Japan Airlines 60
Osaka Kansai (KIX) - Los Angeles (LAX)
Tuesday, May 31st, 2016
Depart:  5:25PM
Arrive: 11:25AM
Duration:  10 hours minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 787-846 (JA-826J)
Seat: 9D (Business Class)

Like our outbound flight to Japan, we were on a similarly configured 787 back to the United States.  Unlike the outbound flight, the business class cabin was full nor did we have free chocolates courtesy of meal vouchers to offer to the flight crew.

The menu read as follows:

The vegetarian dinner:

The Japanese dinner:

Overall the meal service was quite slow, and the situation made worse by keeping the cabin lights on for an extended period of time.

The flight attendants also stopped by with cookies during the service.  Overall, perhaps due to the cabin being full, service seemed worse than on our outbound flight.  We didn’t get refills of the water we were drinking during our meal courses.

Between the long dinner service and the seemingly early arrival lunch, the flight ended up offering a disappointing amount of sleep for what one might expect.

JAL operates its 787 with angled lie-flat business class seats from LA to Osaka.

Due to our flight delay, we had been given two $20 meal vouchers at check-in.  However, due to the free food at the lounge, we decided to buy a box of chocolates in the terminal to give to the crew.

Overall, service was impeccable, whether due to the half-empty cabin or our gift at the beginning of the flight.

Japan Airlines 69
Los Angeles (LAX) – Osaka Kansai (KIX)
Friday, May 27th, 2016
Depart:  4:33PM
Arrive: 8:39PM
Duration:  8 hours, 40 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 787-847 (JA-828J)
Seat: 8C (Business Class)

This particular flight featured JAL’s angled-lie flat business class seats.  While unfortunate for a modern aircraft, the seat was fairly comfortable.

For this flight, the menu read as follows:

The drink menu read as follows:

I had ordered the vegetarian meal in advance of the flight, so my starter began with asorted vegetables.

In contrast to the Japanese menu starter:

The next vegetarian course was grilled vegetables, along with a tomato filled with pesto.

The Japanese Kobachi bowls:

The main vegetarian course was pasta with tomato sauce and mushrooms.

The vegetarian desert was a cup of fresh fruit, somehow different from the banana compote on the menu.

To start our meal before arrival, the crew had prepared a thank you note in chocolate for the gift we had given earlier.

As a bit of a reboot until things can be backfilled, I’m jumping ahead in trip reports to mid-2016.

As a oneworld Emerald, we were able to stop by the first class lounge at LAX.  Due to apparent lounge rules, it’s not possible to hop between the business class and the first class oneworld lounges in the Tom Bradley terminal.

The lounge features a large seating area looking inwards towards an atrium, a bar, and a sit-down dining area.

The far end of the restaurant overlooks the security checkpoint and ticketing hall.

As our flight to Osaka was delayed, we sought out lunch from the restaurant which offered tasty (and complimentary) fare in contrast to the terminal outside or the Admirals Club in adjoining Terminal 4.  The lunch menu read as follows:

Lunch service wasn’t quite ready to begin, so we wandered around the lounge for a bit.  Between waiting for lunch to start and the length of service of a three course meal itself (from appetizer to dessert took about an hour), this was not a quick bite before catching a flight.

I started with the spiced tofu salad, dropping the chicken.  My girlfriend ordered the salt and pepper squid.

Additionally, we ordered a set of sautéed mushrooms in garlic butter for the table.

I ordered the casarecce with broccolini, chili, and parmesan as my main course.

For desert, we picked the chocolate fondant with raspberries and marscapone.

Outside of the restaurant, though, the immediate, self-serve food offerings were a bit sparse.

It is possible to order from the restaurant menu while sitting elsewhere in the lounge:  We asked for a fruit plate from the staff and had one delivered to our chairs.  Nevertheless, I’m not quite sure where this would leave you if the restaurant was changing over from breakfast to lunch as it was when we first arrived.

With a bit of time to kill, we hopped over to the KAL lounge across the hallway using Priority Pass.  The lounge was a bit more crowded than the Qantas lounge, and the self-serve food less interesting.

The KAL lounge, however, did manage to have plentiful outlets everywhere, thereby resolving one of my biggest pet peeves when traveling.

Thanks to a United travel waiver for the Northeast, Wideroe was willing to make changes to the otherwise non-changeable mistake bookings.  Rather than try to call Norway, I gave their online chat a try: A few minutes later, I had a new ticket in my email and was ready to go.  A quick call to United and one systemwide upgrade later, I had a seat in the business class cabin.  Online check-in didn’t go so smoothly, though:

That’s not the message you want to see 4 hours before your international flight while it’s after business hours in Norway…  One lengthy call to United (and some fingerpointing between United and Wideroe) later, I was able to check in and obtain a boarding pass.

At Newark Airport, security was a zoo and TSA Precheck was no better.  Right as I passed through the security checkpoint, TSA discovered an abandoned bag, requiring passenger traffic in the terminal be stopped until a police dog could inspect the suitcase.  This left me scrambling to get to my gate where the masses were already teeming but boarding had not yet started.

Boarding eventually started and I settled down into my seat.

United 19
Newark (FRA) – Milan Malpensa (MXP)
Friday, February 14th, 2014
Depart:  6:58PM
Arrive: 8:17AM
Duration:  7 hours, 19 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-424ER (N68061)
Seat: 2K (Business Class)

In addition to the choice of water or orange juice predeparture beverage, the flight attendants came by to offer amenity kits.  Our flight featured the much-coveted (yeah… right.) hub-friendly tins:

Given the few cents necessary to acquire the contents, it’s not clear to me why United thought people would be willing to pay $20 for these.

As I had placed myself on this flight less than 12 hours beforehand, I didn’t have the opportunity to ensure I had a vegetarian meal.  Nonetheless, the menu offered a vegetarian dish so I didn’t have to cobble together a meal out of the salad and sundae.  The menu read as follows:

Somewhat interestingly (given there had been a slight uproar on FlyerTalk over the matter), the wine list made a reappearance.  (During my trip from Hong Kong on United, the wines were conspicuously absent.)

After a bit of perusal of the menu and a bit of a delay departing Newark, it was time for takeoff.

East-bound transatlantic flights (particularly from the east coast) are meant for sleeping, but I figured I would check on the IFE during dinner.  While I ordinarily don’t think much about it, given I prefer to use my laptop or read a book, this was one of the more subpar IFE experiences.

About 50(!) minutes after takeoff, the flight attendants came by with hot towels, finally providing an initial place setting an hour(!) into the flight.

The bread arrived at the 1 hour, 20 minute mark.

Our next course, salad, took another 20 minutes to arrive, making its first appearance at the 1 hour, 40 minute mark.

The entree of ravioli quickly followed, a few minutes later.

I selected a cheese plate for dessert. Nearly 2 hours and 30 minutes since takeoff, the flight attendants made another round afterwards offering sundaes as well

When flying east across the Atlantic, I’ve tried to have one simple guideline:  Go to bed before running out of Canada.   I didn’t quite make it this time.

To the extent I could, I slept through the breakfast service, waking up completely only just before our arrival to Milan Malpensa.

Overall, the flight turned out much better than I had expecting just a day prior.  That is to say, it wasn’t in coach.

While perhaps the Friday night departure made the cabin less full of business travelers in desperate need to catch some sleep before important meetings, I was a bit dismayed that the dinner service took about 2 hours and 45 minutes of the flight to complete.

Once in Milan, I quickly cleared Italian immigration and headed to my hotel in city center.  As part of their BusinessFirst offerings, Continental had long provided arrivals lounges and day rooms in their European destinations.   When I inquired on-board this flight, the flight attendant I asked interpreted it as a question about breakfast before arrival.  As I later discovered by inquiring on FlyerTalk, United does provide day rooms at the Sheraton Malpensa Airport for BusinessFirst passengers, but it requires asking at the gate or lounge (rather than on the aircraft).

Having been escorted to a waiting car from the lounge, we quickly drove along the terminal past Lufthansa’s various widebodies waiting to depart to far-off lands.

Until we turned left and drove past the jetbridge, it didn’t occur to me that this was the 747 scheduled to fly to New York.

After stopping the car, my driver escorted me and my suitcase to an elevator next to the jet bridge so I could board the plane.

Lufthansa 400
Frankfurt (FRA) – New York (JFK)
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
Depart:  10:55AM
Arrive: 1:35PM
Duration:  8 hours, 40 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-430 (D-ABTL)
Seat: 82C (First Class)

While many airlines place their first class cabin behind the nose on their 747’s, Lufthansa has its on the upper deck.  The 747 First Class differs a bit from those on other aircraft (such their A340) by featuring a dedicated bed next to the seat, minimizing the compromises necessary to get a seat that can morph into a bed at a moment’s notice.

  One of the flight attendants stopped by to drop off a pair of pajamas and an amenity kit.

After finishing up boarding soon after the first class passengers arrived, we had a short taxi past a waiting United 777 before taking off.

The menu read as follows:

The initial place setting, complete with butter, olive oil, and grinders for salt and pepper.

As we were departing from a Lufthansa hub, they could afford to attend to details such as ensuring the butter is stamped “First Class.”

When United’s reservations system dropped this Lufthansa segment, I lost my vegetarian meal reservation.  Nonetheless, the flight worked out and I was able to find suitable vegetarian options from the menu.  I began with the salad and lettuce mousse.

For my main course, I selected the walnut gnocchi.

Finally, I had some carrot cake, topped with fresh carrots, for dessert.

Having woken up at the crack of dawn in Europe (and with minimal sleep from the night before), I settled down to take a nap.  I woke up shortly into the snack service just before landing, selecting the canape with cream cheese.

Once off the plane, Customs was a zoo, even for Global Entry, so I was a bit delayed in getting into the city.

