Posted by Seth on April 19, 2012 under News | 
As part of their bankruptcy restructuring American Airlines will be closing four Admiral’s Club locations, the company has announced. The closings are happening reasonably quickly – one at the end of June and three at the end of July – and in three of the four locations there is not a partner lounge alternative on offer.
The lounge in Panama City, Panama will be closing at the end of June. With only four daily departures, all on 737-800s, apparently the necessary volume of premium customers to justify the cost of maintaining the facility wasn’t there. United Airlines and Copa jointly operate a lounge in Panama City still but that isn’t affiliated with American or its partners. No word yet on whether premium cabin passengers will be invited to use that lounge but it seems unlikely.
The July closings include the lounges at Dulles, Kansas City and Santo Domingo. Similar to Panama City, the flight frequencies do not appear to support the lounges. At Dulles there is still a British Airways Terraces Lounge so passengers can take advantage of those facilities. Santa Domingo has a lounge operated by oneworld partner Iberia which should be able to handle some overflow of customers, depending on operating hours. American currently operates the only lounge in Kansas City so there are no other options for passengers looking for such a facility.
On top of the announcement of the closing of a call center in Tucson this is not a particularly positive week for the AMR workforce.
Posted by Seth on January 3, 2011 under Trip Reports |
It is now the new year, with new goals and new milestones on the horizon. But not too late to take a quick look back at 2010 and the travel milestones I hit during the year. Not surprisingly, the more I travel the harder it is to reach new and different accomplishments. Indeed, 2010 had many fewer than 2009, though in a couple categories it surpassed the previous year.
Perhaps the most significant numbers of the year are the total amount of time in the air:
- 151 segments
- 208378 miles
- 18 days 13:31
Those numbers are “butt-in-seat” and based on the distances between the starting and ending airport as calculated on www.openflights.org. They do not include 500 mile minimums or the like. In most cases the durations are based on wheels up to wheels down as tracked by the appropriate authorities, not the block time of the flight or estimates. The 208K miles is the most ever for me in a calendar year as is the 151 segments.
Of the 151 segments flown, more than half (86, to be precise) were routes I had not flown previously. It is certainly becoming more and more difficult to find new ways to get to different places but I continue to try. New lines and new dots are still of value to me and I’m finding that I’m paying a bit more to get them.
I also passed through 77 airports during the year located in 18 different countries. I actually Immigrated 31 different times, including the various times I returned to the United States. On four of my trips there were multiple foreign countries involved.
I visited 15 distinct countries, plus the USA. Eight of those countries (St. Maarten, Sint Martin, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Togo, Guyana, Morocco and Tunisia) were new to me. Two of the crossings (into Togo and back into Ghana were on foot while the Sint Martin/St. Maarten crossing were by car; The others were all by plane. I also added a new state visited – Idaho – to my list even though I drove over from Spokane to get there rather than flying in.
My travels included flying on 24 different airlines (possibly a few more if regional/express carriers are included by I’m not great at tracking those). Of those 24, 13 were airlines I had not previously flown on (AC, AT, BA, BD, BE, HA, LC, RW, SN, TGY, VS, YV & YX). Again, it is getting much harder to find new ones at reasonable prices but I’m doing my best, including a couple booked for the early part of 2011.
None of my milestones north, south, east or west were new extremes for me this year. Nor was my longest flight (SYD-SFO) longer than previous records. I did get a new shortest flight for my list, one that will almost certainly never be broken.
Somewhat amazingly, of the 151 flights I only had three instances where I was struck by operations so irregular that they caused a missed flight. One of them – during my JetBlue AYCJ adventures wasn’t a big deal and I got back on track without really missing anything along the way. Two others – a US Airways delay out of Belgium and a Royal Air Maroc fiasco in Casablanca – caused me to overnight unexpectedly. The US Air incident wasn’t so bad but the Air Maroc one was pretty awful.
Finally, I managed to pick up five new aircraft types during the year. My favorite was probably the smallest, the Cessna 208 Caravan I, though the
| Saab SF340 was fun, too, and the Embraer 175LR was the best ride of them all.
And I got robbed once where the guy took money directly from my hands and probably a couple more times due to bad negotiating skills in markets. At least I robbed the guy who physically took the cash out of my hand back. |
And while I sit on the airplane now, enjoying a flight from Lufthansa into Frankfurt and on to Munich, I realize that I may only be three days into the new year but I’ve already got a new line for my map and tomorrow will bring another one, along with a rubber duckie souvenir. Not a bad way to start the year.
Related Posts:
Tags: Air Canada, bmi, British Airways, Brussels, Dominican Republic, Embraer, FlyBE, Flying, Ghana, Guyana, LoganAir, Lufthansa, Morocco, Togo, Tunisia, Virgin Atlantic
Posted by Seth on September 23, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Wander around the square outside the cathedral the Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo for more than a couple minutes and the layers of touts become quickly apparent. They even go so far as to wear appropriate uniforms depending on exactly what they’re shilling for. The guys in pink are all selling tchotkes, for example. On the plus side, that does make them rather easy to identify and avoid.
One of the groups working the square is a collection of volunteer guides (blue shirts), willing to show tourists around for “free.” Even knowing that it was not really free, I decided to take Manuel up on his offer to walk me around the Zona for an hour. Odd are he knew more about what I should be looking for and I was too lazy to do any research of my own. Besides, while my walkabout yesterday was pleasant enough, I really had no idea what I was looking at.
So we set off together to explore the oldest city in the Americas. Because of Santo Domingo’s position as the oldest city it has many other “oldest” designations as well. Oldest cathedral? Yeah, we got that. Oldest hospital? We saw that, too. Oldest stone house and oldest military installation were covered, too.
