Flight check: Denver to Los Angeles with United Airlines

Photo / Paul Sullivan

Oliver Pelling flies UA1613 from Colorado to California.

The plane: Boeing 737-900.

Class: Economy. Though arguably, when you're 6ft 5 and refuse to pay United's standard $200 USD for an emergency exit row, you're in a class lower than Economy.

My seat: 26D.

Price: You can get on this for $167 one way.

On time: It was, until it wasn't. We took off as scheduled but had to turn around midway to Los Angeles because of a"funny smell" coming from the cabin area (it wasn't me). We arrived back on the tarmac in Denver surrounded by fire trucks and paramedics. We sat in Denver airport for two hours waiting for a new plane. We eventually arrived in LA just in time for me to miss my connection to Melbourne. I'm still not sure what the funny smell was. Theories circulated the cabin faster than farts. One guy said he heard a pop when we took off and thought it was a small bomb. Another said someone spilled some chemicals. A third contested it was an electrical fire. All told, it was a thrilling affair.

How full: 100 per cent, and with a few cases of morbid obesity, we'll call it a soft 146 per cent.

Fellow passengers: Fine, until the bit where we had to turn around and they all started whinging.

Entertainment: Listening to my fellow passengers offer their two cents on the "ignorant" United staff was a great font of amusement. It's amazing how many members of the general public become instant experts on how to deal with airline mishaps when something goes wrong. "Why didn't they do this?" "Why didn't they do that?" I guess we'll never know, suckers.

Service: Good, but I felt the hostess who served me lacked a certain salt-of-the-earth characteristic that really makes me feel comfortable when I'm 30,000ft above the ground. You know?

Food and drink: I had a nice bag of pretzels. They reminded me of myself, all twisted up in seat 26D.

Toilets: Akin to a small and nice hotel toilet. The flush, however, was a somewhat over-aggressive, as if it felt it had something to prove.

Airport experience: First time: good. I got a cheesy jalapeno pretzel. Second time: not so good, though the chargers under the airport chairs enabled me to charge my iPad and watch I'm Alan Partridge.

Would I fly it again? Without the delays, why not?