I’m in Washington D.C. this weekend.  In lieu of as-I-go hotel reports, I offer up an ad from the U.S. Mint on the DC Metro:

Sadly, the Mint killed off the credit card-based direct ship program recently; otherwise, I would be happy to use $1 coins.

Last month, JetBlue announced they wouldn’t have another All You Can Jet promotion.  It’s been revived in the form of BluePass which offers “unlimited” travel to/from either Boston or Long Beach, CA, depending on the plan selected.  To refresh memories, the All You Can Jet terms are still available.

Pricing’s a bit steeper, but it is good for travel for three months rather than one.  “Boston All” comes in at $1999, “Boston Select” at $1499, and “Long Beach Select” at $1299.  Travel must touch the city named in the package.  The Select plans restrict which cities can be flown on the plan.  Unlike AYCJ, bookings can be done up to 90 minutes before departure and there are no change and cancellation fees.

United’s A320 painted in its “Friendship Livery” pulled up right before we pushed back for our IAD-DEN leg two weeks ago.

Boeing sent one of its 787’s, ZA004 with tail number N7874 down to Albuquerque.

Since Congress failed to reauthorize the FAA at midnight, many of the taxes on airfare have been suspended. 

There’s been an opportunity for airlines to try raising their fares.  Virgin America is calling attention to the tax holiday with a sale and  United’s fares seem relatively unscathed.

In lieu of another trip this weekend, I offer a picture of the Sandia Mountains from last week’s trip.

The tram ride up the mountain was billed as a “flight,” but I doubt I’ll be earning my elite minimums with United Airlines for the trip.

Rather than adopt a photography is a crime attitude, Albuquerque Sunport has a few areas setup for plane spotting.

The North area has a covered picnic bench in the shape of a plane.

The cover for the garbage can is in the shape of a helicopter.

The North viewing area is close to the end of the A concourse, making it well-suited to seeing Southwest’s planes come and go.

After a long string of stories about the program, the U.S. Mint has finally stopped taking orders for its dollar coin direct ship program paid by credit card.

It’s too bad as I was planning on quickly finishing up the spending requirements on my new credit cards.

To kick off completing my three stays under the Visa Signature promotion, I stayed at a Hilton for my trip to New Mexico.

American Airlines announced their order for 460 new planes, 260 from Airbus and 200 from Boeing, this morning to modernize its domestic fleet.  This weekend, I had the “joy” of riding in two MD-82’s slated to be replaced by these new planes.

Once you’ve seen the legroom of one American Airlines exit row, you’ve likely seen them all.

I cleared as a standby on both of my segments to get out to Albuquerque.  Both flights were nearly full in economy but had plenty of seats available in first.  While I declined to take an earlier flight as a standby to try to get denied boarding compensation instead with Continental, I’m reasonably confident my chances of scoring a bump on my originally ticketed flights wasn’t that great.  If worse came to worse, the gate agents could have started operationally upgrading passengers to first.

The entrance lobby features a 1914 Ingram/Foster Biplane in its atrium.

In March, Jeff Smisek of United Airlines was mum about upcoming changes to United’s Mileage Plus and Continental’s OnePass programs.  United launched its “Mileage Plus Explorer” card.

As far as benefits go, it mostly resembles the legacy OnePass Plus card that I recently applied for to grab a 50k bonus mile sign-up while it lasts.  The headline benefits are a “40k” bonus mile sign-up bonus, a free checked bag, priority boarding, and two United Club passes a year.  To actually obtain the “40k,” one has to add an additional authorized user to the account (for 5k miles) and hit $25k in spending in a calendar year (for 10k miles).  With targeted 50k mile sign-up bonuses floating around for both the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature and the Continental OnePass Plus cards, the effectively 25k sign-up bonus is meager.

As a United 1P, I can already check three seventy pound bags for free and I get to board over the red–soon to be blue–carpet.  Like the OnePass Plus card, the card extends upgrade benefits for elites on domestic award tickets.  That said, since my miles are already destined for international travel in premium cabins, I’m unlikely to use this perk.  In terms of mileage earning, it’s a step-down from the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature card with its 3 miles (and 1EQM) per $1 spent with United, 2 miles per dollar for Star Alliance and “every day” purchases, and 1 mile per dollar for everything else.

