Posted by Seth on June 1, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
As crazy as the act of flying for no particular reason other than to collect the miles may be, at least it is reasonably easy to try to explain to people. Elite status and miles to redeem for a reward ticket are relatively easy to explain, even if the other person doesn’t really believe that there is any value in those things. And lots of free drinks and riding in the pointy end of the plane are also relatively well understood. But what about a trip where there aren’t really any miles to be gained, status to be had or – gasp – free drinks on board?? I recently took one such flight and thoroughly loved every minute of it, even with little concrete to gain from the trip.
No miles. No status. Nothing, except the opportunity to fly to a new (to me) airport on a new (to me) airline. And so it was that on a sunny Belizean afternoon I walked to the San Pedro airport (air strip is probably a more accurate description), walked in to the Maya Island Air ticket office and requested a seat on the next available flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker. Fortunately for me the next flight was leaving in a scant 15 minutes. The agent at the counter made a call on the walkie-talkie to the operations center to inform them that an additional stop would be necessary on the flight – my stop. I handed over USD$25 in cash (how often do you buy an airline ticket in cash??), took my boarding pass (a laminated color-coded piece of paper) and waited out on the shaded deck for them to call our departure.
Ten sweaty despite the shade minutes later the “red boarding pass” flight was called and we walked out onto the grass, around one plane and up to the side of our Britten Norman BN-2. What great luck for me! Not just a new line on the map and a new airline, but I also got my first flight on this particular type of airplane. This was just the icing on the cake. We were assigned seats by the airline employee collecting our passes (I think it was by passenger size but I’m really not sure) and a couple minutes later we were flying at 2,500 feet over the reefs of Belize.
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| Looking down, shortly after takeoff from San Pedro |
A boat crossing the flats between the Cayes |
The flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker is all of 13 miles long, a distance that the Britten Norman BN-2 covered in a scant 8 minutes. Actually that seems a bit slow, but neither they nor I were in much of a hurry. The flight and the landing at Caye Caulker were both uneventful and shortly after the plane pulled up to the end of the runway I was out the door and staring at the airport:
Just a hundred yards or so past the end of the runway along a sandy path and I was back on the beach, meandering my way towards the downtown area, and I use the term “downtown” loosely. There are a couple bars and restaurants and a few hotels and guest houses. And that is it. It was incredibly quiet there, which is either really nice or downright spooky, depending on your point of view.
The walk from the airport to downtown took about 20 minutes, just enough time to see what there was to see and head over to the ferry dock where I was able to purchase my return ticket to San Pedro on the local boat service. Another 20 minutes or so on the boat and I was back on Ambergris Caye.
Thus ended my 90 minute “mileage run” that had nothing to do with miles and everything to do with being just plane crazy.
Posted by Seth on April 22, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I’ve had a trip planned for this weekend for a few months now. I knew that I would be going to Florida for the Freddie award ceremony. And I knew that I’d have to stick around until Saturday for another meeting associated with the event. What I didn’t really know were the rest of the details for the trip. And up until early this week I still hadn’t finalized those details. It turns out that the downturn in the economy has opened up at least one major benefit for the traveling public: prices are not spiking very close to the departure date like they used to. This allows customers to delay spending money on a ticket until closer to the actual trip, which is a very good thing for the customer. Of course, it has a negative impact on the merchants.
Airlines in particular are keen to sell tickets as far in advance as possible. They get to sit on the cash until they actually fly you somewhere which is very useful for their balance sheet. Some airlines, such as Continental, actually use that cash as part of the assets used to secure fuel hedges, so the need for that cash in their coffers is very real. But advance bookings are down – a LOT. Folks aren’t buying the seats. And so the prices on many flights are staying low rather than increasing. In fact, the cost for a flight to get home from Tampa next Tuesday actually dropped over the weekend rather than increasing as I expected it to. So by procrastinating I actually saved $20 on that deal, though I did forego collecting the miles on that part of the weekend’s travels. Still, not a bad trade-off to me.
Hotels are the other major group that are struggling with bookings, but the prices there are not reflecting the impact quite as much. Still, some aggressive and educated use of Priceline to bid on hotels can solve that problem very much in the consumer’s favor. I paid about a third of the going rates for the hotel rooms I’ll be staying at during most of the weekend. Not too shabby.
