With all the whining concerning United’s Starnet Blocking, their insidious practice of blocking partner award travel seats when booking with Mileage Plus miles, one can usually find their desired seats and routings – eventually. Unfortunately, as well, sometimes it’s not Starnet causing problems – it’s good ol’ fashioned lack of award availability. For my upcoming Eastern Europe and Iraq trip, I’m very happy and appreciative of the route I have now – but, greedily, would like two more changes made to the itinerary before I depart. Yes, I fully concede these changes border on nitpicking, and greedy clamoring of someone booking with award miles (why is it the entitlement always inflates when we book first class awards essentially for free and when we have our truly hard earned miles as currency) – but, man – these two desired changes have become a smoldering campfire in my mind – omnipresent, and guaranteed to elicit a few resentful thoughts when I head through the airport and see my desired flights on the departure monitor.

The first leg of my journey takes me from New York (JFK) to Washington, Dulles (IAD), where I pick up my connecting flight to Frankfurt (FRA). At this point, I have about a six hour layover in IAD. While I could certainly kill a few hours at Dulles, there are only so many rides on the mobile lounges, walks to remote terminals, drink chit runs, and consuming pieces of cheesecake in the Lufthansa Senator lounge I can stand before astonishing boredom sets in, and I want to head into Washington, D.C. to see my dear old friend Matt to have lunch. Dulles, unfortunately, has no convenient connections into the city (it’s a long bus ride to some Metro station in Virginia with any option one chooses), and therefore, wanted to change my first flight to a US Airways Shuttle flight from La Guardia (LGA) to Washington, National (DCA). I’ve always wanted to try the US Airways Shuttle (guaranteed to make you feel like you’re somebody on a business trip), and DCA is the airport with perhaps the most convenient connections to a city in the world (except for Tashkent, Uzbekistan). And, despite repeated calls to United, there exists no availability from LGA to DCA at any time during the day, on my day of departure. I guess I’ll be humping it to Falls Church or to Rosslyn if I want to head into the city. Not a terrible inconvenience, yes, but one that certainly would curtail my time inside the city.

Perhaps even more irritating have been my searches for Swiss Air flight 14 from Zurich (ZRH) to JFK. Currently, I am booked on flight 16, which departs at 9.55am. I’ll be arriving on an early morning flight from Vienna, that, as of now, only allows for an hour connection in ZRH. Flight 16, as well, is the old Swiss Air first class configuration, which, while I am wont not to complain, I would certainly like to try the new configuration offered on flight 14. I would also like more than a rushed hour trying the Swiss ground services at Zurich, as well. Of course, I have been calling every day for perhaps the last month, and Swiss 14 has absolutely no award availability, in any class, on that day. I’m hoping some will pop up even a few days before departure (believe me – I’ll keep calling), but as of right now, it looks like a very rushed stay in ZRH.

Again, gripe as I may, I’m still very happy to be able to do some traveling in just about a week.