United finally announced that they’re shifting to a revenue-based earning scheme for 2015.  Given the announcement looks like a copy-and-paste (and a find-and-replace of “Delta” for “United”) from Delta’s announcements, it’s surprising it took them this long.

We knew this was coming.  Some are talking about the destruction of the program, but fortunately, credit card spending will save us.

This change might finally spur me to get on the Delta bandwagon, though.  At least with them, I can earn elite qualifying miles entirely from credit card spending with American Express.

After writing up my post about the AA award chart changes, I took a quick glance at Twitter.  There’s not quite the sharp response that was elicited by United and Delta during their recent devaluations, but I caught notice of American Airlines promising that all would be revealed in the morning.

Well, okay, they didn’t quite say that.  They went for:

You’ll see some changes to the AA and US websites. We plan to officially announce some new policies later this morning

Then the other shoe dropped:

US Airways has a new award chart out, increasing the price to 110k miles roundtrip for business class to North Asia.  Somewhat oddly, first class remains at 120k miles roundtrip.

While it’s not quite as bad as the feared fuel surcharges of last August, One Mile at a Time discusses how AA has quietly restricted its AAnytime awards.  In between his original post and my write-up of this, AA has released a new award chart with “five” tiers:

• MileSAAver Level 1: This looks like AA’s old off-peak awards.
• MileSAAver Level 2: These look like AA’s traditional peak MileSAAver awards.
• AAnytime Level 1: Old price
• AAnytime Level 2: New higher tier
• AAnytime Level 3: A very vague asterisk.

One commenter on FlyerTalk suggests that this is the start of market-based awards for last-seat availability:

It is meant to be announced tomorrow. AA did everything in their power to keep it hush hush until they sprang it on us. AAnytime awards will now be dynamic, meaning we will have to pay a premium on high demand dates/periods, and less on off peak periods. What is also unannounced as of yet is that International Gateway City Stopovers are also gone.

Emphasis mine on the real nugget in there.  Edit:  A quick search of NRT-LAX (stop)-BOS shows that this is pricing as two separate awards:

After arriving off of my flight from Los Angeles, I made my way to the Lufthansa First Class lounge prior to my flight to Vienna.

I checked in with the front desk attendant, who then directed me to the window across from her.  Rather than have First Class passengers enter Schengen elsewhere in the airport, Lufthansa has arranged for a member of the German Border Police to be available.

As I my flight to Vienna was going to be departing from a remote stand, I was told to come back when it was time for my flight to get a ride to my plane.

I then went to the back of the lounge to take a shower following my redeye flight.  Lately, Lufthansa has been issuing collectible blue rubber ducks, but this location was apparently “out.”

There were only a few other passengers in the lounge on a Monday afternoon.

I then went out in search of lunch at the buffet.

All of the outlets were European style.

When I entered the lounge, the attendant at the front desk had instructed me to return to the front at 3PM for my ride to the remote stand for my flight to Vienna.  As I didn’t want to hold up an entire plane with my tardiness, I returned at 3 sharp and went downstairs to the limousine desk.  Boarding had not commenced, so the agent advised me to take a seat.

She investigated and found out that the flight was still waiting on one last crewmember.  As there was going to be a brief delay, she suggested I leave my bags downstairs and return to the lounge to relax.  A few minutes later, the front desk clerk stopped by to apologize for the delay and let me know that I my flight (and car) were ready.

As we approached the plane, my driver asked whether I wanted to board the plane first.  Rather than hold up a bus full of people, I said I didn’t mind waiting or boarding simultaneously.  After we pulled up to the plane, he verified that the crew was ready for boarding, let me out of the car, and then carried my bag to the plane.

Meanwhile, a bus full of people were waiting, despite my best intentions.

My gate was a quick walk from the lounge, so I took a moment to admire the planes preparing to depart to Europe that evening.

The flight was already starting to board economy, so whatever line there might have been for the premium lane had already cleared out.

Lufthansa 453
Los Angeles (LAX) – Munich (MUC)
Sunday, December 22nd, 2013
Depart:  5:16PM
Arrive: 1:04PM
Duration:  10 hours, 48 minutes
Aircraft: Airbus A340-642 (D-AIHP)
Seat: 2K (First Class)

As I settled in, a flight attendant came by with an amenity kit, pajamas, and a menu for dinner.  After introducing himself (in English), he asked whether I preferred English or Deutsch.  I answered “either,” leading the flight attendants to interpret that as “English” for the rest of the flight.  Answering this in German might lead to better results.

The flight attendants then came by offering water and champagne as predeparture drinks.  My macadamia nuts and rose were somehow overlooked, however.  The purser eventually stopped by with a rose after takeoff.

The menu read as follows:

Obviously, it’s not possible to realize that you’re flying in Lufthansa’s First Class without it being prominently written at the front of the cabin.

The dinner service began with bread and olive oil.

Lufthansa provides small salt and pepper grinders for its meal service.

I had ordered a vegetarian meal in advance, so in lieu of caviar, I was served a small vegetable plate.

The vegetable plate seemed a bit redundant with the salad appetizer.

I had ravioli for my entree.

A bit after dinner, I asked for a turndown.  Lufthansa’s in-flight entertainment left a bit to be desired, so I decided that getting a full night’s rest, even if at an awkwardly time in the evening, was a better choice.

Several hours later, I woke up to a well-lit cabin and one of the flight attendants asking me for my breakfast selection.  When I mentioned that I had ordered a vegetarian meal, she quickly recalled that and returned with breakfast.  Two dishes of fruit, rather than the one on-menu dish of fruit, is an important part of any vegetarian breakfast.

As the breakfast service was wrapping up, our captain came on to announce our imminent arrival to Munich airport.

After reaching our gate, I disembarked and began walking to the center of the main terminal, in search of the Lufthansa First Class Lounge prior to my flight to Vienna.

With my flight to Munich departing at 5:15PM, I dropped off my rental car just before 3PM and made my way to LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal.  The Lufthansa First Class check-in line actually had two other passengers waiting when I arrived.

During check-in, the agent asked me if I needed to be escorted to the lounge or the plane.

Me: “What exactly does that entail?”

Agent: “Well, we’ll walk you through security and drop you off in the lounge.  In the case of the plane, we’ll pick you up from the lounge when the flight is ready to board.”

As TBIT is serviced by non-US flagged carriers, TSA Precheck hasn’t been setup yet, so I decided that being walked past security could save a bit of time.  It worked out well in that I was able to enter the north checkpoint after they had stopped accepting new passengers for screening.  It worked out poorly, as the agent didn’t want to steer us to a checkpoint with just a metal detector, so I ended up having to opt-out and enjoy a Freedom Grope.

Star Alliance runs a shared lounge at TBIT with a separate first class section.

When I arrived, the first class section was empty.

Shortly after I arrived, an attendant stopped by with a dining menu.  As I was going to eat on my flight, I turned it down and began to look around.

The first class section has a small dedicated selection of food and drinks of its own and passengers can head over to the main Star Alliance Gold lounge next door.

Since Hong Kong, I’ve become fascinated by the power outlets available near the seating areas of lounges.

While the first class is somewhat secluded (and has views of absolutely nothing), the main lounge overlooks the main airside hall.

The lounge has an outside terrace that looks northeast towards the east part of runways 24L/24R and the terminal buildings.  The weather of Los Angeles in December was too much for lounge goers, even with several fireplaces and heaters setup.  For the hour (near sunset), it was a bit disappointing that the terrace didn’t face west.

The main lounge had its own selection of food, along with a few hot dishes.

As part of the decorations for the lounge, there were a number of quotes prominently displayed on the walls.  I kept feeling like they were telling me something about Los Angeles…

Soon though, it was time for my flight to Munich and headed to my gate.

While I had booked a K fare for my journey across the middle of the Pacific to Hong Kong, I splurged on a W fare for my return, choosing to play systemwide roulette with United.

When I booked this trip, confirmable upgrade space was plentiful on United’s two NRT-SFO flights for the days I wanted to travel.  As UA78/UA79 service between Tokyo and Hong Kong was dropped in late October, I was left trying to book a flight with ANA unsuccessfully.  Thanks to some quirks in United system’s, it proved impossible to book that segment while staying in a low fare bucket (rather than say full fare coach or business class for HKG-NRT).

Fortunately, my upgrade cleared a few minutes before online check-in opened and I was assigned the last available business class seat on the plane.

I left the lounge when boarding was announced, but nevertheless, group 1 had already become a sea of humanity.

Boarding flights (to the United States, at least) at Hong Kong is somewhat complicated by the thorough bag inspection conducted for every passenger.  Making past the final security check, I settled down in my seat.

United 862
Hong Kong (HKG) – San Francisco (SFO)
Monday, December 2nd, 2013
Depart:  12:30PM
Arrive: 8:25AM
Duration:  11 hours, 55 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-222 (N121UA)
Seat: 6B (Business Class, Lower Deck)

After finally passing an entire 747 of passengers through the bag search gantlet, we pushed back, taxied, out, and took off to the South.

The menu read as follows:

Service began with drinks and warm, mixed nuts.

I had ordered a vegetarian meal; and thanks to my upgrade clearing before the 24 hour mark, I managed to actually receive it.

Somehow, American manages to rather consistently offer small glass bottles of olive oil and vinegar as a dressing choice.  United, rather consistently, offers prepackaged dressings in far less elegant plastic containers.

At United, “Asian vegetarian” secretly means “Indian” for reasons that have never been made clear to me.

After finishing lunch, we still had about nine hours of flying time left before our scheduled arrival to San Francisco.  The majority of flights from (and to) Asia are poorly timed for any reasonable sleep schedule:  3PM is not a great time to go to sleep.

I caught what rest I could before waking up to the beginnings of the breakfast service about an hour before arrival.

