So I just flew TPA to JFK on Delta and had an interesting flight. It was uneventful for the most part, although there were a few things, both positive and negative, that make it worth mentioning. First the negative. Before boarding I decided to take my camera bag out of my carry-on because I knew I wanted to use it during the flight, and since I was in the bulkhead it made sense to me. I go to board and am down the jetway, when the gate agent chases me. She says “Sir, can you do me a favor?” I responded with “Let me guess, consolidate?” She said “yes, please do.” I realize she was only enforcing “FAA regulations,” but I nonetheless decided to explain to her that I just took it out of my bag a minute ago because I’m in the bulkhead and wanted to speed up boarding as we had a late departure. “Sorry sir, you’re limited to two carry-on bags,” she responded. She asked me to step to the side as I placed my camera back into my carry-on, and waited for her to “approve.” Eventually her colleague said “those are big carry-on bags, but I think you’ll be ok.” If any of you are going to chastise me, please don’t tell me they would get fined.

They were nice enough about it so I wasn’t really holding a grudge. And ultimately the outcome was good, unlike a flight I had a while back where my carry-on was legitimately too big but I didn’t want to check my bag, so I decided to “layer” my clothing (on me) to save carry-on space, if you know what I mean. I ultimately won, much to the agent’s chagrin.

Once onboard there were no pre-departure beverages due to the late departure, but the flight attendant in first class was exceptionally friendly. As the door was about to close there were still two empty first class seats. A lady came up from coach as the gate agent was about to close the door and indicated she was on the upgrade waitlist. The gate agent responded “first class is full.” Before the lady could respond the gate agent shut the door. Now that’s pathetic.

The most notable thing about the flight has to be the exceptionally obnoxious people around me. I had an empty seat next to me, which you’d think would translate to a pleasant, relaxing flight, but no. Seated across from me was a lady with a baby and she couldn’t care less about taking care of her. Not only that, but the baby decided to stink up the cabin shortly after takeoff while the seatbelt sign remained on for about 45 minutes. Absolutely deadly fumes. Wonderful. Seated diagonally from me were two people that wouldn’t shut up. And seated behind me was a lady that wouldn’t stop bugging her seatmate. The guy had the patience of a saint, pretending to be interested in every word she said. She was a rich Czech lady that loved all the “bargains” she could find in Tampa, like $300 jeans that would be $500 in Italy!

To top it all off, we got in about 30 minutes early. Well, I should say we made it to the apron 30 minutes early. Then we waited and waited and waited. Eventually we started moving and I thought we were in luck, but as it turned out we were just going to a remote gate. Seriously, a remote gate on a domestic flight? This is the first time in my life I’ve had to get on a bus in order to deplane a domestic flight.

Of course now things are looking up with Club World London City in a few hours….

People in front of me up the escalator here at TPA:

Person 1: “So what is it, like an eight hour time change for us today?”
Person 2: “No, it’s actually a three hour change for California.

Wow….

It’s time for a reader photo. Thanks to Megan for sending in this one.

Correct Answer: Qaqortaq, Greenland
Winner: Udi

If you’d like your photo featured, please email it to me at onemileatatime@hotmail.com, along with the correct answer.

Well, it’s official. Continental is now a part of the Star Alliance, and within minutes of the clock ticking midnight in Houston FlyerTalk’s CO Insider posted some details. They’re all worth a read, but here are some of the highlights:

Expanded lounge access for Presidents Club members. Presidents Club members and up to two guests will now have access to United Airlines Red Carpet Clubs and US Airways Clubs without any same-day ticket requirement.

This is definitely the biggest news. I was expecting this, although it’s nice to finally see it confirmed. I would expect the same reciprocal lounge access to be the case for United Red Carpet Club members, although I haven’t seen confirmation of that yet.

Qantas partnership to end. Many of you saw this coming, and the date has been set. Continental’s OnePass partnership with Qantas will end on December 17, 2009. After this date, OnePass reward redemption and mileage earning on Qantas will no longer be offered.

Nothing shocking there, and not that this is a huge loss since the “devaluation” a while back.

Three partners not yet ready for redemption. There are three Star Alliance members that we will not have redemption capability on day one. They are: SWISS, EgyptAir and Shanghai Airlines. We expect SWISS and EgyptAir to be available for reward redemption by early/mid-November. Shanghai Airlines will likely take longer.

This is interesting. Not sure whether they still have contracts to work out or it’s a technological limitation, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

Remember that Delta/Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis that overshot the airport by, oh, about 150 miles? Well, the story just got weirder. I totally expected them to have been asleep, but check out the latest news on the topic:

Instead, Cole and Cheney told investigators that they both had their laptops out while the first officer, who had more experience with scheduling, instructed the captain on monthly flight crew scheduling. The pilots were out of communication with air traffic controllers and their airline for more than an hour and didn’t realize their mistake until contacted by a flight attendant, the board said.

I’m trying my best to wrap my head around this. Let’s be honest, pilots “cheat,” but at the same time the rules are meant to be broken. Many times they’re talking when the cockpit is supposed to be “sterile,” while other times they no doubt use their laptops during flights. But how can two pilots with a combined total of over 30,000 hours of experience forget to do their jobs for over an hour while they’re fully awake?!?

I want to believe it, but I just can’t. There’s gotta be more to this….

Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoy international travel in premium cabins, but at the same time the more you fly, the more the novelty wears off. Nowadays most of my international travel is in first class, so business class isn’t usually anything to get excited over…. except for my upcoming trip!

