie-flat bed seating in Business Class like the 777, although it felt a bit more cramped than the 777, and lacked a privacy door.
One positive to the Boeing 787 (as well as the Airbus 350 wide body jets), is the cabin pressure is set at 6,000 feet, vs 8,000 feet on the 777, 747 and virtually all other jets, both narrow and wide body alike. Captain Steve (DOS) explained this provides a more natural and comfortable cabin environment, less fatigue, dehydration and jet lag. Breathing is also better due to the lower pressure altitude. It offers newer LED lighting as well; i.e. mood lighting, and window shades that tint, rather than are physically raised and lowered by the passenger.
Unlike our flight to Tokyo, the Haneda flight was mostly night-time after we were airborne a couple hours, all the way until we landed around 8am in Houston, vs the mostly daytime flight to Tokyo which arrived around 3:30pm. We had nice meal service, and once again I ordered the “Westernized Meal” on the way home.
After the main onboard meal, I watched a movie, The Second Best Marigold Hotel, and then slept for a few hours until a couple hours before landing, where we were served another meal, and abbreviated breakfast of sorts.
I remember waking up at some point during the Haneda flight to Houston, and looked out the window noting the most beautiful RED moon! Wow I thought; it’s too close to the plane to be the planet Mars, but maybe this is how the moon really looks like in the middle of the night from 35,000 feet! After coming to from my sleepy, groggy, senses I remember the windows on the 787 were tinted, and instead of closing via a window shade like on most planes, a button underneath the window adjusts the lightness to darkness of the window tint, thus emulating a closed window from the daylight. I had my window adjusted to the almost closed setting, and with the tint the moon looked red! The picture below was after I started to adjust the window tint to open, which reduced the tint, but when I first observed it the moon was fully “red”! Funny, I know, I amuse my self! 😀 I’m glad I didn’t ask the flight attendant if that was Mars I was looking at! LOL!
We landed at IAH in the morning, and quickly cleared immigration via Face Recognition, and then retrieved our luggage, went thru Customs and re-checked our luggage to Orlando. Luggage retrieval, Immigration, and Customs was very efficient in Houston this trip, unlike a couple years ago coming back from New Zealand, when the lines for Immigration, including Global Entry we used, had almost an hour wait. The IAH International area has obviously been majorly upgraded both in size and technology, in hopes of attracting more international visitors, as well as United expanding its hub presence there.
As we had a 3 hour layover, we had time for lunch in the airport, which was nice and relaxing in the spacious terminal. We lunched at the center part of the terminal which was part of a large bar and restaurant, which was not very busy at 10am.
After lunch we walked to the gate area, but this wing of the IAH terminal is quite odd; unlike any other airports I’ve been to with the exception of Newark Airport, which is also a United hub. Hmmm; must be a United design, but it’s ridiculous and is not practical for customers waiting for their flights, as there is no where to sit! United’s terminal gate configuration has numerous fixed seats (meaning they can’t be moved), but they are arranged around tables with iPad-like devices to order food and drinks from. It’s obviously a revenue grab, but there are no rows of passenger seats to wait for at the gate! While you can sit in those areas, its not real comfortable, and you feel like you should be ordering something by sitting there. It’s a horrible setup for passengers waiting for their flights to board; no handicap seating, and very crowded making it hard to navigate for mobility channeled passengers.
Once we went to board the flight, we were in Group 1 as we were on a domestic First Class flight. Unfortunately, we were pulled out of line when the agent scanned our boarding passes. In a final moment of our trip where nothing had gone wrong, this was our only sign of trouble on our entire Japan trip, and this United flight was our last flight segment to get home. We had to go to see the gate agent to resolve the issue for our flight, where she told us our Codeshare Star Alliance tickets with ANA and United, were not purchased for the United portion of the flight to Orlando! WTF? We had valid boarding passes, had already re-checked out luggage to Orlando on United after clearing Customs, and this lady and the man at the scanning machine are telling us our tickets aren’t valid!🤬
Apparently, according to the United agent, with a code share flight such as ours when there are two carriers involved, ANA Airlines should have sent the actual ticket electronically over to United or attached a paper ticket to our boarding pass. I replied something to the agent like “How the heck are we supposed to know that, and why is that our responsibility!” We’ve flown plenty of Star Alliance codeshare flights before, never having this issue. She basically ignored us and frantically kept typing on her keyboard saying if ANA doesn’t respond before your flight, you’re not getting aboard as we (meaning United) don’t get paid! (This noon flight being the last nonstop flight available for the rest of the day back to MCO, and we were quite tired after a 12 hour plus flight). Steve DOS calms me down a bit, although he was upset too.
United made us feel like we were stow-aways sneaking onto the flight, when we had a paid Business Class ANA and First Class Domestic ticket on United booked and paid months ago, had a written confirmation, had already flown most of the trip, and now are being delayed from getting on their dumpy older 737 jet! It brought back memories of Helen Hayes stowing away to Rome on one of the Airport movies from the 1970’s! LOL! Finally after 20 minutes while meanwhile the whole flight of passengers had boarded, a supervisor comes over and promptly clears up the mess. I don’t know what happened for sure, but my guess is the lady gate agent didn’t do something correctly as he cleared it up right away.
The male supervisor explained that we did nothing wrong, it was a behind-the-scenes glitch. I told him we have another flight back from Australia/New Zealand at the end of the year, also a code share thru IAH on United, and don’t want this to happen again. He said it might happen in fact, which was not very comforting. We made the flight home to Orlando, just barely, but it was a bit embarrassing taking the last two seats in First Class with the flight fully boarded and everyone looking at us after being pulled out of line. Fortunately there was still room in the overhead bins for our carryon luggage which is unusual these days.
This was a major failure on the part of the Star Alliance, ANA, and/or United and should not have happened. We had paper boarding passes from ANA, and also electronic boarding passes from United, yet it still showed us in “their system; ie the agent screen customers don’t have access to” as not being ticketed. (Interpreted to us as, at United the customer is always wrong and you’ll be delayed or miss your flight until we can prove you are right.) And as far as having an actual paper ticket, everything is electronic these days, and we haven’t had a paper ticket (not boarding pass) for over 10 years. So much for the “seamless integration of the Star Alliance partner airlines”. We nearly couldn’t board the flight home because of the airlines “glitch”. To United, even a customer’s written confirmation from UNITED itself means NOTHING! We had paid for the ticket months before and had a written and emailed confirmation! United could sure use some better customer service skills! OK, rant over!😀
Anyway we took our two hour flight back to Orlando, arriving slightly late in the afternoon, but otherwise an uneventful flight, although I drafted a letter to Customer Service on the flight. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency MCO Airport for one night only to rest up a bit, while we had scheduled for our checked luggage to be delivered to our home, which we’ve done before and it’s well worth the cost.
We had dinner at McCoy’s Restaurant at the Hyatt, with a feeling of Déjà vu, as we were there nearly a month ago on the start of our trip to Japan. Our server remembered us, and asked us about our trip! DOS and I discussed our Japan trip between ourselves during the meal, and had an early evening before going to bed.
The next day, we had breakfast, and then Uber’d back to our home, where our luggage was waiting for us on the porch as we requested. It’s been an awesome trip to Japan, and we would recover from it over the next few days. . .
Welcome Home!