Once again, I had a vegetarian meal for breakfast.

While I wanted to catch some good pictures of the San Francisco area from the air during our approach, the fog of the Bay Area was diligently uncooperative.

Seated in 6B, just behind door 1L, I was able to get off the plane quickly and make my way to the United Arrivals lounge.

I had some time between clearing passport control and my flight to San Francisco so I stopped by the United Club.  Like the Narita United Club (and Global First lounge), the Hong Kong lounge is a bit different from those normally found in the United States.

First, the lounge sits on an open air platform above the terminal concourse.  Off in the distance is N121UA, our Boeing 747 in United’s Star Alliance livery.

More importantly, the food is vastly different than the normal United fare.

A make your own taco station?  That’s a far cry from Milano cookies and yogurt covered raisins.

Beverages were intermixed with the various food sections.

My only (slight) annoyance was that the power outlets were limited to the British style.  While I do carry a power strip to maximize my usage of a single outlet adapter, I had to go fish it out of my carry-on suitcase.

For Thanksgiving, I decided to visit Hong Kong, convincing myself that flying via Honolulu and Guam was a “good idea.”  When I tried to go to Manila this way in 2012, I was bumped from one of my westbound segments and rerouted via Narita in first class.  I didn’t have the same string of luck this time around.

As a 1K on an international itinerary, I stopped by the Honolulu United Club to occupy myself for my two hour layover.  While it’s like any other United lounge, it certainly offers a bit nicer scenery.

I looked away from the Internet for a few hours this evening before making one quick glance at it just now.  When my gaze returned, I discovered that the sky is falling over in Atlanta.

Inside Flyer is reporting that Delta will be switching to a revenue-based frequent flier program in 2015, joining its illustrious peer group of Southwest, JetBlue, and Virgin America.

The key takeaways from the article are:

• Tiered points earning (based on spend) depending on elite status
• A new 5 tier fixed-price (rather than revenue) award chart:  The 25k mile domestic roundtrip third-rail of many US frequent flyer programs may live for the time being…if you can manage to find “low” availability.
• Delta is making implausible claims that “these changes will improve overall availability at the lowest award levels, i.e. the 25,000 miles domestic roundtrip.”  Umm… No.  Credit card companies buying frequent flier miles by the supertanker and increased load factors have made these awards scarce.

As American and United might be quick to join this bloodbath, I’m thankful I just applied for an Avianca credit card last night…

Update:  MileCards.com has convenient charts!

I booked this trip about two weeks out for my first flight and about three weeks out for my return segment.  My upgrade for this flight cleared a mere 12 hours prior to departure.

As a business class passenger (and executive platinum elite), I had access to the British Airways lounge at Malpensa. The only take away I had was that the wifi was quite slow.

American 199
Milan Malpensa (MXP) – New York Kennedy (JFK)
Tuesday, October 15th, 2013
Depart:  10:25AM
Arrive: 1:40PM
Duration:  9 hours, 15 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-323ER (N346AN)
Seat: 6H (Business Class)

The flight attendants came by with a choice of water, orange juice, and champagne for the predeparture drinks.

The menu read as follows:

Service began with a salad.

About 90 minutes before arrival, we were served a snack.  I picked the Uno pizza.

I’ve talked about the American old business class product several times.  It’s now an outdated and unremarkable product, but I was far happier flying it than taking a seat in coach on United’s 767-424ER.  The United W fare, eligible for systemwide upgrades, was about $650 more for the roundtrip.  Considering my total airfare was about $600, I didn’t bite.

In preparation for my departure to London, I visited the Flagship lounge next door to my gate.  I previously visited this lounge in September 2013.  As this was the last international departure for American that evening, the lounge was quite empty.

After clearing customs, I took the people mover from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 to catch my flight to Los Angeles.  My flight to Los Angeles was delayed due to high winds at O’Hare, giving me plenty of time to enjoy the lounge.

It’s worth noting that the Flagship Lounge, situated at the end of the K concourse, doesn’t have showers of its own.  Instead, passengers need to visit the Admirals Club (which spans the bottom of the H-K concourse intersection).

My upgrade from Düsseldorf to Chicago fortuitously cleared.  In writing this trip report, however, I discovered that I’m missing most of my photos from Big Ben to this picture of our 767 in Germany, as well as those taken on board.

I wagered on clearing my upgrade to London and lost.  (I successfully “won” in September 2012 on a similar-looking trip to Dublin on American Airlines.)  While the 777-300ER has a new plane smell to it, that’s about the only thing I was looking forward to for my journey across the Atlantic.

As an Executive Platinum member, even in coach, I was able to visit the American Airlines Flagship Lounge, which I last reviewed in 2012.  I chose to have dinner at the lounge, with the intent of falling asleep after takeoff.

Shiny:

I had an exit row seat sitting across from one of the flight attendants.  She seemed…quite worried that I was skipping dinner and eventually, breakfast.  My seatmate was another Executive Platinum who had booked her ticket months earlier–American prioritizes upgrades by time of request–and had failed to clear.

Despite plenty of speculation that American and US Airways would certainly merge EQM balances for travel occurring in 2014, a quiet FAQ update (only appear on usairways.com!) indicates this is not the case.

“Can I combine my AAdvantage and Dividend Miles elite qualifying miles and segments to qualify for elite status? No. Because we are currently maintaining two separate programs, elite qualifying miles and segments (and American’s points) only count toward elite status in the program in which they were earned. Elite credits will not be an additive between the two programs to determine a customer’s 2014 qualification or status.”

There can be a bit of back-and-forth about the meaning of “2014”:  Is that for elite status in 2014 or qualification (for 2015) by way of travel in 2015?  Fortunately, higher-profile bloggers have looked into this important matter.  One Mile at a Time’s post is still pending an update from the airlines, but Hack My Trip confirms this reading of the FAQ.

Somewhat awkwardly, this comes on the heels of the 50% mile bonus for cross-crediting US and American flights.  Registration with US Airways (for American flights) and American (for US Airways flights) is required.

A thread on FlyerTalk highlights the silent changes that happened to American Airlines’ policies as the merger festivities kicked off:

• Minimum time for checking in (online or at the airport) without baggage at a U.S. airport is no longer 30 minutes, but is the same as the one with bags (i.e. airport-dependent, and mostly 45 minutes);
• Minimum time for checking in (even without baggage) for flights departing the U.S. for an international destination is now 60 minutes. The way it’s written, this includes departures to Canada, Mexico, and non-U.S. Caribbean Islands
• Minimum time for checking in (even without baggage) has increased to 45 minutes in all hubs plus a lot of other airports:
• Airports increasing from 30 minutes to 45 minutes: CLT, PHL, PHX and PIT
• Airports increasing from 40 minutes to 45 minutes: ATL, ORD, DFW, EWR, MCO, SFO, SJU, SEA, TPA, IAD

The “new” American delivered on making US Airways award availability bookable with premerger AA miles (source: The Flight Deal):

J. Edward on MilePoint found a double RDM promotion from United that isn’t targeted.  While it’s not a double EQM promotion that I so desperately need this year to retain 1K, it’s better than nothing.

The terms and conditions:

1. Offer is valid for segments with an origin and destination within the 48 continental U.S. states on flights marketed and operated by United and United Express, which includes domestic travel within international itineraries. Offer excludes travel to or from Alaska or Hawaii.
2. Registration is required before travel on united.com.
3. Offer is valid on tickets purchased between October 21, 2013, and November 21, 2013.
4. Offer is valid on travel completed between October 21, 2013, and November 21, 2013.
5. Members can earn double award miles on base miles earned for travel in F, A, J, C, D, Z, P, Y, B, M, E, U, H, Q, V, W and S fare classes.
6. Double miles are defined as two multiplied by the base award miles otherwise credited in connection with qualifying segments.
7. You can earn the bonus an unlimited number of times in accordance with these terms and conditions.
8. Offer is only valid on United and United Express and is not valid on United-marketed codeshare flights operated by other carriers.
9. Offer is not valid on government fares.
10. Passenger must be a member of United’s MileagePlus program to qualify for this offer.
11. This offer is not combinable with other non-combinable offers.
12. Bonus will be posted to the member’s MileagePlus account six to eight weeks after the end of the promotion period.
13. This offer does not apply to Premier® qualifying miles (PQM), class-of-service bonus miles, class-of-service PQM, Premier bonus miles, redeemable bonus miles or other promotional PQM.
14. Service charges for ticketing with a United representative in the 50 United States and Canada are $25 by phone, $30 at a City Ticket Office and $35 in person at the airport. Ticketing charges may vary outside of the U.S. and Canada and based on MileagePlus status level. The ticketing service charge does not apply for tickets purchased on united.com. Service charges are subject to change.
15. Offer is subject to change without notice. Other restrictions may apply.
16. Miles accrued, awards, and benefits issued are subject to change and are subject to the rules of the United MileagePlus program, including without limitation the Premier program (the “MileagePlus Program”), which are expressly incorporated herein. United may change the MileagePlus Program including, but not limited to, rules, regulations, travel awards and special offers or terminate the MileagePlus Program at any time and without notice. United and its subsidiaries, affiliates and agents are not responsible for any products or services of other participating companies and partners. Taxes and fees related to award travel are the responsibility of the member. Bonus award miles, award miles and any other miles earned through non-flight activity do not count toward qualification for Premier status unless expressly stated otherwise. The accumulation of mileage or Premier status or any other status does not entitle members to any vested rights with respect to the MileagePlus Program. All calculations made in connection with the MileagePlus Program, including without limitation with respect to the accumulation of mileage and the satisfaction of the qualification requirements for Premier status, will be made by United Airlines and MileagePlus in their discretion and such calculations will be considered final. Information in this communication that relates to the MileagePlus Program does not purport to be complete or comprehensive and may not include all of the information that a member may believe is important, and is qualified in its entirety by reference to all of the information on the united.com website and the MileagePlus Program rules. United and MileagePlus are registered service marks. For complete details about the MileagePlus Program, go to united.com/mileageplus.

