United Airlines offers a number of departures daily from LAX using the 777, but this is the only domestic one. Flight 950 leaves shortly before 8 every morning for Washington Dulles, with continuing service to Brussels, using a short-range 3-class 777.

This aircraft, the third Boeing 777 off the assembly line, is very special to me. She first took to the skies on 2 August 1994, under registration N7773, as part of the Boeing 777 certification program, and that was the day I visited the Boeing Everett factory. Later on, on 9 December 1999, she was the exact aircraft that greeted me at Schiphol Airport after a week of nightmare in sexist, homophobic Amsterdam; listening to Melissa Etheridge as the United inflight programming on my way home was such a relief that day. This is my first time sighting this aircraft since leaving Amsterdam - one day short of the 12th anniversary of that moment.

The Amsterdam experience is the key reason why United has been my favorite airline ever since.

N771UA continued to soldier on in badly decayed Battleship Gray paint until early 2011, when she gained the current Continental Disco Ball livery seen here.

"Fly the Lesbian-Friendly Skies"