Anyways, the final details of the weekend are pretty entertaining. Over a six day/five night span I’ve four different hotel stays, thirteen flights, five airlines, almost 10,000 miles in the air and somewhere around 30,000 frequent flyer miles earned. Oh, and I’ll also re-qualify for top-tier status on my alternate carrier for next year. That means I’ve hit top tier elite on two airlines this year before the end of April. Oh, and almost all the flights this weekend will be in first class though I only paid for coach on all of them. I even have a day off while in Florida where I’ll probably spend some time diving and relaxing on the beach. Not bad at all.
Posted by Seth on April 10, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I’m not particularly a huge fan of the various ham options. Honey glazed, spiral cut, boneless or bone-in, none of them are really quite my thing. But a trip to HAM seemed like just the way to celebrate Easter in my strange and travel-addled mind. And so it is that I find myself sitting in the Newark Presidents Club, enjoying a glass of wine and preparing to spend 26 hours in Hamburg, Germany.
I’ve managed to book a reasonably cheap room that doesn’t involve sleeping in a plywood box, and I have also found a couple decent online resources for planning a short trip to Hamburg. The best I’ve seen so far is a two-day trip and I think that I can squeeze a lot of that into a single day and then just sleep the whole flight home.
I’m most excited about visiting the Fischmarkt, the weekly Sunday morning fish market that has been operating since 1703. The market kicks into gear between somewhere around 4-5am, and after a long night of partying that seems to be where folks head to grab a nice brunch and one last drink before collapsing in a heap of sleep. In my case that heap will be seat 16A of the flight home, so I just might manage to make it out through the night for the party.
Oh, and the other reason I’m making the trip (as if I really need one) is for the miles. Lots and lots of miles. The double EQM promotion is still running and I’m going to pass a half million lifetime miles on Continental with this trip. Just a few more years of this fun and I get status for life. Good times!
Posted by Seth on February 28, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I made it through the first flight of my fifteen-flight, seven day, 35,000 mile adventure this morning just fine. Thanks to my elite upgrade I was able to enjoy a comfy seat and sleep the majority of the flight, which is a good thing since the 5:30am departure meant a 4am wake-up call this morning. And I was foolish enough to go out drinking in DC with friends and didn’t actually make it to the hotel until ~11:30pm last night. Not a lot of sleep going on there. Good thing I have so much time to nap today to make up for it.
I actually have had the upgrade clear in advance for eleven of the flights, not a bad percentage really. And I’m still holding out a glimmer of hope on the others, but that seems less likely. Plus, I only had to endure a minor amount of mocking from the guy printing out my boarding passes as he looked at my itineraries and tried to figure out exactly where I was going.
And for the folks who don’t believe that the airlines actually really do try to get the bags on to the next flight on a short connection, I just watched them stop moving a plane back from the gate and pop the hatch open to get a couple late bags on. That’s great news for those spring breakers who will actually have their stuff with them when they arrive.
Posted by Seth on February 23, 2009 under Uncategorized |
A few tidbits of news concerning flights to Australia this week, all of them good for the consumer.
First up, V Australia is finally ready to start operations. They were originally supposed to start up a few months ago during the peak southern hemisphere summer season, but thanks to the Boeing strike they couldn’t get their plane delivered in time. But that’s all behind us now, and they have their first 777-300ER fully loaded with three classes of service – business, premium economy and economy – and ready to fly. They are starting service this Thursday, with 3x weekly service between Sydney and Los Angeles. Service will go to daily in a few weeks when they receive their second plane. Additional service between Brisbane and Los Angeles will start in April and Melbourne is coming in September (both also dependant on receiving additional planes).
If that isn’t enough to drive some competition on the USA-Oz routes, Delta’s planned start of service between Los Angeles and Sydney on July 1 is certainly going to do so. Delta is going to be flying with a 777-200LR. The plane certainly has the range, but they only have 276 seats on the plane. A 777-300LR has 75-100 more seats on it, and the 747s that United and Qantas use have close to 400 as well. And then there are the Qantas A380s that are running on the route, with 450 seats and even more cargo capacity. I have no idea how Delta is going to be competitive in such a market. They have fewer seats to spread the fixed costs over and the fixed costs on such a route are VERY high. But the net result remains the same – cheaper prices for customers and now all three alliances will have service between the USA and Oz.
