Posted by Seth on July 28, 2011 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, News | 
I was quite disappointed when JetBlue announced earlier this year that their wildly successful All You Can Jet program would not be returning this year. The company has apparently not left the "unlimited" flight coupon game completely, however. They announced today are offering BluePass, a three month unlimited flight ticket, with a few limitations.
Most significantly, the pass is targeted at residents of Boston or Long Beach. Each flight must be either to or from those airports, depending on which pass you purchase. Open jaw, circle trips and multi-destination trips are prohibited. This significantly limits the flexibility of the pass relative to the AYCJ passes of the past two years. That said, connecting itineraries are permitted so there are quite a number of interesting routes that can be flown with the unlimited pass.
There are "select" passes available to a limited number of destinations (13 ex-BOS, 9 ex-LGB) or a "full" pass that permits service to all airports in the route network from Boston. The price for the passes are $1299 for the LGB limited pass, $1499 for the BOS limited pass and $1999 for the BOS unlimited pass. Taxes for international destinations are extra.
The passes are valid for travel between August 22 and November 22, 2011. Limited destinations for LGB are: LAS, OAK, SFO, SMF, SLC, PDX, SEA, AUS and ORD. Limited destinations for BOS are: JFK, EWR, BWI, BUF, DCA, IAD, RIC, PIT, RDU, CLT, ORD, BDA, and JAX.
The limitations of only one trip per day and originating or terminating in Boston certainly make this deal a bit harder to call an immediate win given my base in New York City. Were I based in Boston the purchase would already be made. Still, it is quite tempting. I’ll mostly be spending the next few hours trying to figure out if the route map out of Boston is interesting enough and if connecting flights will be permissible such that I can get real value from the deal.
Hopefully they don’t sell out before I figure it out for myself.
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Posted by Seth on June 20, 2011 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, News |
As part of their announcement this morning that the All You Can Jet promotion would not be returning for 2011 JetBlue offered up a 15% off discount to help soften the blow. This discount is valid for all travelers and can be used as often as you want, so long as you book by 21 June 2011. Book online at JetBlue.com and use the code FRIENDS11.
The discount is only valid for travel during the "normal" AYCJ period which is 6 September – 5 October this year. Still, if you’re flying then anyways this is a pretty good deal. Happy Jetting, even if it isn’t unlimited.
**Offer ends 6/21/11 (11:59 PM ET). Valid only for flights purchased on jetblue.com/promo. Code (case-sensitive) is valid toward newly-booked travel; cannot be combined with other offers; not redeemable for cash, but is transferable. Valid for 15% off r/t base fare for travel from any JetBlue city to any JetBlue city from 09/06/2011 to 10/05/2011. Travel must originate in the United States. If travel changed/cancelled after 06/21/11, discount is forfeited and fare differential plus $100 change/cancel fee per person applied. Cancellations are for JetBlue travel credit only, valid for one year. If reservation is not changed/canceled prior to scheduled departure, all money associated with reservation is forfeited. All fares must be purchased at time of reservation, and are oneway, and nontransferable. JetBlue reserves the right to deny boarding to passengers without proper documentation. Other restrictions apply; see jetblue.com/about/legal/legal.asp.
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Posted by Seth on June 20, 2011 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, News |
In an announcement just emailed to previous All You Can Jet participants, JetBlue indicated that the AYCJ program will not be returning for 2011.
Dear Wandering Aramean,
Thank you for being a part of our All-You-Can-Jet program. We hope you enjoyed flying anywhere you liked, as often as you liked!
We’ve been fielding a lot of questions about our plans for the AYCJ program. As a member of the AYCJ community we wanted you to be the first to know that we will not be offering this program in 2011.
Even though we are not offering AYCJ in 2011, we still want you to enjoy a discount this fall. As a special thank you, please enjoy this single-use Promo Code: for 30% off* your next roundtrip flight on JetBlue this fall. This offer is valid for one-time use and can be used for you and up to 6 friends on the same itinerary. Plus – here’s a special 15% off** Promo Code for you to share with your friends and family.