Below the “S” revenue fare bucket, United also has T, L, K, G, and N, so not all fares will be eligible for this promotion.

AA announced that it is adding two new routes to Asia from DFW, Hong Kong and Shanghai, starting in the summer of 2014.  HKG will see 777-300 service, while PVG will see the old 777-200.

One Mile at a Time and View from the Wing both mention that Haneda service (from JFK) is being axed, leaving Japan Airlines’ flight as the only oneworld service to Tokyo from New York.  Interestingly, their webpage announcing the new service to Asia still lists this route as on-going.

For my return to New York, I took the redeye to Dallas.  Concerned that my upgrade might not clear—especially when booking ten days in advance, I used one of my systemwides expiring February 2013.  If I were flying from New York to London, I’d do everything I could to avoid coach:  As Kahului to Dallas is longer, my views were similar.

As this was an even flight number, I chose a seat in the forward portion of the cabin.

American 6
Kahului (OGG) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Monday, January 21th, 2013
Depart:  18:31PM
Arrive: 5:41AM
Duration:  7 hours, 10 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-323ER (N378AN)
Seat: 1B (First Class)

The menu read as follows:

I chose the tortellini for my entree.

Compared to the cheese plate I had on the way out to Los Angeles, this flight’s paled in comparison.

While the flight time was disappointingly early as I was going to sleep in Hawaii around midnight, the slightly longer flight (compared to most transatlantics) made up for it slightly.  After my previous long haul experience with this seat (New York to London), I had convinced myself that I hadn’t slept at all.  In comparison, I actually felt well-rested afterwards (as good, if not better, as the business class recliners used on American’s Flagship Service for JFK-SFO/LAX).

We had been delayed departing Maui, first for ETOPS-related paperwork followed by an incredibly slow pushback/taxi out, so we arrived to Dallas late, reducing me to 12 minute connection with a terminal change for my onward flight to New York LaGuardia.  During the taxi from the runway, I turned on my cell phone to find that I had been protected on the 7AM departure.   A quick sprint between terminals later (being seated near the front of the plane is good for more than the meal order!), I managed to get the gate for my original 6AM flight.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the merger between US Airways and American Airlines will be announced tomorrow morning at 7:30AM CST:

The plan is to announce the deal in the pre-dawn hours Thursday, followed by a 7:30 a.m. CST call with the analyst community, a Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport press conference in mid-morning, a 1 p.m. Dallas/Fort Worth Airport presentation to AA employees, with the video and audio broadcast to other locations.

Doug Parker will run the combined airline.

Online Travel Review reminds us that consolidation is inevitable.  View from the Wing has some guesses for how AAdvantage might end up.  AA’s systemwide upgrade policy was not long for this world as it was.

As seems to be the tradition at American’s LAX station, boarding started several minutes ahead of schedule. When I made it to the gate at the scheduled boarding time, boarding for group 3 had already been called.

American 253
Los Angeles (LAX) – Kahului (OGG)
Saturday, January 19th, 2013
Depart:  9:00AM
Arrive: 12:55PM
Duration:  5 hours, 55 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-223 (N609AA)
Seat: 5B (First Class)

The menu read as follows:

AA generally (with rare exception) takes meal orders from front to back on even flight numbers and from back to front on odd numbers, so I was one of the first to make a meal choice.  As I had not ordered a vegetarian/vegan meal in advance, I chose the four cheese ravoli.

Our arrival gate put us next to two Thomas Cook 757’s a bit far from their homes. WestJet leases them for the winter season.

I’ve acquired my status with American and United Airlines rather cheaply.  Last year, I spent about $4k with each airline to pick up 115-125k EQM on each.

An observant FlyerTalker caught a change (now removed) from Delta’s website today, enumerating the revenue component of Delta’s 2014 elite program, entitled “Medallion Qualification Dollars.”

Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs) – Coming Next Year Beginning January 1, 2014, SkyMiles members residing in the United States (excluding Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) will qualify for Medallion status based on an additional threshold – the member’s annual spending with Delta, which will be measured by Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs). Members must also meet the existing Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) or Medallion Qualification Segments (MQSs) qualification criteria. The threshold ranges from $2,500-$12,500 MQDs depending on Medallion level. Alternatively, Delta SkyMiles Credit Cardmembers can be waived from the new Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs) requirement if they make at least $25,000 in Eligible Purchases within the calendar year.

Delta Points seems… enthusastic about the change.   View from the Wing emphasizes the saving grace in labeling this qualification MQD’s:  Promotional and bonus rates of MQD earning could easily take the sting  out of qualifying.

While I’m glad I do not fly Delta, AA and UA could easily adopt a similar set of qualification requirements.

United is offering 20% off the redemption cost of coach bookings made between now and November 15th to Europe for travel dates between January 15th, 2013 and March 13, 2013.  This brings the total for a US-Europe roundtrip to 48k miles from 60k miles.  The offer is restricted to United-operated flights and applicable to one-way tickets.

American’s off-peak period to Europe runs between October 15th and May 15th annually, bringing the total mileage cost down from 30k miles for a coach one-way to 20k miles.  Rather usefully, the off-peak price is applicable to British Airways-operated flights as well.  BA flights still carry the customary British Airways fuel surcharges, so an “award” with BA transatlantic segments could easily run as much as an outright revenue ticket.

US Airways offers its own off-peak awards for US Airways metal for itineraries between January 15th and February 28th.  In addition to their discount coach roundtrips for 35k miles, US Airways offers business class roundtrips for 60k miles.  While coach inventory seems plentiful, business class is a bit more disappointing:

I’ve started a listing of the best options for purchasing points outright.  While these are only occasionally a good value, the option to buy points can often be useful in topping up  an account for a specific award redemption.

I am exceedingly late to the party announcing double redeemable and elite qualifying miles on American Airlines as an apology for recent operational performance troubles, but here goes.

For everyone, AA is offering:

• Double EQMs between November 1st and December 31st.
• Double RDMs between November  16th and November 26th.

For elites, the double RDM window spans the entirety of November and December.

The promotion requires registration by December 31st with code AATHX and is good on all ticketed itineraries, even those purchased before November 1st.  Double miles (whether elite or redeemable) are restricted to AA marketed and operated flights.

Try as I might to not look a gift horse in the mouth, the extra EQM do little to convince me to hop on a few more AA planes than I already was going to.  (The redeemable miles, on the other hand…)

American Airlines has been offering significantly discounted first class fares lately.  Last month, The Points Guy advertised this as a great deal that had all the appearances of ending quickly. To put this into perspective, consider flying from JFK to SFO on January 18th.

The “First Special” fare on AA85 (operated by a two-cabin 767-300 with international business class seats) is being sold for $442 one-way, a premium of $274 over the cheapest available coach fare.  ITA offers us a glimpse into where AA stands amongst other carriers:

Jetblue does not offer a first class cabin and Alaska’s nonstops on this route are coach codeshares operated by American and Delta.