What’s more telling of the changes to Mileage Plus to come is an official company representative’s post made on FlyerTalk.  Standard awards are being eliminated for those Mileage Plus members without the card or elite status.  While the standard awards can often be horrible values, especially for domestic travel, they at least give options to Mileage Plus members.

Someone at work was looking to get to Europe later this summer and asked my advice for how I find cheap fares.  I pointed out ITA in addition to my paid ExpertFlyer account.  A quick search later turned up an Air France -marketed, Delta-operated flight that was significantly below the prices they had seen elsewhere.

They went ahead with booking, but overlooked that it was a Delta-operated rather than Air France-operated flight.  Coincidentally, The Cranky Flier had a piece about the downsides of codeshares for passengers.  I’m not that thrilled by them either.  As United and Continental merge, I’m frequently placing bookings from one carrier operated by the other.  Even as flight numbers shift around, the two haven’t been brought in line with each other.  UA1 is a flight from Sao Paulo to Houston right now and CO1 is a flight from Houston to Guam via Honolulu.

I’ve been busy with other posts up until now and I’m going on another trip this weekend, so it’s time to post a few photos from my stay at the Sheraton Sunnyvale.   The stay rounded out three stays under the stay three times, get a night free promotion that ends at the end of the month.

Courtesy of a match over from Hilton, I’m currently at the midtier with SPG.  When I asked about whether I could receive an upgraded room for having status, the front desk clerk declined to do so.  The second desk clerk pulled up my reservation and informed me that I had an interior-facing room rather than an exterior one (facing part of the near by expressway).

It’s an often repeated mantra on Flyer Talk.  For a brief bit today, JetBlue was offering $4-5 fares (each way, all-inclusive) for their one-day only LGB-BUR service in “celebration” of Carmageddon (Hat Tip: The Wandering Aramean).

I already have travel plans for this weekend, so I hesitated as I thought about how I’d get from there to Los Angeles and back in time to pick up the rest of my itinerary.  For deals like this (where most of the value comes from the entertainment value), I really should have booked without thinking first.  Worst case, I’d be out $16 (all four of the one-ways).  Best case, I’d have a good story to tell.

It’s worth remembering that “new” DOT regulations require:

Requiring airlines to allow reservations to be held at the quoted fare without payment, or cancelled without penalty, for at least 24 hours after the reservation is made, if the reservation is made one week or more prior to a flight’s departure date.

While I’d be less concerned about getting my $16 back from JetBlue (and since it’s 3 days out, it’s ineligible anyways), but it’s certainly a way of choosing to book first and ask questions later when good deals come up.  AA offers a 24 hour free hold (with upsell opportunities to extend it longer for a few dollars) and United/Continental offer 24 hour refundability.

AA sent me a link to their email “Appraiser,” which offers bonus miles for subscribing to various email lists.  My address appraised for 2k miles after being offered signups for mailing lists I thought I was already on.  If the miles clear, I won’t complain too loudly.

A discussion on FlyerTalk suggests that it’s accessible from a non-targeted link.

Hat Tip:  Mooper on FlyerTalk.

To get back to New York, I traveled along SJC-LAX-JFK.  Once again, booking myself onto the p.s. redeye to New York.

United leaves SJC-LAX service to SkyWest.

Having noticed that my p.s. flight was looking a bit empty a week out, I chose to upgrade to business class with miles.  While award tickets to Europe would constitute a better redemption value, the p.s. economy to business class is one of the few values for domestic redemptions available.  Since I was in a T fare, the upgrade required 20k miles with the $75 copay waived for being an elite on United.  In contrast, the fully paid upgrade offer made a week out was for $375, giving me a 1.875 cent per mile redemption value.

Ordinarily, domestic passengers do not have complimentary access to airport lounges operated by the US-based carriers.  That said, p.s. business class passengers get access to the RCC at their departing airport and first class passengers the First Class lounge.  With a roughly three hour layover at LAX, I stopped by the RCC to take a look.