JetBlue strives to create fun, flexible and affordable ways for our customers to travel. Please stay tuned for bigger and more exciting promotions to come!
We look forward to welcoming you onboard soon.
Thank you for your loyalty,
Martin St. George
SVP Marketing and Commercial Strategy
Twitter: @martysg
This is a sad day in many ways. Not that it is horribly surprising – load factors are up along with fuel prices – but still sad. I had a blast the past two years, flying tens of thousands of miles at pennies on the dollar and making some great friends along the way.
Now to start planning other adventures in September and October.
Posted by Seth on September 30, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
The effects of the AYCJ experience on the human body can be debilitating. Three weeks in – and I’m actually being somewhat conservative in my flight scheduling, with stops in hotels and at home every now and then – and I am beat. Wandering through JFK T5 on Wednesday morning I felt a lot like this guy. I was actually rather jealous that he had some extra time to lie down and sleep.
Alas, no nap time for me on the floor of the terminal. I was off to fly again. I needed to get to Washington, DC eventually on Wednesday in advance of my trip to Wyoming on Thursday. I had previously purchased a MegaBus ticket for $1.50 but that was before I got the All You Can Jet pass. And since the flights were free why not take a couple more. Also, I’m continuing in my quest to get to all the JetBlue airports on JetBlue rather than on any carrier. And I’d never flown from Boston to Baltimore. Add all that up and I had my new plan: JFK-BOS-BWI.
Yes, that’s very much the long way to get from New York to Washington. And it was made longer by the fact that the MARC train frequencies from BWI into Washington’s Union Station suck, even at rush hour. Still, I got my new line and a couple good flights and I even snuck in a quick nap on the BOS-BWI flight.
Plus I got a couple more photos for my collection of the earth from above.
Most amazing to me is that, even though I have 3 more days of AYCJ time unaccounted for, I am actually considering not booking any more flights. Part of that is because I have a decent amount of work that I need to get done and I have not been doing as much as I should have during these travels. But the other part is simply because I’m tired. If feels strange to say it, but I may have actually found my limit in terms of what is a reasonable level of travel for me. Apparently it is somewhere before I am doing multiple domestic redeyes in any single week. I think that’s probably a reasonable place to draw the line.
Posted by Seth on September 28, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Quick trip down to RDU on the books for my AYCJ adventures this week. I showed up at the airport like normal, about an hour before departure. Through the security at JFK T5 reasonably quickly and then confronted with my most hated morning sight in the JetBlue terminal: the line for Dunkin. I want a donut for breakfast but I refuse to wait in a longer line than I did to clear TSA for that.
Lacking that I headed back out into the food court area and up onto the high-rise platform. Somewhat engrossed in my laptop I was startled when someone plopped down at the seat right across from me at the table. Hey there, Morgan! No more than 5 minutes later another friend dropped by and joined us at the table.
Chatting about travel, itineraries and the AirTran/Southwest merger was fun but it got better when the two folks at the other end of the table that we were sharing with them piped up that they were also on the AYCJ pass.
I’m always amazed how easy and enjoyable it is to make friends and meet people in airports. When the chances are high that you already know someone there it is even easier.
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Posted by Seth on September 26, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Today’s AYCJ trip was perhaps the silliest of all for me – and that’s saying something. I took a flight out to Nantucket (ACK) and back just an hour later solely for being able to say that I flew to or from that airport. Why? Because it means that I’ve now flown to every domestic airport that JetBlue serves.
Yeah, I collect airports like some people collect stamps or coins or whatever else it is that people collect. And today I picked up the last dot on the USA that I needed for my JetBlue collection to be complete when I touched down in Nantucket.
By my count there are currently 43 domestic destinations served by JetBlue. I’ve flown to or from 30 of those destinations on JetBlue; the other 13 I’ve hit on other airlines. Maybe that’s cheating the stats a bit, but I am going to pick up at least 2 more of those 13 this coming week and maybe a couple more next week as the All You Can Jet adventure wraps up this year plus another a couple weeks hence.