Excluding American from the picture, the closest we come is Delta with a connection.  For a nonstop, this is an outlandishly low fare.  ITA indicates that the $442 price is based on the SA14ERP1 fare code.  ExpertFlyer gets confused by this code, but ITA exposes the full (and correct) fare rules:

``` Flight Restrictions: AND - FOR TRAVEL ON/AFTER 08JAN 13 AND ON/BEFORE 01APR 13 THE FARE COMPONENT MUST NOT BE ON ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING AA FLIGHTS 1 THROUGH 4 AA FLIGHT 10 AA FLIGHT 12 AA FLIGHTS 15 THROUGH 17 AA FLIGHT 18 AA FLIGHT 19 AA FLIGHT 21 AA FLIGHT 22 AA FLIGHT 30 AA FLIGHT 32 AA FLIGHTS 33 THROUGH 34 AA FLIGHT 40 AA FLIGHT 59 AA FLIGHTS 117 THROUGH 118 AA FLIGHT 133 AA FLIGHT 177 AA FLIGHT 178 AA FLIGHT 180 AA FLIGHT 181 AA FLIGHT 185 AA FLIGHT 201 AA FLIGHT 252 AA FLIGHT 277 AA FLIGHT 299 AA FLIGHT 1520.

Application:

ECONOMY FARE WITH AN INSTANT ONE-CLASS UPGRADE AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE TO FIRST/BUSINESS. APPLICATION CLASS OF SERVICE THESE FARES APPLY FOR ECONOMY CLASS SERVICE. CAPACITY LIMITATIONS SEATS ARE LIMITED BOTH ECONOMY AND FIRST CLASS BOOKING INVENTORIES MUST BE AVAILABLE AT TIME OF BOOKING. THESE FARES PERMIT A ONE-CLASS UPGRADE AT THE TIME OF BOOKING. ```

The excluded flight numbers involve domestically-operated, three-cabin aircraft.   Further, this leads to some odd quirks for last minute bookings.  If I wanted to get on an AA plane bound for SFO in 14 hours, the price gap narrows:

Discount first class is a mere $159 above discount coach.  Without Executive Platinum status (or with a companion), I would need to spend six 500 mile stickers (at a cost of $30/each if bought outright) and still gamble on the upgrade.  FlyerTalk is in an uproar, but the whole situation feels reminiscent of Alaska Airlines’ approach to pricing first class:  Sell it at a sane price and wind up with more revenues.

This year, I’m going to spend roughly $4k to earn about 110k EQMs on American (~3.63cpm).  If I were simply out to requalify for Executive Platinum (since the EXP desk adds considerable value above and beyond upgrades) with minimal flying, I could book these fares and qualify on EQP (at 1.5x the flight distance) by flying about 67k miles at a cost of $11.4k or so.  It’s not a bargain, but it’s a far lower price premium than normally exists for purchased first class.

As a follow-up to last month’s 100% bonus on shared miles, US Airways is now offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles to the general public.

US is charging $37.625 per 1k miles (inclusive of taxes), bringing the total cost for 100k miles to $1881.25.

As I had a string of Starwood stays last week, I was far more concerned with SPG’s Better by the Night promotion and overlooked the other promotions that were more quietly announced.  Loyalty Traveler notes another promotion, one for Aeroplan miles, that stacks for nights between September 10th and December 9th:

• 3 eligible nights earns 3k Aeroplan miles or 5 nights earn 5k miles.
• If at least 3 nights are in Canada, SPG is offering an additional 3k miles.

As I’ve had 6 eligible nights since September 10th already, I went ahead and registered today.

While Aeroplan suffered a number of devaluations last year, both explicitly in its award chart and more quietly in the form of fuel surcharges, the program has still been quite good to me in the aftermath.

Yesterday, American added four new/resumed international routes to its Summer 2013 schedule:

• Chicago - Dusseldorf, resumes April 11, 2013 (discontinued Dec. 1995), 1x daily, operated by a 763.
• Dallas - Seoul, starts May 9, 2013, 1x daily, operated with a 777.
• New York - Dublin, starts June 12, 2013, 1x daily, operated with a 752.
• Dallas - Lima, resumes April 2, 2012 (discontinued Feb. 2006), 1x daily, operated with a 752.

The Points Guy mentions the addition of a few domestic routes as well:

• DFW-Beaumont/Port Arthur (BPT)
• DFW/ORD-Columbia (COU)
• DFW-Fargo (FAR)

Singapore Airlines announced a new Airbus order as well.  With its trade-in of its A345s, it will be discontinuing its EWR/LAX-SIN flights, leaving Qantas’ DFW-SYD nonstop as the longest in the world.

Having built too much padding into my schedule for getting to the airport, I had quite a bit of time to kill.  Luckily, I had my Priority Pass card on me (making use of it for the second time since I got my Platinium Amex), so I was able to stop by the Americal Airlines Admirals Club/Japan Airlines Sakura Lounge.

As a joint lounge with JAL, the lounge had a comparatively off-beat food selection from an ordinary Admirals Club.

Yesterday, I wrote about upgrading with British Airways Avios as a cheaper way to fly Club World.  Ultimately, the fuel surcharge jump from World Traveler Plus to Club World offset most of the savings, but it still wound up being a reasonable plan for the traveler who absolutely desires to fly BA Club World.

Nonetheless, the BA fuel surcharge structure set me to thinking:  If fuel surcharges between business and first class are the same, could the BA companion pass finally have a sensible use?

One of the features of the Chase-issued, British Airways Visa is that it earns a companion ticket after $30k of spending in a single calendar year.  There are a number of restrictions to it (to paraphrase):

• The companion ticket is only applicable on award tickets.
• The award tickets must be issued by BA and operated entirely by BA.
• The main cardholder must be a traveler on the itinerary in its entirety.
• Taxes and fees for the companion are still due.

The last restriction is a bit onerous, but it’s worth looking at some sample bookings for next Saturday, October 13th, New York to London one-way in three-cabin first class.  (Despite advertising claims to the contrary, United’s BusinessFirst is not three-cabin first class.)

American shows some availability on both AA and BA metal.

The taxes and fees for the AA-operated flight are $2.50.

Flying BA adds $345.20 in fees to this award.

In comparison, the same flight booked via British Airways costs 60k Avios (instead of 62.5k AAdvantage miles), but has slightly taxes and fees of $437.70:

This gives us three options to London for two in first class:

• AA booked and AA operated: 125k AAdvantage miles and $5.00
• AA booked and BA operated: 125k AAdvantage miles and $695.40
• BA booked with the companion ticket: 60k Avios and $875.40.

While I’m not thrilled by the taxes and fees on BA-operated awards, paying $180 to trade 60k Avios for 125k AAdvantage miles feels reasonable (if the travel would have happened on BA anyways).  The deal is a bit less sweet when comparing between AA booked/operated and BA booked/operated itineraries.  Assuming a generous value of 1 Avios to 1 AAdvantage mile, buying 65k AA miles for $870.40 might be a reasonable deal (1.33cpm) if I didn’t already have 393k of them already and wasn’t earning more at a comparable rate by flying.

Whether due to a massive amount of capacity or steep fuel surcharges, BA at least tends to have premium cabin availability when American (on its own metal) or even the entirety of Star Alliance does not.  For this particular date, United has no premium cabin availability on its nonstops from Newark and mid-October is hardly a peak travel season.  If flying BA makes or breaks the trip, the companion ticket is useful; if BA can be avoided, I might lean towards experiencing the first world problem of flying American Airlines three-cabin first class.

For the time being, I suspect that I’ll continue to book cheap revenue tickets and upgrade for simple trips to Europe.  For a mere $6 beyond the cost of the BA companion ticket-based itinerary, I was able to fly myself and a friend to Europe and back last month in AA business class for most of the journey.  It’s not quite BA First, but the savings will mean I’ll survive, particularly after the new lie-flat business class starts flying next month.

American and British Airways recently kicked off  a promotion for roundtrip travel in premium cabins/near-full fare economy between the U.S. and Europe, September 25th, 2012 through January 31st, 2013.  The promotion has tiers according to the number of trips taken:

• First roundtrip: 15k AAdvantage miles (or Avios)
• Second roundtrip:  35k AAdvantage miles (or Avios)
• Third and subsequent roundtrips: 50k AAdvantage miles (or Avios)

While I normally don’t dwell upon paid business class (or even full-fare coach), American’s terms include British Airways World Traveler Plus fares booked into W, E, and T.  Since I received my BA visa from Chase, I’ve been wondering what I would do with the Avios I’ve been accumulating.

British Airways offers a rather sane route for international upgrades.  Upgrades with Avios are available to the next cabin of service if there is award availability for that cabin.  (This might be less than ideal in its own way, but it feels far more straightforward than looking through United.com for “R” inventory to confirm upgrades at booking.)

Since BA considers its premium economy product (World Traveler Plus) a separate cabin between its coach product (World Traveler) and its long-haul business class product (Club World), one has to purchase a premium economy ticket to upgrade to business class.  The base Avios for JFK-LHR is 20k, so the cost to upgrade (in terms of Avios outlayed) is 10k in each direction.

I’ve been looking to fly BA Club World for some time, but I haven’t quite begun to tolerate the rather steep fuel surcharges levied by BA (for nearly all of its awards) or by AA (for BA-operated awards).  To put this into perspective, consider a simple roundtrip between New York and London in business class the MLK weekend this upcoming January.  As a baseline, I’ll lookup the cost of booking this trip as an award with American.

There’s a bit of BA-operated award availability that weekend:

Great.  50k miles each way makes 100k roundtrip… but that range of $2.50 to $700.00 in “Taxes and Carrier-Imposed Fees” is rather ominous.

If it sounds ominous, it probably is ominous.  The total cost of this award is 100k AAdvantage miles and $972.60.  Booking as an outright award with British Airways is similarly grim, 80k Avios and $1151.25:

Now that we have BA flights with business class award space available, we can price a premium economy itinerary with ITA to get a feel for the cost of upgrading a revenue trip.  Since AA showed availability on only the BA flights out of Newark (and not JFK), we can request only those flights from ITA:

As BA186 and BA189 fly only between Newark and London Heathrow, ITA is offering us a single itinerary:

Clicking through on the price offers a detailed fare breakdown:

With a price in mind, we can now go book via BA’s website, booking a flight with cash and upgrading with Avios.  As expected BA186 and BA189 are available.

Clicking through yields a bit higher of a price (due to increased fuel surcharges levied by BA on business class tickets):

In the price breakdown, there’s a small button to see the full details of where our money is going.  The discrepancy is entirely attributable to the $370 increase in fuel surcharges.

Chase has been offering 10% off BA-operated itineraries booked via BA.com for its US-based cardholders.  This discount ends at the end of the year for outbound travel occuring in 2012, so it is unfortunately not applicable to this particular trip.  Nonetheless, as this trip is booked into a “T” fare bucket, it does qualify for the promotion that I began this post with.

This particular trip costs 20k Avios points and $1751.25, but it earns miles on the itinerary (approximately 7.6k with class-of-service bonus) and under the US-Europe roundtrip promotion (15k for the first roundtrip).  Recall, the net costs of an AA award operated by BA were 100k AAdvantage miles and $972.60.  Factoring in the opportunity cost, there is a tradeoff of 122.6k AAdvantage miles for $778.65 and 20k Avios points.  Even under the most optimistic of valuations for Avios (1:1 with AA), booking BA-operated flights with AA offers a platry 0.76cpm valuation.

