I have been traveling. I will post an article on my recent travel soon. I did write some on the flights, but the posts are still in outline form. Got some work to do. In the meanwhile, the world did not stop and things have been going on in the past few days. Here are a few tidbits.
1. Lufthansa shares its seating layout for the 747-8i:
Lufthansa is the first airline to fly the Boeing 747-8i. It will be referred to as the 74H in the 3-character mode of referring to …

As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, I just redeemed 480,000 United miles for four business class tickets to India. My mileage balance has now fallen below 200,000 miles. This has left a deep desire in my mind to ramp up some miles! With the large balance I had, I had started taking it easy and had been focussed on other programs and credit cards with points like Chase Sapphire. It is back to getting UNited miles now.
Here is what I have been doing:
Applied for the new United MileagePlus® …

United has been beaten up bad on its absolutely pathetic boarding process. Just the sheer number of comments I got on my last post on this topic (32 at the time of writing this) is telling. They have turned what used to be an orderly and efficient boarding process into a cattle call, where the only way you did not get boarded ‘first’ was if you did not have a United MileagePlus number.
Well, they seem to have noticed that we hate it. In an email I got today that was …

British Airways has gone wild! They are giving us multiple opportunities to hoard up on Avios. I already have over 155,000 Avios in my household account and am loving these promotions they are running to get my Avios total way way up. Here are a few I found:
British Airways Visa Signature Card® offer for 100,000 Avios!
British Airways has brought back its 100,000 Avios credit card from Chase. I blogged about this credit card offer in my post here. This is a great offer – 100,000 Avios for $20,000 spend in …

By no way does this mean that a merger is sure to happen, but the unions of bankrupt American Airlines have decided to support a potential merger with US Airways. US Airways’ CEO has been hinting on a possible merger for some time now. The unions are backing this because AA is in trouble. As it went into bankruptcy, they announced 13,000 job cuts! A merger with US Airways could be a path to safety for AA.
US Airways itself came to be in its current form thru a merger. The …

Yes, it has happened! As I had predicted in my last post, BMI has announced that in parallel with it’s exit from Star Alliance, it will allow for BMI Diamond Club Destination miles to be transferred to British Airways Executive Club Avios and vice versa. While the two programs have not been merged, they are now equal partners. BA is also reciprocating status between the two programs and allowing privileges like lounge access to each others Elite members. Full OneWorld membership is coming soon too, for sure.
The official date of …

Jetblue (B6) and Japan Airlines (JL) reached a codeshare agreement for 21 US destinations from B6’s stronghold cities of New York and Boston. JAL had direct flights from both cities to Tokyo. The codeshare strengthens the interline agreement that they had established in February.
 
It is interesting to note that none of the 21 destinations are currently served directly by JAL’s Oneworld partner American Airlines (AA). That is not surprising given the strong ties B6 has with AA. Last November, AA announced the ability to each AA miles on select B6 …

The Space Shuttle Discovery’s arrival to Washington DC yesterday was an event of a lifetime. It was what it was hyped up to be. This blog itself got more hits on my last two posts on the Shuttle’s arrival, than my entire number of hits on all my other posts so far this month combined. (Read my earlier posts – Space Shuttle Discovery flies into Dulles and Live Blog from the Shuttle arrival).
My personal experience in trying to spot the shuttle was not as good. First I got stuck in …

7:30 AM:
Starting my live blog. I will be posting updates here all day. So keep refreshing this page. I am also posting updates on Twitter, so keep an eye there.
Wheels up: The Shuttle flight has lifted off. NASA posted this picture of the shuttle flight taking off from Florida. ETA in DC – 10AM.
8:18AM: Getting ready to head to the airport. Still deciding where to go. The two main choices are: Air & Space Museum parking lot or Dulles airport Daily LOt #1. The airport lot will probably give a …

As I have blogged before, I have accumulated over a million miles over the years. I have collected these miles by flying, with credit cards and lots of free miles from various sources. I actually have never flown more than 60,000 miles in a any year (I am the ‘unroadwarrior’, after all). Most years I barely fly 35,000 to 40,000 in a typical year. Accumulating these miles took several years. So, redeeming 480,000 of them in just one go was painful.

I redeemed the miles for four seats in business class …