I’m nowhere close to flying all the routes that the airline offers and there are still many international destinations that I need to get to. And I’ll try to get to the few missing on JetBlue at some point. Still, I’m happy to have reached this milestone. Oh, and the two new domestic stations coming online later this year – BDL and DCA – I have already flown through so I’m covered for a bit there.
I tried to write a limerick to celebrate this milestone, but my efforts proved rather futile. I think we’re all better off for that.
In other AYCJ news today, I actually got yelled at (as did several other passengers) by the gate agents in Nantucket for not boarding the flight quickly enough. Apparently they decided that the “Boarding Time” on our boarding passes was when the plane should be closed up and ready to depart, not when boarding should start. They actually started the boarding before the inbound flight was even scheduled to arrive. That we then closed up and taxied out to the end of the runway where we waited for our departure slot into JFK – which came right when it was supposed to assuming an on-time boarding – without functional LiveTV on the plane is a whole different issue.
Read more of my All You Can Jet adventures here.
Posted by Seth on September 26, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
JetBlue might not have quite as extensive of an international route map as some other legacy network carriers, but I still managed to get to the Orient using my All You Can Jet pass. Orient Beach, that is.
Located on the French side of St. Martin, Orient Beach is a small town with a couple miles of white sand, a few dozen hotels and merchants and crystal-clear blue water as far as the eye can see. The town also has a number of restaurants in it, all within walking distance, so I was able to find some good food even though my rental car was broken and i had to disconnect the battery overnight to turn off the horn that was sounding incessantly. It is off-season in St. Martin right now so many of the shops and restaurants are either closed or running on limited hours but overall there was still enough to see and do and eat to keep me going.
After a morning walk the length of the beach – and passing plenty of naked old dudes having their morning constitutional as well – I settled in on a beach chair at La Playa, adjacent to L’Hoste Hotel where I was staying. I saw about a dozen people total over the next two hours which was just fine with me. A bit of quiet reading and relaxing time was quite enjoyable given my flight patterns the past couple weeks.
And then it was back to the Dutch side of the island and making my way back towards the airport. I drove through Phillipsburg and across the southern edge of the island as I made my way back towards Maho beach. Phillipsburg has a lovely beach of its own and plenty of hotels, as well as being a somewhat developed section of the island with grocery stores, shopping and industrial areas.
I returned the car early and headed to the airport to grab my boarding pass before a bit more plane-spotting at Maho beach. The line was completely ridiculous, however, three hours before departure so I made the 10 minute walk to the beach without having checked in first and figured I’d just hope for the best. It was worth it as just moments after I arrived at the beach – literally I dropped my bags in the sand to grab these shots – an Air Carribes A330, F-ORLY, arrived from Paris. What a beauty.
After that a couple US Airways planes – an A320 and a B757 – came in.
And then the real moment of truth for this day, the Air France A340-300 arriving from Paris.
Now it was only 1:40 prior to my flight’s scheduled departure so I bid adieu to my AYCJ pals I was plane-spotting with and hoofed it back to the airport. No line at check-in which was great. I also learned why I had been unable to complete online check-in. I got SSSS’d. Seriously. That hasn’t happened to me in 5+ years. I was shocked. Even the guy working the counter couldn’t figure it out.
The crazy part is that apparently it didn’t matter. No one checked anything special throughout the immigration or security screening process. They didn’t even check my boarding pass as I went through the metal detectors. At the gate the same agent took my ticket and asked me to make sure I had my bag inspected by the rent-a-goons they had performing “random” secondary screenings in the jetway area.
I probably could have just walked past that without trouble but I was curious to see just how thorough my screening would be. Not very. The buy didn’t make it more than 2 layers down into one of my two bags before waving me on. Don’t get me wrong – I think most of the “security” crap today is, well, crap – but they barely even tried here even after I was apparently flagged for some reason.