Other possible routes to London in Club World include waiting for a business class fare sale ($2012 roundtrip, as we saw this summer) or booking a much more sanely priced, AA-operated award.  For my sample dates of travel, only AA First Class was available on the outbound flight, bringing the total for the roundtrip to 112.5k AAdvantage miles and $286.70.

Delta has unveiled a similar promotion for flights between the the U.S. and London in business class/near-full fare economy.  Since I don’t collect Skypesos, I haven’t spent much time thinking about how to make efficient use of it.

View from the Wing notes that Aegean is offering 2000 status miles for signing up for an account.  Rather crucially, Aegean has an extremely low bar for Star Alliance Silver status (4k status miles), which offers a free checked bag on United and US Airways.  For the time being, Aegean offers “lifetime” (for the lifetime of the program’s generosity) status.  FlyerTalk has a crash course thread for additional information.

While US-based fliers are used to fares which earn at least 1 mile per mile flown, Aegean credits discount United coach fares (W, S, T, L, K) at 50% (or in the case of United’s recently added N fare, potentially 0%).  All US Airways revenue fare classes (that I’m aware of) credit at 100%.

For the traveler without status (and any forgone elite redeemable mile bonuses), crediting a cheap US Airways transcontinental flight to Aegean can be a cheap way of obtaining free baggage allowances in the future.  Based on the current US Airways share miles promotion, the opportunity cost of 2k miles is $22.70 (if the transaction fee is amortized over 50k miles).

US Airways is offering a 100% transfer bonus when sharing up to 50k miles between accounts during the month of October.  With the $30 processing fee, a 50k transfer prices at $567.50 or 1.135 cents per net mile.  While it isn’t quite as good as Grand Slam last year (approximately 0.34cpm), this promotion requires far less attention and effort to benefit from.  As noted in the promotion terms, “accounts less than 12 days old are not permitted to Buy, Share or Gift miles,” leaving two weeks to open an account to participate.

To make the value of these miles a bit more tangible, it’s worth consulting the US Airways award chart.

• Off-peak (Jan. 15 - Feb. 28) North America/Hawaii to Europe in business class is 60k miles (or 55k for US Airways Mastercard holders) plus taxes/fees.  The cost of acquisition for those miles under this promotion?  $681 (or $624.25 respectively).
• A Star Alliance North America to North Asia award (potentially routing with a stopover in Europe)  is 90k miles in business class.  United runs 100k in comparison.
• A Star Alliance North America to the South Pacific award is 110k miles in business class and 140k miles in first class.  United charges 135 and 160k miles respectively.

While I still haven’t put the miles I earned from Grand Slam to good use as I promised (since I took two revenue and one award trip to Europe in the meantime), I’m oddly tempted to top-up my account a bit.

US Airways is also running a (targeted) 100% bonus promotion for buying miles this month. as well

With boarding for American’s flight to New York called in the British Airways lounge, it was time to head to the gate. As our upgrades had yet to clear, we asked after having our boarding passes scanned.  One seat was left and I was at the top of the list.  I learned two things:

• It’s great to be an Executive Platinum as the airport upgrade list places all EXPs above all non-EXPs.  (It’s far less fun when your companion doesn’t inherit your status and falls into the latter.)
• The UK Passenger Service Charge (not to be confused with the UK Air Passenger Duty) is well worth the price to connect at LHR on the return for increased upgrade space.  In comparison, AA blocks 2 business class seats on its 757-200’s for crew rest (for a single crew member), making an already tough upgrade tougher.

American 171
Brussels (BRU) – New York Kennedy (JFK)
Tuesday, September 18th 2012
Depart:  10:17AM
Arrive: 12:43AM
Duration:  6 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-223ER (N198AA)
Seat: 3E (Business Class)

The wine and beverage lists were the same as those offered on the New York to London flight that I took a week prior.  The meals read as follows:

While American’s flight attendants normally practice FEBO (Front Even/Back Odd) for their starting point in taking meal orders, the purser took orders from the front.  My speculation for the neglected back is the presence of the crew rest in 4AB.  Thus, by the time she reached me, the pasta dish, the lone vegetarian option on the menu, was gone.  The purser told me she’d do what she could.

On AA’s two-cabin international service, business class has a choice of marinated cheese or warmed nuts.

The prepacked roll is a clear sign of a vegan meal.

I didn’t see any black olives as promised by the menu, but this felt far more on-menu than a vegetarian/vegan special order meal.

I chose the cheese plate over the sundae for dessert.

Shortly before landing, we had another meal service.  I opted for the pizza.

Our pilots announced at Brussels that we would likely arrive early to New York, but low ceilings at JFK delayed us ever slightly, eating up the time we had saved crossing the Atlantic.  As the lone apparent arrival at the time to JFK Terminal 8, US CBP was painless.

With 30 minutes free between security and boarding, it was time to visit the British Airways lounge. Our American 757 for the flight was nearby, although occluded by a railing.

Without an upgrade to business class yet, it was time to eat a quick breakfast:

When this trip was booked in July, I was unable to locate any confirmable upgrade space around the dates we were interested in traveling, so I went ahead and booked the trip with waitlisted systemwide upgrades. While I would normally be unwilling to do this with United (as I’m unwilling to play systemwide roulette to discover I lost and overpaid for my coach seat), American’s systemwides work on any fare so waitlisting (and ultimately clearing) came at no additional cost above and beyond an ordinary roundtrip in coach.

As the date approached, I steeled myself for a transaltantic flight in coach with the solace of having reserved exit row seats at booking.  After a bit of observation in late August and early September, upgrade space in business class consistently opened up on JFK-LHR between 48-72 hours if there was at least two full-fare business class seats for sale.  The upgrades for this flight cleared at 54 hours out.

After enjoying the Flagship Lounge for a few minutes after boarding was initially called, it was time to head to the gate.  While boarding for group 2 (or perhaps 3) was already underway, the PriorityAAccess line still about 10 passengers in line.

American 138
New York Kennedy (JFK) – London (LHR)
Wednesday, September 12th 2012
Depart:  8:03PM
Arrive: 7:28AM
Duration:  6 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-222ER (N765AN)
Seat: 10H (Business Class)

While AA’s business class is far superior to the coach seat I could have flown, its hard product leaves quite a bit to be desired compared to some Star Alliance carriers (or even British Airways).  Once I settled in to sleep, I was left battling the appreciable 10 degree angle-from-horizontal of the fully-reclined seat.  To make matters even worse, a woman with a lap infant was seated across the aisle.

The flight attendant working our side of the cabin passed out menus prior to push back and began taking orders as we taxied.  He was trapped in conversation with 8H, so our orders were taken shortly after takeoff.

Early into the flight, 10E, the middle seat in business class in the row (Yes, American has middle seats in its business class as well) had a broken reading light.  After the two business class flight attendants (rightfully) concluded it was the button on his seat that was broken and distracted themselves from starting the meal service, he sought a full refund for his seat from them.  Ordinarily on a redeye, I spend my time sleeping with a bit of time spent eating sprinkled in if I’m on a transoceanic flight.  Evidently, my priorities have all been off:  Rather than care for a comfortable seat for the $3.5k I’m hypothetically spending to fly across the ocean, I should care only about whether I have a working reading light…

The amenity kit:

The menu read as follows:

The wine and beverage lists read as follows:

I had requested a vegetarian meal shortly after booking.  American’s vegetarian meal also stands in for its vegan meal.  The main annoyance of this comes in the form of receiving margarine, rather than butter, with the meal.

I took the on-menu ice cream for my dessert.

After dinner, I wandered through the business class galley and ended up speaking with one of the flight attendants.  While landing cards were placed on the plane, American’s ground staff at JFK had failed to place any FastTrack immigration cards for London Heathrow on the plane.  With a 2 hour, 15 minute scheduled layover, I less concerned about the connection from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 and was instead much more concerned about my prospects of having time to stop by the Arrivals Lounge for a quick shower.

I settled in to my seat and attempted to sleep as best as I could, limited by the “early” 7:40PM departure out of JFK and the angle of the seat.  During the dinner service, I had requested the express breakfast option and found myself woken up by the flight attendant about 30 minutes prior to arrival.  In retrospect, I’m reasonably pleased with this decision as I didn’t have a good estimate for how much our early arrival might slip or how bad immigration queues could be for managing to stop by the arrivals lounge for breakfast.

While eating my breakfast, I had firmly convinced myself that I actually hadn’t slept at all on the flight.  The non-EU passport line ended up being marginally longer than the FastTrack line, but it still afforded enough time to stop by the American Airlines Arrivals Lounge prior to heading to Terminal 1, allowing me to convince myself that I was refreshed and had actually gotten enough sleep to make it through the day.

Alitalia is running a promotion for 15% off bookings made by noon (European time, 6AM Eastern) tomorrow by using coupon code WEEK15US for travel between October 1st and March 31st.  The promo is applicable to Delta flights on itineraries entirely within the US in addition to flights actually operated by Alitalia.

For example, a simple JFK-LAX roundtrip on Delta priced with ITA:

The same itinerary, priced with the coupon on Alitalia’s website:

It’s my understanding that these fares earn full Skypesos with Delta (or could be credited to Alaska).

Back in July, a brief fare war broke out across the domestic US carriers for travel from the United States to Ireland in the fall.  Around that time, I wrote a post discussing the process of finding an itinerary to actually use these low fares.

Because simply researching possible itineraries without actually going anywhere isn’t much fun, I booked one for myself and a friend who needed to eventually get from New York to Los Angeles.  This produced a slightly unusual, transatlantic (and backtracking!) way to get to L.A., JFK-LHR-DUB-BRU-JFK-LAX, stopping in Dublin for 5 days and Brussels for 1:

