Index
Day 1 - Inaugural
Day 2 - Arrival
Day 3 - Lanzarote
Day 4 - Island hopping
Day 5 - Island hopping
Day 6 - Tenerife
Day 7 - Return
Canary Islands
The usual live music and local foods marked the Newark to Tenerife inaugural flight celebrations. Probably some speeches too, but as usual my inbound flight was slightly delayed to EWR, then was delayed even longer on the ground at EWR while ground crews worked furiously to repair a pothole (!) in the tarmac, so I missed out on all that.
The purser, Jarl, was a Canary Islands native from many years ago who was super stoked to be able to work the inaugural flight, and three pilots (aka the return flight crew for two days later) were onboard in business, with the return flight attendants in economy, so quite a few United employees on board-- which to be fair, seems to be common on a lot of these point-to-point international flights. As the only (as of this writing) non-stop from the United States to the Canary Islands, many passengers seemed excited as well, even if most did not realize it was the inaugural.
The old 757's they use on ~6.5 hour EWR-TFS route are definitely showing their age, but at least the new Away-branded amenity kits are kind of nice. Far nicer than the seats, which are definitely getting pretty worn up front. The usual inaugural swag-- printed flyer, second smaller printed flyer/menu, pin, pajama top as well. Also got standard Polaris slippers, pajamas, and they did offer mattress pads too (but not to me, wtf?). Food was the "improved" Polaris food. Printed menu, warm nuts, the turbot was a definite improvement but still a little weird with the cauliflower-broccolini croquettes), and a pre-made ice cream sundae.