I seated myself near the windows and had a view of gate 70A and most of Terminal 8’s gates:

Back at SJC, my flight looked overbooked so I got added to the volunteer list there and headed to the gate to wait for the agent to arrive an hour before departure.

Volunteers weren’t needed for the flight, so I took my assigned seat as ticketed:  5B.  (The other emergency exit row on p.s., row 9 of business class was unavailable when my upgrade cleared.)

The redeye served a snack choice of either a fruit and cheese plate or a cold chicken sandwich.  I opted for the cheese plate:

The only inconvenience on my return segments was check-in.  Since I used my miles to explicitly upgrade for the p.s. segment rather than the entire direction of travel, risking burning 20k miles to only clear for a 45 minute long, regional jet flight rather than p.s., I could not check-in online.  Even as an elite, I had to spend about an hour on the phone with United Web Support the morning of my flight, first on hold, then waiting while they diagnosed the problem, and ultimately, until they realized they had to remove me from the UDU list for SJC-LAX, allow me to check-in, and then restore me to the SJC-LAX upgrade list.  Reservations with UA/CO seem surprisingly fragile.  Due to how my standby and volunteer listing went for my IAH-LAS segment on Memorial Day weekend, Continental’s agents had to spend longer processing my Same-Day flight change.

Around 3AM Eastern, my upgrade for my DEN-SJC segment cleared 11 hours in advance.

Seat selection didn’t happen until I got to JFK in the morning due to some computer glitch, so I wound up in 1F.

In contrast to my memory of 1F on an A320 for a LAX-ORD redeye, this seat came with a small cutout in the bulkhead to improve the legroom a bit.

Our predeparture beverage choices were water and orange juice:

Our just over two hour flight came with lunch service, opened by warm nuts:

Since my upgrade cleared only 11 hours out before the flight, I couldn’t place a vegetarian meal request by the 24 hour cut off.  I ended up having the mushroom soup being served with the normal catering’s choices of chicken sandwiches and turkey salads and a snack box from economy as my lunch.

The audio jacks in seats 1EF weren’t working, so I didn’t have the chance to catch Channel 9.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty good short-haul flight.  The purser stayed attentive to the small first class cabin.

In the movie Up in the Air, Ryan Bingham describes the rewards that come with accumulating 10 million American Airlines miles.  As in the movie, American counts all mileage for lifetime status purposes including elite bonuses and credit card miles, at least for now.  Yesterday, Tom Stuker put the finishing touches on flying 10 million butt-in-seat miles with United Airlines.

United named another plane after him.  Previously, N770UA, a Boeing 777-222 was painted with “Thomas R. Stuker, Customer.”

From Dulles, I trekked to Denver.  With a scheduled departure time of 8:38AM from the C concourse, I didn’t have time to stop by the Lufthansa lounge in the B concourse as it is scheduled to open at 8:20AM.

Even with a 767-300’s thirty first class seats early on a Saturday morning,  I finished in the top ten of the waitlist for first class upgrades.  If it’s any consolation as a 1P, the 1K next to me in the exit row didn’t clear either.

Our 767-300 was still in the old United “Battleship Grey” livery:

I’m traveling to San Jose today out of New York Kennedy, stopping by Washington Dulles and Denver along the way.  JFK is a relatively small base for United, compared to even New York LaGuardia let alone Continental’s Newark fortress.  p.s. flights to LAX and SFO fly out of here, along with small regional jets–like the one I’m on today–traveling back and forth from Dulles.

While demand for extensive premium seating justifies United’s p.s., American’s Flagship, and Delta’s BusinessElite flights between New York, I haven’t quite placed my finger on this flight’s niche.  There’s international Star Alliance flights to catch from JFK and a vast swath of United destinations out of IAD. Judging by the number of passengers presenting passports while boarding, my speculation probably isn’t idle.

18 hours out from my departure, ExpertFlyer was showing “Y0” for all of these JFK-IAD flights today.  A full fare, one-way economy ticket runs $877, but with no full fare inventory remaining, United is not even willing to gamble that it might have to bump someone.  Yesterday’s New York weather waiver probably didn’t help.