Tomorrow night I’ll be flying British Airways’ new Club World London City service into London City Airport. What’s so exciting about it? Well, I’ll be crossing the ocean in an Airbus 318 with only 32 business class seats. What makes this especially exciting for me, as an airplane geek, are the flight numbers. The two Club World London City flights operating between New York JFK and London City are BA002 and BA004, while the flights from London City to New York JFK are BA001 and BA003. Yes, those are the same flight numbers that British Airways used for the Concorde. And for me there’s just something really exciting about that.

Beyond that I’ve never been to London before, so I’m thrilled to be able to spend a couple of days exploring a new city. And to top it all off, it looks like I’m bringing Florida weather with me, with temperatures well above 50F and no rain in the forecast. You’re welcome, London.

Up until yesterday I thought I had seen it all when it comes to itineraries with issues. While we’d like to think that codeshare flights and alliances translate to a smooth travel experience, that often isn’t the case.

Take yesterday, for example. I received an email from a reader that was flying roundtrip in a couple of months from a city (we’ll call it XYZ) to IAD via ORD both ways. He booked all the segments as US Airways codeshare flights, but all the segments were on United metal. So the itinerary looked like this:

XYZ-ORD-IAD-ORD-XYZ.

Make sense?

So what was the issue? Well, everything looked good on US Airways’ website, but his issue was that the United website wasn’t displaying the first segment of his trip, XYZ-ORD. All other segments showed as normal. Kudos to him for being so vigilant.

At first I assumed it was a united.com glitch, and I would have just left it at that had the segment been on US Airways, but since the segment was on United as a US Airways codeshare, I decided to give United a call. At first they told me everything looked fine with the itinerary.

I asked them specifically about the first segment, XYZ-ORD, and they said that they didn’t see him booked on that flight. After looking at the schedule it was apparent that there was a schedule change on the itinerary. This flight had changed flight numbers and was now leaving about 20 minutes earlier. No big deal, right? Well, the agent told me they sent that information over to US Airways about two weeks ago, but US Airways never accepted the changes and reissued the tickets. I said, “well it’s clear that there was a communication gap between United and US Airways, so can you go ahead and reconfirm him on that flight?” The response was “Sorry sir, this flight is actually sold out now.”

This is where it always gets fun. On one hand I feel bad being overly-l0gical to the agent because it isn’t their fault, but at the same time I secretly enjoy breaking it down as far as possible so that they can explain to me how such a thing can happen. So at that point, our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Well, then maybe you could open up space for him.”
Agent: “Unfortunately we’re not able to do that, the flight is sold out.”
Me: “This is clearly an issue between United and US Airways. What exactly could he have done differently? Thank God he checked his itinerary, because no one else notified him.”
Agent: “I understand sir, but this is US Airways’ fault.”
Me: “But that’s outside of his control. You choose to work with US Airways both as a codeshare partner and Star Alliance partner, so this is something the airlines should sort out between them. He’s essentially being involuntarily denied boarding two months out here.”
Agent: “Sir, we’d be glad to put him on any other flight, even on a different day.”

At this point I decided to leave it as is and advise him of the situation. Maybe he could benefit from a date change.

But I’m sorry, I’ve dealt with so many itineraries, and this is the downright strangest thing I’ve ever seen. And yes, I’ve seen a lot of strange things, from being denied boarding on Singapore Airlines because United didn’t reissue a ticket correctly to a plethora of other things. What made this particularly egregious is the fact that the flight was sold out, and we’re two months out! So a huge mistake was made, totally outside of this guy’s control, and worst of all they’re claiming they can’t fix it.

Hopefully he’ll get a good resolution to the issue….

Join us for episode 42 of the Upgrd Podcast, as we’re joined by listener Mark to discuss US Airways, along with this week’s news.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but haven’t gotten around to it until now. For hotel award reservations after January 14, 2010, Hilton has increased the number of points required for virtually every hotel. It’s not just a straightforward points increase, but instead they’ve created a new category of hotels, category 7. Apparently every hotel will move up one category (and opportunity hotels will move to category 1), making every hotel one category more expensive.

So what are the practical implications of this? A category 6 hotel, which would consist of Conrad hotels and the really nice Hilton hotels, used to be 40,000 points per night. Now those hotels will move to category 7, or 50,000 points per night. That’s a 25% increase! You can find all the details here.

C’mon now Hilton, this really isn’t smart. I expect across the board moderate devaluations of miles/points once the economy recovers, but this isn’t the time to increase award costs. Hotel rates are substantially down, occupancy levels are low, yet you’re going to charge even more points? That doesn’t make sense!

I have about 300,000 Hilton points I need to burn, so I guess it’s time to start thinking about where I want to go.

I know, I didn’t think such a thing existed either. I’m used to flying United, where upgrade space often isn’t released till at the gate. I’ve been on 757 flights (24 first class seats) with only three seats assigned, yet United decides to hold back all the upgrade space till the gate. As if 21 people are going to buy last minute tickets.

Then there’s the other extreme, Delta. I’m flying them next Tuesday from Tampa to New York. I was happy to see my upgrade cleared on Wednesday (a full six days out), but was shocked to see that after the Platinum upgrades were cleared, there was only one seat remaining for sale. As of this morning, first class is sold out.

As an upgrader that books far in advance I love this, but this can’t be good for Delta’s bottom line, can it? For the next four days no one could buy a first class seat for any amount of money….