Last up on the this this morning is an interesting report that came out yesterday regarding potential changes in trans-Tasman service. The New Zealand and Australian governments have apparently agreed to streamline the operations for immigration, customs and quarantine for the short hops between their countries. This is apparently expected to help ease the travel experience and, according to some carriers, cut ticket costs by as much as 30% on those routes. From the article:
Quarantine, security and immigration issues have to be addressed to make the route a common border, The Sydney Morning Herald website said.
An Open Skies bilateral agreement is already in place, relaxing the rules for carriers flying between the two countries.
After two years of discussions, Australian and New Zealand Customs are planning trials to clear passengers before they board flights between the countries.
Sure, none of this is as cool as the crazy Los Angeles – Honolulu – San Francisco – Sydney round trip flights for $600 (I really wish I had bought one or two of those), but it is still all great news for folks headed to or from Australia. Oh, and there are still plenty of great deals to be had for flights ex-Sydney, thanks to the V Australia fares. Enjoy.
Posted by Seth on February 21, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I’ve been trying to convince myself of this for the past few days now. It isn’t working and I believe that I will just give up on rationalizing it at this point in favor of celebrating the fact that I’m going to be in Tokyo in a couple weeks.
A couple months ago Southwest was having some fun with sale fares. They were pricing a different city at 50% off each day for about a week. And other carriers were matching those sale prices in markets that they shared. So when I saw that flights between Baltimore and Seattle on Continental were ridiculously cheap (~$137) and could earn me a LOT of miles for each one, I bought a few. I bought three to be precise, on three consecutive days. The plan was basically to just fly all weekend, rack up some miles and relax in the comfy confines of Continental’s 737 fleet. Sure, that’s just a bit crazy, but it is the kind of thing I do from time to time. Besides, I have a few books I’ve been meaning to read. I actually have a 10 hour layover in Seattle next Saturday during which I plan to leave the airport and head up to the Boeing facility for a factory tour. Other than that, however, I plan on being in the Baltimore, Houston and Seattle airports the whole time. Thank goodness they have showers in the Presidents Club in Houston.
And then Continental threw another curve ball out there. For a brief period of time on Wednesday and Thursday of this past week they had a mispriced fare loaded in their systems. Flights from Seattle to Tokyo were <$600 round trip. That is a pretty good deal just on the fare alone, but the kicker in this case is that the fare class they were priced in was actually the second highest coach class Continental offers. That makes upgrades on these fares VERY affordable, assuming the inventory is there. It also means that there are bonus miles to be earned. Just one of these $600 tickets will accrue over 25,000 elite points, enough to make a status level jump. With all the Seattle trips I already had planned I was already going to be qualified for Silver for next year. And one of these Tokyo trips puts me at Gold. Not too shabby a place to be in the first week of March. Oh, and I was already able to clear the upgrade for the outbound flight, so I get to fly at least part of the way in the BusinessFirst cabin.
I actually relayed this schedule to a pilot I know who occasionally flies on the Houston-Seattle runs to see if I might overlap with one of his flights. The response I got was great:
Man, are you twisted? I fly for a living and don’t have an itinerary like THAT!
Yes, I really am just that crazy. I’m flying a hair under 35,000 miles in a span of 7 days, starting next Saturday. And I’m going to Tokyo, because for some reason I believed that it is on the way home from Seattle.
I’ll be in Tokyo for about 50 hours total – a completely ridiculous proposition in many regards. But it should be sufficient time to visit the Tsukiji market a couple times, eat more sushi than I probably should, drink more whiskey than I probably should and get lost in their subway system for a while. Sounds like a great trip to me!
Posted by Seth on December 6, 2008 under Uncategorized |
I seem to find myself in positions where I get to hang out with folks from airlines recently. Last night I was invited as a guest of a guest to a party that Delta was having in NYC for some of their Medallion members. The event was held in the private lounge space at Celsius, the bar set up at The Pond ice skating rink in Bryant Park. The lounge area was very nice, except for the part where the bar was closed for the event itself. Still we had some hot chocolate and mini-dessert tarts and got to talk with a few other Delta frequent fliers and also a number of folks from the marketing group at Delta.