At check-in, I added my name to the volunteer list as the flight was, in fact, overbooked.  At the gate, they were checked-in even but asked me to wait around a bit more.  For a passenger wanting a bump off a small regional jet, hearing gate agents count up the number of checked and carry-on bags about to go on the plane is music to his ears.  Smaller planes are prone to weight and balance issues, requiring the airline to send the plane out with empty seats. While these sorts of issues don’t require compensation to be given, United tends to do so for the sake of good customer service.

They ended up not needing my seat so I took my flight as scheduled.  As far as viable reroutings go out of JFK, there were a few p.s. flights to the West Coast with only business and first class seats left:  Not a bad way to get to my destination in addition to some travel credits in-hand had I gotten bumped.

The CRJ200 exit row seat even came with a palatable amount of leg room given the short duration of the flight:

Our CRJ200 at IAD:

Cathay Pacific is holding a giveaway and sweepstakes with the opening of their Chicago to Hong Kong route.  Each week, the first 25 users to click through will have the chance to purchase a round trip for $100.  There’s also a sweepstakes for a free roundtrip as well mentioned in the full rules.

Hat Tip: The Points Guy.

To get back to New York, I booked the United p.s. LAX-JFK redeye flight in economy.

For my previous four bookings on this particular flight in its various incarnations as UA82, UA691, and now UA599, United was looking for volunteers to be bumped.  Of those three oversold flights, I’ve taken the offers twice and been upgraded to business class once.  This time around, they were actually clearing the standby list.

When I noticed a bulkhead aisle seat open up, I grabbed it.

United bills its p.s. economy section as “Economy Plus.”  A quick glance at Seatguru shows that the pitch on these seats is only 34” for United p.s. 757-200’s compared to the 36” for mainline United 757-200’s.   The bulkhead row has a bit more legroom, perhaps even a bit more than the bulkhead in United’s A320 first class.

A week prior, clicking through on United’s “upgrade to premium seating” offer actually showed a price ($375) to upgrade to business class.  Amongst United’s premium domestic cabins, p.s. is the only one which has ever tempted me to upgrade, even with miles.  Nonetheless, I declined and chose to gamble on being bumped and rerouted onto an itinerary eligible for a complimentary upgrade to first class.  Apparently similar reasoning went through the rest of the cabin, as we departed with empty seats in business class.  Similarly, my flight out on American also had empty seats in business class.

Like the balance struck by charging for standby, upgrades are similar.  As a midtier elite on American, I’m not eligible for automatic upgrades; United excludes p.s. flights from automatic domestic upgrades for its elite members.   Denying free upgrades to passengers, even with space available nominally preserves the value of upgrading in advance.  Why pay to upgrade when one can wait it out and gamble on getting an upgrade right before departure?  If the price were a bit lower, I’d likely jump on it.

Otherwise expensive summer airfares ended up being on sale for the Fourth of July weekend.  Yesterday, I took another American Airlines flight from JFK to LAX.

I was originally booked on AA33, the 7:45AM departure to LAX, but I managed to get to the airport early enough to see that there were open seats for AA201, the 6:30AM departure.  I handed the gate agent my original boarding pass and she added me to the standby list, where, due to a combination of status and my original check-in time for my actual flight, I bubbled up in front of 17 other standby passengers.  While milling about the gate area, I snapped off a few photos of Terminal 8.

I milled around the gate area and cleared at the start of Group 3’s boarding into the exit row.

Standby policies have always intrigued me.  When I was in college, I routinely flew between MDW and LAX on Southwest.  Same-day standby with Southwest requires buying up to an Anytime fare.   Since standing around a crowded gate area for an hour was generally better than paying $100-200 to leave earlier, I never took Southwest up on a standby offer.  For non-elites, American charges $50 and United $75 for unconfirmed standby.  When I was flying in college, my view was that I was a liability to the airline until they got me to my destination.  If they could get me out of the airport sooner, I would be one fewer passenger to rebook if a flight got canceled.