Off to seat 12A and a nice, smooth flight back up to New York City. A bit of a nap and a bit of screaming from the baby next to me, plus the lap child he was holding, and I made it safe and sound. Just another day in the Jetting life.
Posted by Seth on September 24, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
“Oh, you again.”
Probably not the way most folks want to be greeted when boarding a plane. For me this morning, however, it was just another JetBlue flight attendant who I had previously had the pleasure of flying with during the All You Can Jet month and one who remembered me. Good to see you again, too, Michael.
This is also my first AYCJ flight where I’ve been acutely aware of just how many others on the pass are on the flight. There were a number of AYCJ conversations going on in the cabin during boarding. Hearing “Where else have you been?” is a pretty good indicator on that front. The flight attendants took a quick poll just prior to departure, asking all the AYCJ folks to raise their hand. I counted roughly 20. A solid showing.
A bunch of us chatted during and after the flight about going to watch the planes land at Maho Beach but there was nothing definitive. At the rental car office the couple sitting behind me happened to show up on the shuttle after mine. We all started chatting with the guy behind the counter about plane spotting and I mentioned that the KLM MD-11 was due in about an hour hence. The other couple was nearly as excited as I was (he was much more than she) and we drove over to Sunset Bar, had a couple Carib beers and watched the planes land.
It. Was. Awesome!
I also confirmed that an Air France A340 is due in tomorrow afternoon shortly before my flight leaves so I’ll be back at the bar to catch that arrival, too.
I’m staying on the French side of the island, right on Orient Bay Beach. Quite nice, though it is clearly off-season and a bit quiet. That’s actually probably a good thing for me.This was sunset from the bar on the beach:
Yeah…life doesn’t particularly suck at all right now.
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.
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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.
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Posted by Seth on September 21, 2010 under All You Can Jet, AYCJ, Trip Reports |
Getting to a meeting in Seattle shouldn’t be too hard. Thanks to the JetBlue All You Can Jet pass I managed to schedule a meeting that otherwise likely would not have happened so I’m pretty excited about that. Any opportunity I have to help share the knowledge of frequent flyer programs’ inner workings and the myriad of ways to calculate the value of the points I see as a great thing. But I also needed to actually figure out how I’d get to Seattle for the meeting.
Sure, there is the option of the non-stop JFK-Seattle but that’s not really very creative. There’s a flight via Boston but I have not had a ton of luck with those so far this month. And then there’s the Dulles – Long Beach – Portland – Amtrak option. Yeah, that’s right up my alley.
For no particular reason I’ve always wanted to ride the Amtrak line between Seattle and Portland. I tried to schedule it during AYCJ last year but I couldn’t get a flight out of Seattle. This year I managed to get that seat so I booked the train, too. I even splurged and spent the extra $15 for the business class seat. After all, I’m on my way to a meeting. Actually, I did it to avoid potential lines at the station in Portland in the morning. 
Turns out there were no lines but I did get a great seat – a solo on the double side of the train so there was plenty of room to spread out and work. I also got a great recommendation for breakfast from Jerry, the Amtrak guy at the counter. Turns out that the post office across the street from the train station has a cafe on the 4th floor that is open to the public and that serves up pretty good, cheap food. I put my Voodoo donuts aside, had the chicken-fried steak and then headed back down to board the train.
We pulled out right on time and I was then treated to some phenomenal views as we rolled north towards Seattle. The train ride was smooth, on time and mostly uneventful, other than the fact that the cafe car apparently didn’t receive the correct catering so they did not have breakfast available. They responded by offering up everything they did have for free which was a nice touch. At the second stop en route they finally got some of the catering resolved: a delivery of fried chicken showed up on the train. Needless to say, the announcement of “Last call for free chicken in the cafe car” made over the PA system was rather entertaining.
The portion of the ride around Olympia was probably the most scenic section of the ride but the whole thing was pretty impressive.
And then it was off to the meetings (more on that later) and back to the airport for my first AYCJ trip to the Caribbean. I’m flying three new lines today, from Seattle to Long Beach to Ft. Lauderdale to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It is a beautiful day for flying.
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