From Delta’s side the party was attended by the new Senior VP for New York as well as a few folks from the marketing department. We talked about a lot of things, some related to Delta, some related to travel and some completely random. I couldn’t convince them that I got a free status comp to Delta Silver Medallion at the beginning of the year, but hopefully they’ll realize that I was telling the truth when they look up my account.
We talked about the SkyMiles program and some of the recent changes with redemption levels. We talked about the segment qualification option coming back next year. We talked about a lot of the new routes to Africa and the high expectations they have for those destinations. We talked about mileage runs to make the next status level and even about fare mistakes and the revenue management group and how they deal with those.
Overall the event was a lot of fun. I don’t really expect I’ll be invited to the next one since I don’t fly Delta all that often, but, as always, it was great to hang out with the folks on the inside and talk shop with them.
Posted by Seth on November 26, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Flights are a bit less crowded these days. At least some of them are. Most surprising to me is that I’ve actually been seeing empty seats in first class cabins. Not a lot of them and there are still plenty of flights where the big seats are all full and a very long wait list exists, but on my trip through Sacramento last week there were actually a number of empty seats in first class both to and from California. That meant I got to take advantage of one of the nice but slightly less useful perks of my elite status: Companion Upgrades.
The concept is pretty simple. If an elite is flying and they have a companion they want to upgrade the companion goes on the waitlist and if the stars align correctly the companion gets to ride up front along with the elite. I’ve used the benefit several times in the past, including to and from Ecuador, Orlando, Jacksonville and Anchorage, but it has been a while. I actually completely forgot about the benefit until I settled into my seat on the flight from Houston to Sacramento and noticed how empty the cabin was. A quick check on Continental’s PDA site confirmed that there were 7 empty seats available up front.
About the same time as I was realizing this I overheard a conversation between another guy flying the same route as me and a flight attendant dead-heading her way back to Sacramento. We all started chatting and I was trying to explain why I would fly across the country and back, via Houston no less, just for fun. She wasn’t understanding it at all. That conversation was rather abruptly cut short when the flight attendant’s cousin boarded the plane. Neither of them knew the other would be on the plane and we had a bit of a family reunion in the middle of the cabin. That also gave me a great opportunity to use a companion upgrade, in this case for a complete stranger. I took the cousin’s boarding pass and made my way off the plane and back up to the ticket counter where I explained to the agent that I wanted to companion upgrade my “friend” who just boarded. About 60 seconds later I was back on the plane with a new boarding pass for the cousin and everyone was happy. And the flight attendant started to understand a little bit why I’d fly a little extra for the benefits.
When we deplaned in Sacramento I looked around the gate area to find someone to do the same thing for on the return flight. As they started boarding the plane I asked a random guy if he wanted to ride in first class. He eventually understood that I was serious so he handed over his boarding pass, happy to trade it for a big comfy seat.
I am pretty sure they both enjoyed the upgrade, and I know I enjoyed the companion upgrade benefit in both cases by being able to share a bit of a better ride with both those random strangers.
Posted by Seth on November 9, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Thanks to United’s liberal airplane swapping policy we ended up without our first class seats on our flights to and from Oklahoma City this weekend. The tickets we bought were instant upgrade seats that technically were coach fares, but we bought them for the first class cabin, not for coach. A bit of prodding this morning at the counter, along with explaining that we really did need to fly OKC – DEN – PDX – SFO – SNA instead of a more direct routing (“business” in Portland), resulted in getting a CR-1 upgrade voucher each. This is my first United upgrade voucher and I’m still not sure exactly how to use it, but I’m looking forward to trying.
The other freebie of the weekend came courtesy of National Car Rental. A few weeks back they loaded a coupon code into their systems that was supposed to be something like a free day – up to $50 – with a three day weekend rental. The problem is that they didn’t actually load the details correctly. The result was that it was just a $50 coupon with no minimums. Once they realized their mistake they went back and cancelled out a lot of the reservations that were made with the code that shouldn’t have been there. For some reason, however, my reservations never got tossed out.
When we showed up at the counter yesterday to pick up the car they guy actually thought it was a mistake and was trying to figure out what was broken in my reservation because it came up as a $0 rental. No taxes, no surcharges, no fees. Just $0. He saw that there was a coupon and eventually handed me the car keys, still somewhat in disbelief. Nineteen miles and about three hours later we returned the car and headed off to the hotel. And it was still $0 for the rental.
Posted by Seth on November 8, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Today was the first day of the truly ridiculous travel schedule. We were up at 5:15 and on our way not too long after that. United has tried to throw off our schedule a couple times so far, but they have yet to succeed.
Incident number one arose when the pilot announced that our arrival into San Francisco this morning would be into the international terminal. That’s great if you’re making an outbound international connection or terminating the trip in San Francisco, but for domestic connections it means a walk to the domestic terminal and going through security again. Not a big deal with a sufficiently padded schedule, but with a 33 minute connection things looked dicey. They didn’t get any better when the agent there decided that my wanting to watch my bag enter the x-ray machine deserved a thorough search of my bag. Still, we arrived in the gate area before they had started boarding so no troubles there.
Incident number two came as we were settling in on the plane. For some reason United decided that we both wanted to change our flights to a more direct routing. They actually came on to the plane to ask us why we were not still going to switch our flights. Suffice it to say that we stuck with the longer routing and are quite happy with that plan.
Flight number four was swapped out for a TED plane, which meant no first class seats. Not really a big deal, as I was pretty much ready to sleep anywhere. But we paid for first class on this trip and they didn’t deliver. Compensation will be coming soon. And it is the same flight tomorrow morning so we’ll have to deal with it again then.
The flying was all pretty good and it reminded me, once again, that earth really is best viewed from 35,000 feet.
We did get to see Oklahoma City a bit, thanks to a free rental car that should never have been. I saw the memorial for the bombing of the federal building. I can only hope that NYC manages something as classy and beautiful when they get around to building the one at the WTC site.
Food was a problem in Oklahoma City. We walked into a few places in the Bricktown district downtown and they all looked pretty bad. A bunch of places were closed, too, which doesn’t bode well for the area. Me eventually found somewhere to eat, but back out by the airport. We really tried, but it just wasn’t happening downtown.
A buffalo art thing in downtown Oklahoma City
Posted by Seth on November 7, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Today was day one of my ridiculous weekend of travel. So far, so good, though there is still time for things to go wrong as I’m only on flight number one. But overall things are good.
I started in NYC this morning and hopped on a bus for the ride down to Philadelphia. It turns out that many flights are much less expensive out of Philly than NYC, so even with a ride to Philly I save money on the flying. Plus, in theory, the chances for upgrades on Continental flights out of Philly are pretty good. But more on that later.
I planned on going to Philly early to meet up with a friend down there and finally have my first real Philly Cheese Steak. I previously wrote about the BoltBus service and this time I took MegaBus, just to compare. They are basically the same and pick up/drop off about the same places at both ends of the trip. On this trip the WiFi did not work, which was annoying, but hardly the end of the world on the quick ride.
So I got to Philly and we headed over to Tony Luke’s for an authentic cheese steak. My order was the same as I’d get anywhere else – provolone with – and, well, it was a good cheese steak. It was not an earth shattering or life changing experience. I actually thought that the meat was a bit dry and bland. But it was pretty good.
After cheese steaks we had a bit of time to kill so we drove down to the end of the Philadelphia runway under the approach path and hung out for an hour or so, snapping shots of the planes coming in to the airport. It was a little too early for the big planes to be coming in from Europe and the grey skies made exposing the shots a bit harder, but I still got a couple decent pictures out of it. Plus, I didn’t get arrested while wandering among the light stanchions that are used to guide the planes in, so that was a bonus.
I thought that I had a decent chance for an upgrade on this flight as my previous flights out of Philly have been easy to upgrade on. Today’s flight, however, could not be farther from that experience. There were about 40 people on the waitlist, and I was in the high teens or low twenties; I stopped checking as it was depressing me. So I’m sitting in my exit row seat and planning my next move.
The layover in Houston gives me about 2.5 hours of time to hit up the Presidents Club with a couple buddies and do what I can to make up for the lack of drinking on thin flight before heading off to my onward connection, where I will also be sitting in coach.
More to come tomorrow as I zigzag my way across the west coast, from The Cowboy (John Wayne Airport) to actual cowboys (Oklahoma City).