The cathedral is actually quite impressive. The cornerstone was laid in the 1520s and construction was completed in the 1540s. They’ve done a fantastic job of maintaining the interior of the facility. Other parts are more recent – the bell tower is from the 1600s – but still quite impressive.
The exterior of the cathedral tells the history of the island as well. There are statues and carvings that reflect a few different European occupations of the area. Some are original and some are replicas, such as the six stone works that replaced bronze statues melted down to make cannon balls at one point.
We wandered over to a couple old homes from the early days. Many have been restored in one form or another. The original tax collector in town had quite a nice setup for his living arrangements; it is now a children’s museum. The original representative of the royal court was rich enough to have his own chapel adjacent to his home. That has been restored into an art gallery. Others are hotels or government offices.
There was also a stop in to the building housing the eternal flame honoring great Dominicans that have honored the country in some way. From past presidents to the pair of women responsible for writing the national anthem, there are scores of honorees in the building and an honor guard keeping an eye out for all of them.
The ceiling of the facility was to me even more interesting than the memorial at ground level. There was a large chandelier that was a gift from General Franco (I think; Manuel was very excited and talking very quickly at this point) and also a pretty awesome painting representing life and death.
Wandering a bit further up towards Place d’España we saw a replica of a pretty cool sundial – two faces for telling time in the morning and afternoon – as well as a wedding party taking some photos. Both rather cool scenes.
And then a trip to the shopping street. Typical process of showing the process first – in this case stones being polished for jewelry – and then the shop next door selling the wares. It is good to know that some things truly are the same the world over.
And then my hour was up. I set the deadline, not the guide, and I think he was just as happy to have me out of his hair. He again reminded me that he was a volunteer and that I was welcome to pay him a small sum as a thanks for the tour I received. Apparently my idea of a small donation and his were rather different.
Maybe it wasn’t really a “proper” tour in the truest sense of the word. Still, I managed to see a bunch of things that I probably would not have otherwise. All in all a pretty good deal. Definitely better than being in one of the groups of 30 I watched being marched from gift shop to gift shop around the square later in the afternoon.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on September 22, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
I’m reclining, cabana style, on the roof top deck of my hotel in the Colonial District of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and I’m honestly not entirely sure how I got here. I’ve got a couple ice cold Presidente beers on the table next to me, a full moon overhead and a gentle breeze blowing in from the water that I can see just a couple hundred yards away. Life in All You Can Jet world is not so bad.
The morning started entirely too early. The redeye flight from Long Beach to Ft. Lauderdale was only 4.5 hours long, dropping us on the east coast way too early in the morning. Fortunately the wait for the flight to Santo Domingo passed uneventfully and the flight itself was only half full. For reasons I still do not understand most of the passengers crammed themselves into the front half of the plane. The guy in front of me was about to take the window seat where the middle and aisle were already occupied. I told him to take my assigned seat one row forward and made my way tot the back of the plane where I had my choice of a dozen beds ready to go. A touch under two hours later I awoke to the pilot announcing final approach into Santo Domingo. Lie-flat coach seating really can be quite wonderful.
A broken down taxi and a couple frantic emails and phone calls and then an easy ride into town followed the flight. I was shown in to one of the cutest hotels I’ve ever seen: Coco Boutique Hotel. There are only four rooms and mine is not particularly large, but the spacious lobby area and the beautiful roof deck more than make up for that. It also happens to be located just off the edge of the Colonial District, one of the best neighborhoods for exploring and dining.
After a bit of work in the morning it was off to explore the city. The Colonial District is a great mix of old and new. From forts and churches dating back hundreds of years to reasonably modern facades decorated with beautiful iron works, the neighborhood is a 
great place to wander around for a few hours and enjoy the vibe of the people radiating out into the streets. I only caught a brief glimpse today; I’ll be back out on the streets again tomorrow for more of it, but the whole area has a very relaxed, easy-going feel to it.
The city seems to thrive very much on a sense of community rather than individuality. There is not a whole lot of privacy in town. Windows and doors are left open and folks are living their lives essentially in full view of their neighbors. Folks sit out in the parks and on the corners relaxing and otherwise whiling away the day rather than cooped up inside their homes, shut out from the world around them. It is quite different and quite pleasant all at once.
The old/new juxtaposition exists in more than just the architecture around town. It seems that many of the businesses in the Colonial District are print shops. I have no idea why, but there is a whole lot of paper and a number of presses in the area. And these are old school printing presses. Some looked like mimeograph machines that I remember from the early 80s. Yet they were chugging away, producing whatever it was that they had been hired to create. Maybe old, but certainly still quite functional.
I was wandering around town when it started to rain a bit. Nothing major; just a typical afternoon shower blowing through. But that forced me inside for lunch. I might be able to find the restaurant again if I tried but I actually walked past it in the rain before turning around and going back in to seek shelter and sustenance. The food was delicious, plentiful and rather inexpensive. For roughly $4 I got a tray full of beef, beans, rice, salad and a soda.
Dinner was similarly delicious, though a bit more expensive. I ended up at Mesón de Luis and was enjoying my Presidente when Luis stopped over to say hi. That’s always enjoyable. The fact that I barely understood anything he said before he switched to English wasn’t too big a deal either.
I was hesitant to commit to the Santo Domingo visit on my AYCJ pass. I didn’t know that it would be worth the $126.80 in taxes (and an extra $10 at immigration for a tourist card that is shredded about 30 second after you purchase it; exact change is greatly appreciated) that the trip would cost. Now that I’m here, relaxing on the roof top under the light of the full moon, I cannot believe I ever considered not making the visit. Definitely a cool place and worth coming back to, particularly if I can time it for the winter baseball leagues and try to smuggle a couple decent ball players back to New York City for the Mets.
Related Posts:
