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They weren’t cleaned during the flight, but I didn’t observe any waiting lines since the plane wasn’t very full.

The restrooms had tissues, paper towels and hand sanitizer, but no other special features or products and their sinks were positively tiny, as is typical with how most airlines have equipped this particular aircraft.

United Airlines economy-class amenities

Pretty much the sole “soft” amenity United economy passengers can expect is a thin, plastic-wrapped blanket.

There are no seatback screens on this plane, and no headphones or pillows were handed out.

In general, this plane doesn’t have Wi-Fi because of the route over the ocean. Even though you can’t connect to the internet, you can still access United’s entertainment through the app.

Alaska Airlines is the only carrier to offer Wi-Fi on all its flights to Hawaii. However, the legacy carriers, which generally operate longer routes, offer Wi-Fi on their wide-body flights to Hawaii.

You could still access offline features on unitedwifi.com and the United app, which had 195 movies, including “A Man Called Otto,” “Avatar” and “Life of Pi.” There were also plenty of TV shows such as “Law & Order” and “The Office.”

There’s no way to track the flight once you lose Wi-Fi. It was a small pet peeve, but I like watching the map and counting down the minutes to arrival onscreen.

How was the food in United Airlines economy class?

United does not serve complimentary meal service on its routes from the West Coast to Hawaii, but it does offer passengers three free snack choices. You can select between a dark chocolate quinoa crisp, a savory snack mix and a “That’s It” mango and apple fruit bar. I tried the bite-sized quinoa crisp and fruit bar, which while pleasant in taste, are completely unsuitable for satisfying hunger. There are also several menu items available for purchase.

Around 20 minutes after takeoff, the flight attendants came by with a meal and beverage cart. Nonalcoholic beverages, including water, soda and coffee, are included for all passengers. Premier 1K members are entitled to a complimentary alcoholic beverage and a buy-on-board food option.

If you plan to purchase food or drinks onboard, you can tap your credit card on the flight attendant’s payment device. Alternatively, you can save your credit card to the United app. You can also scan your PayPal QR code, but the flight attendants can’t swipe your card, accept a chip-based credit card or receive cash. There were three buy-on-board meal choices available on my flight: a cheese and fruit tray ($8), a peach bacon barbecue burger ($10) and a mezze rigatoni with cacio e pepe in a chili sauce (also $10).

There were also three snack boxes (between $8 and $10) and four snacks (like Pringles and barbecue jerky) for purchase.

While Premier 1K members ordinarily receive a single paid food selection from the meal cart for free, the generous flight attendant offered me the cheese tray meal, an additional snack box and watermelon gummies at no charge. This isn’t customary, but the flight attendant seemed to be in a joyful mood and wanted to share the celebratory spirit of excited passengers bound for Hawaii. I particularly enjoyed the cheese tray, which had three types of cheeses, fresh grapes, fig preserves and crackers. The Takeoff snack box had beef salami, dried apricots, salted almonds and several salty spreads.

Around 90 minutes before landing, the flight attendants came through with a second beverage service. Upon the conclusion of both services, they were quick to collect trash from passengers.

My few interactions with the crew were all positive. They graciously expressed their interest in making everyone’s flight as pleasant as possible and passed through the cabin between the two beverage services with trays of water.

Final impressions

Descending into the sunset over Kona, my flight on United Airlines economy from San Francisco to Kona felt perfectly acceptable, though I was eager to reconnect my phone to the internet and see what I’d missed in five-plus hours.