Hong Kong
With United 821 arriving yesterday evening, managed to get a decent sleep at home before heading back to the airport for the last flight of 2025. LAX was surprisingly not as busy as it was three days ago, was able to get an actual table at the Polaris Lounge to eat, and unlike my United 152 three days ago, this LAX-HKG crew was actually happy to have an #AVgeek aboard. Quite cool to talk to pilots Ron, Trevor, Dave, and Benjamin before departure, and get some of their perspective as pilots on the recently changed LAX-HKG-BKK/LAX-HKG-SGN routes; have gotten a bunch of perspective on that from the flight attendants, but from the pilots is more rare, and hence, much appreciated.
As this flight was a very last minute addition to my schedule, decided to mix it up and try out another one of the special meals that were just updated (good summary at Live and Let's Fly) for December. Turns out the "balanced diet" meal is pretty meh, at least out of LAX. Way too much yogurt in the appetizers, and while the chicken is more healthy than the normal chicken served in business class, it's not as tasty. Not the worst choice per se but definitely not a great one for flavor.