Due to the complexity of the itinerary, I gave up attempting to use multicity and called the Executive Platinum desk.  While this wasn’t actually a mistake fare, the agent placed me on hold for several minutes while verifying that $440/person was, in fact, the correct fare for this trip.

Since matching from Continental Platinum to American Executive Platinum in December 2011, I’ve had 8 systemwide upgrades on AA that I’ve been looking to use.  Up until this trip, I had been sitting at about 90k EQM on AA since May and had little-to-no planned international travel before their expiration date.  While United imposes fare minimums for its systemwides when used on international, long-haul travel, AA has no such requirements, allowing me to fly the entire trip in business class on the AA-operated segments.

Like my trip on United to Europe in January (for $680), $440 for roundtrip business class to Europe plants this trip firmly in revenue rather than award territory.  An award ticket in business class would run 100k miles (plus 20k foregone miles that were earned on this itinerary) and $130, a rather miserable 0.25 cents per mile redemption value.

I’m a bit late to the party, but Online Travel Review noted yesterday that Icelandair is having a 20% bonus on purchased points until September 28th.  30k Saga Club points (25k base + 5k bonus) can be purchased for 39,500ISK (including a 2000ISK processing fee).  Based on recent foreign exchange rates, this is roughly $331 assuming one uses a credit card with sane forex rates.

While this doesn’t sound like especially exciting news, Icelandair has some gems in its partner award chart.  Alaska Airlines roundtrip itineraries can be obtained for 20k Saga Club points in coach or 30k Saga Club points in first, in addition to a $40 or so fuel surcharge.  Further, while the award chart states “continental US,” there’s been quite a bit of success in booking itineraries with connections under 4 hours for travel all the way to Hawaii.

I would deem this deal as not long for this world, but it appears that Icelandair is well aware of the attention their point sale and award chart is getting.

This year, I’ve largely shifted my New York-San Francisco/Los Angeles trips to American as I’ve been greatly enjoying a phenomenal complimentary upgrade rate.  With my booked September travel completing my Executive Platinum re-qualification, I’ve begun to switch my attention to United.

For most of my travels, I’ve been departing out of Newark and La Guardia for reasons of destination, price, schedule, and the eligibility for complimentary upgrades.  Last weekend, I was flying to San Francisco on p.s.  In an effort to conserve my upgrade instruments, I had confirmed an upgrade for myself only on my redeye return.  Nonetheless, my flight was oversold in coach so I was able to pick up an operational upgrade to business class.

United 397
New York Kennedy (JFK) – San Francisco (SFO)
Saturday, August 4th 2012
Depart:  8:18AM
Arrive: 10:53AM
Duration:  5 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-222ER (N517UA)
Seat: 11C (Business Class)

For now, the hard product on p.s. is unchanged, although it is due to adopt the Continental lie-flat business class product and lose its first class cabin late this year.

My seatmate was no where to be found until two minutes before the door closed, so I wound up using his seat as my example of a business class seat (as I had already settled in and thrown my pillow and blanket into the overhead bin):

Sadly, the “new” United has “aligned” its on-board products including its menus.

Thanks to “alignment,” the menu looks unsurprisingly similar to my Newark to San Francisco flight in May in format.  While the “p.s.” designator is mostly just another marketing term (American uses the word “Flagship” to refer to its service along thes routes), it is still disappointing to see it removed from the product.

My return to this trip was an uneventful redeye back on p.s. to JFK.  While I’m disappointed by the decline of the p.s. soft product and the lack of complimentary upgrades on the route, I still prefer the p.s. business class seats to those on American.

Alaska Airlines is offering a $50 discount certificate for new Mileage Plan members resident in California who sign up by October 26th, 2012.  The discount code is valid for travel between September 5th and November 10th for travel from California.

While prices out of Newark on Alaska are generally not competitive with United for me, Alaska routinely has $168 one-way all-inclusive fares to and from Hawaii out of San Diego, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento.

ANA sent out a survey yesterday valid between August 9th and August 16th.  Even though United.com (prior to 3/3, Continental.com) has improved rather steadily over the past year for searching partner availability, ANA’s Star Alliance search is still quite valuable.

Until recently, American had a NYC-DUB fare priced at $51 (with $202 in additional fuel surcharges).  While prices have gone up slightly (the base fare is now $151), sub-$500 roundtrips to Europe are nothing to scoff at.

My starting point for any itinerary like this one is to glance at ExpertFlyer.

The fare rules for the OKX7Q5G1 fare include a few interesting snippets:

American tends to use MPM-based routing rules for its international fares; this fare is no different:

/VIA THE ATLANTIC/ MPM 3811
MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES BETWEEN ORIGIN AND DESTINATION
 MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES ORIGIN TO DESTINATION
       TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 550 MILES APPLIES
       WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA CHI AND/OR DFW AND/OR RDU AND/OR
       MIA
       TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 705 MILES APPLIES
       WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA SUB AREA 21

American directly serves DUB via ORD, but this trip is 4413 miles:

The CHI ticketed point deduction provides an additional 550 miles beyond the 3811 base when we connect in ORD, so routing via O’Hare is permissible.  With a base fare in-hand, we now want to try looking for itineraries that might work:

The “Advanced Routing Codes” have two components:

• “c:aa+” specifies that I want to fly on one or more AA-coded flights.
• “/f bc=o” specifies I want to fly under an O booking code.

Unfortunately, since this fare has been around for about a week, the O inventory on AA metal has largely disappeared:

Rather than fly entirely AA metal, we can try flying to Europe, then connecting to Aer Lingus:

The “c:aa+ c:ei” routing code specifies that I want to fly one or more AA-coded flights then an Aer Lingus-coded flight.  On the inbound leg, I need to reverse the order.  This search yields some prospective dates:

Clicking through on the 18th yields a few options:

Examining the price breakdown, we see that our $151 base fare was applicable.  (The variations in price are due to changes in government-imposed taxes.)

The next tricky part is trying to actually book this itinerary.  Roundtrip quickly stops providing the relevant flights and even Multicity may fail.  Generally, my complex revenue trips (including this one) have been booked by calling.  Even if the phone booking fee could not be waived, spending $25 to book an itinerary substantially cheaper than the “obvious” trips offered on the airlines’ websites may be worth it.

Last year, I picked up the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card when they were running a 40k miles after first purchase promotion.

Alaska offers its members using the card a 1K mile bonus on each booking.  At the time, I figured I would pick up Alaska-coded American Airlines flights occasionally when the AS-coded flights were cheaper or the same price as American’s own flight numbers.  Since making Executive Platinum last year, I’ve stuck to American-marketed and operated flights for the sake of my complimentary upgrades, so this part of my plan didn’t quite work out.  As of a few days ago, Alaska quietly inserted the note in July statements that the booking bonus was going to end August 1st.

As a further enticement of the card, Alaska offered a $110 companion ticket for cardholders annually good on any fare (for itineraries entirely on Alaska metal).  Since Alaska offers rather cheap, fully-flexible first class fares from Newark to Hawaii, this can be quite a bargain.  Consider a simple United fare to Kauai around Labor Day weekend:

This particular itinerary is far from ideal:  The JFK-LAX and HNL-EWR flights aren’t eligible for complimentary upgrades (even if I do like p.s.).  The same itinerary in Business or First Class on United runs about $2500 per person.

While American is a bit more expensive, I would almost certainly be assured complimentary upgrades as an Executive Platinum member (albeit at the cost of 20 500-mile stickers to upgrade a companion for the entire trip) or could easily burn 4 of my spare systemwides to upgrade:

In contrast, a first class itinerary on Alaska Airlines for a single traveler runs $1695.  The companion ticket adds $167.50 to this ($110 for the ticket, $57.50 in excise taxes).

While it is not an ideal itinerary, the total all-in cost of airfare per person comes to $931.25 for first class.  The class of service bonus (~5k RDM if crediting to American) and ability to save my RPUs and GPUs with United makes the small price increase very tolerable. (If combined with an easily available Avios award for 4.5k points per person on American for an early morning BOS-JFK segment, the inbound overnight in Seattle can be avoided by taking the SEA-BOS redeye operated by Alaska.)

Today, the companion ticket has been restricted to coach fares effective August 1st.  To make matters worse, Alaska-operated flights in coach out of EWR tend to be expensive…

While $1400 or so ($1275 plus the companion fare and its excise taxes) is a bit cheaper than my sample United itinerary would be for two, the cost of an overnight in Seattle each way (or an overnight on the outbound and a BOS-JFK Avios award on the return) eats up most of the cost savings.

While I do not have nearly as much invested in Alaska as say American or United (I’ve only flown 6 Alaska-operated one-ways on the LAX-SEA route and I have the credit card), I’m still left to grumble about these “changes I’m going to like” that I had thought were confined to Jeff Smisek’s Continental Airlines d.b.a. United Airlines.

Outside of my hastily put together award trip to Australia and New Zealand and a very brief visit to Montreal, roughly 134k of the 144k miles I flew last year were domestic, primarily flying to Los Angeles and the Bay Area.  This year is no different.

In the past, I’ve written extensively about United’s p.s. service from New York Kennedy to San Francisco and Los Angeles, ranging from the vast legroom of Row 9 to the first class experience.  In December, I completed American Airlines’ Executive Platinum status match challenge from United.  Unlike p.s., which is ineligible for complimentary premier upgrades, American offers its Executive Platinum members complimentary upgrades even on its Flagship Service on JFK-SFO/LAX.

As someone who has made 8 trips to Los Angeles and 6 trips to San Francisco this year, I’m one to appreciate upgrades when I can have them.  Had I not directed the bulk of those trips to American (only 2 of the 14 trips were on United), I would have exhausted my 4 regional upgrades and 6 system wide upgrades that I earned last year with United in April if I used them only for the redeye flights I took.  (Let’s not talk about what I would have done for the next 8 months of the year.)

Nonetheless, I’ve become somewhat complacent and deferred writing up a trip report of the service, so here goes.

American 17
New York Kennedy (JFK) – San Francisco (SFO)
Friday, April 20th
Depart:  7:30PM
Arrive: 10:09PM
Duration:  5 hours, 39 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-223ER (N335AA)
Seat: 11D (Business Class)

The menu read as follows:

I passed on the shrimp appetizer that came with the first course.

Conveniently, American has offered a vegetarian pasta dish with every JFK-LAX/SFO dinner flight I’ve had…  I contrast with the choice of a “cold chicken salad” or a “cold chicken sandwich” that I’ve experienced all too often on United.

Since my upgrade did not clear for the island hopper, I was not looking forward to flying in coach for 24 hours on a 737.  After a few calls to United (namely, to convince the agents that, yes, despite their location in North America, I was within 24 hours of the departure time of my flights), I moved to the nonstop, UA200.

Notably, my connection in Guam was the first time I’ve looked forward to encountering TSA.  When I fly in the United States, the worst hassles I suffer are the lines and the opt-out pat down.  In contrast, the security situation at Manila is a bit more involved.  To enter the airport building, passengers had to have their bags X-rayed and pass through a metal detector.  (I can live with that; I had to in Istanbul.)  After picking up my boarding pass, paying the Terminal Fee, and passing through passport control, we had another security checkpoint, this one in a normal-looking, walk-through metal detector setup.  Upon reaching the gate, my carry-on bags were opened and the contents throughly inspected (including the individual, blank sheets of paper in a folio I travel with), I was patted down, and then two guys needed to spend a minute looking at my shoes.  To be clear, this wasn’t because I was randomly selected for enhanced screening:  Everyone at the gate had to pass through this rigmarole.

United 200
Guam (GUM) - Honolulu (HNL)
Monday, May 28th
Depart:  6:35AM
Arrive: 5:56PM
Duration:  7 hours, 21 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-222
Seat: 17G (Economy Class)

For the sake of completeness, I did take a few photos on my (comparatively) short hop to Manila.  Coach just doesn’t merit quite as many words (or photos) as first class.

ANA 949
Tokyo (NRT) – Manila (MNL)
Friday, May 25th
Depart:  6:17PM
Arrive: 9:34PM
Duration:  4 hours, 17 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-381ER (JA603A)
Seat: 26B (Economy Class)

Since I was an arriving passenger from a Global First flight, I had access to the first class lounge in Tokyo for my three hour layover.  If nothing else, it made for a change of scenery from March.

Upon entering, I presented my boarding pass to the check-in podium.  I’m not sure why it’s necessary, but I was escorted to the elevator bank up to the first class level.  Would armed guards have tackled me if I tried to press the elevator call button on my own?

As noted before, the lounge has unique artwork.

The lounge had a slightly different food selection than the main lounge.

The views and decor are the essentially the same (the first class lounge sits one level above the main lounge).

I never found out the reason, but while I was waiting for my flight to Manila, an EVA Air A330 was met by emergency personnel on the ground to be towed away while followed by a slow moving procession of firetrucks:

After about two hours in the United lounge, I left for the ANA lounge closer to my departure gate to get my seat changed (from the second to last row middle seat on a 763 to an aisle) and to flee the deteriorating wifi quality.  While I did get my seat changed, the ANA lounge was packed and the wifi was somehow even worse than the one I had left.

As I was checking up on flight loads the day before my trip, I noticed that the day’s UA915 (HNL-SFO) flight had been canceled and my flight to Honolulu showing no seats for sale in either cabin.  Since SHARES’ (apparent) inadequacies prevent adding one’s name to the volunteer list anywhere but at the airport for the segment in question (unlike United’s Apollo system, which let me volunteer at La Guardia for my connection in Chicago to Portland in February), I waited at my gate at Newark hoping for an on-time departure (and a subsequent on-time arrival) so I could volunteer before they found enough people willing (or not) to take another flight.

We arrived on-time from Newark and quite fortunately, my next gate was only a hundred feet away.  The gate lice had already swarmed the boarding area, but I was able to make it up to the podium.

“Do you need volunteers?”

“Yes, we’re oversold by 11.  We’re offering $400 in travel credit, a hotel, meal vouchers, and a first class seat on tomorrow’s flight.”

“I’m not actually going to Honolulu.  I’m going to Manila today.  Do you think you can make that work?”

While it’s not a 777-worth of people, being oversold by 11 passengers at T-45 minutes certainly left the gate agents pressed to take any volunteer they could find.  With a US passport and no checked bags, they were able to reroute me, even on a moderately complex international itinerary.  When I was standing at the podium with my netbook, I did a few searches with ITA for United inventory, coming up with the flight to Tokyo, reaching Manila via Guam about 24 hours later than I had planned.

They came up with something better (allowing me to avoid ditching a night at my hotel in Manila):  United GlobalFirst to Tokyo followed by the ANA nonstop to Manila.  Why ITA failed to show this itinerary to me baffles me.

As I was leaving the podium, I asked–having not looked at my boarding passes yet–whether they were able to find a way of sticking me in business or first class.  “Oh, we managed to keep you where you were.”

Having only 50 minutes prior to departure, I took off for the international terminal (which thankfully is connected airside).  With Gate 100 in sight, I found myself next to the United Global First Lounge and with a few moments.  I looked at my boarding pass for my seat number:   4A.  A thought crossed my mind:  “Huh, I think that’s first class.”

I took a moment to pop into the lounge, but only had a few minutes to check my email before the announced that boarding was starting.

Our Tulip-bearing 747:

United’s Business product comes with a single pillow; Global First (as well as p.s. First Class) gives you two.

United 837
San Francisco (SFO) – Tokyo (NRT)
Thursday, May 24th
Depart:  11:48PM
Arrive: 2:11PM
Duration:  10 hours, 23 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-222
Seat: 4A (First Class)

(For reasons that are not fully clear to me, the first class “suites” on United have shoulder harnesses but the business class seats do not.)

The amenity kit was consistent with the new (Tulip-less) branding of Continental d/b/a United Airlines.  (The plastic-wrapped slippers, however, still had Tulips.)

When I flew to Sydney, I was on the right side of the aircraft, giving a terrific view shortly after take off of the Golden Gate Bridge (at night).  Between being on the left side of the aircraft and a bit of cloud cover, the views after take off weren’t as good.

With 5061 miles to go, I was fully prepared to relish every moment of it.

The menu read as follows:

As a legacy United flier, I’m supposed to cheer that Continental’s management kept the warm nuts served in a ramekin, so here-here! (Economy Plus seems to be the other vestige of United Airlines.)

First came the bread (I skipped the tuna appetizer):

Rather than the on-menu tomato-basil soup, they were serving a wild mushroom soup that turned out to be quite good (and I’m not much of a mushroom fan).

Prior to takeoff, I was able to secure the pasta for myself on account of being a “vegetarian who got put on this flight less than 30 minutes ago.”  While United no longer prioritizes meals by status (except for Global Services members), a combination of my sob story, being in full-fare F, and having 1K status worked (or perhaps no one else wanted the pasta).

I took the ice cream.  One of these days, I’ll be adventurous and try the cheese selection on an international United flight.

Our five course meal got me most of the way through my movie, so I finished it up and then tried to get a bit of sleep.  Rather fortunately, I had lucked out by having a minimal amount of sleep the night before, so I was able to actually fall asleep.

I woke up at the western tip of the Aleutians.

I chose the fruit and yogurt for breakfast.

For some reason, I like the shrubbery of Narita.

For all of the moaning that occurs on the Internet about how “US-based airlines suck,” I was impressed by the United Global First product.  As far as hard-products go, the seat was quite comfortable (aided, of course, by the two pillows provided) and offered substantial storage space in the compartments next to the seat. While the legacy United Business class product doesn’t provide aisle access to every seat (and even has, gasp, middle seats, as I complained last week), the suites are well arranged.  As far as the soft-product goes, the crew was excellent (I had a vegetarian meal to eat!) and the food decent (I wasn’t on Swiss).

That said, if not for award tickets or VDB reroutes, the next time I need to fly from San Francisco to Tokyo, am I going to pull out my American Express Premier Rewards Gold card (3 points per dollar on airfare, of course) to buy a $8538 walk-up, one-way fare?  I’ll be realistic:  Of course not.

As far as flights go, my trip in first class from Newark to San Francisco was uneventful. Having been rather sleep deprived from the night before, I slept for most of the flight. I must have missed an announcement, but these flights are now offering menus that I’m continuing to find fascinating (on an non-p.s., domestic route):

I had about an hour before boarding started, so I visited the Senator lounge next to my gate to check up on my email as my hotel imposed somewhat outrageous prices for internet access.

Traditionally, Continental operated the Newark-Berlin route with a mix of 757-200’s and 767-200’s.  Today, United was using a 767-224ER.

United 97
Berlin Tegel (TXL) to Newark (EWR)
Sunday, April 1st
Depart: 9:35AM
Arrive: 12:40PM
Duration: 9 hours, 5 minutes
Aircraft: 767-224ER (N67158)
Seat: 4B (Business Class)

The 767-200’s of Continental are still using the old BusinessFirst recliner style seats (rather than the full lie-flats of the 757-200’s and 777-200’s):

The menu read as follows:

Lately, United has been acting as if “bread” were a course unto itself for its premium cabins, so I must do the same.

I had ordered a vegetarian meal, but the flight attendant taking meal orders offered the on-menu cheese lasagna as well.

Shortly before landing, we were offered another snack service.

While this was a comfortable 9 hour daytime flight, I would have personally put up with the inconvenience of a connection in order to pick up a lie-flat seat for the overnight transatlantic flight.

Since Turkish Airlines was only offering the extended city tour, I had to cut out of the city tour a bit early.  Despite my best efforts to arrive at the airport with minimal time to spare, I still had time to visit the Turkish Airlines business class/Star Alliance Gold lounge.

From the time I booked this award (in December) until departure, Aeroplan was firmly convinced that I was flying on an Airbus A320 series aircraft.  A few weeks before the trip, the then Continental.com website began reporting that Turkish Airlines was operating an Airbus A340 between Istanbul and Berlin, even while Aeroplan (and Turkish Airlines!) were showing an A321 loaded on the schedule.

I didn’t get my hopes up.  Once I arrived at the gate, I was informed that the inbound aircraft was late, so I found a seat for myself somewhat removed from the windows.  When the gate agents began the mad boarding scramble, I looked out the windows and noticed two engines hanging off the left wing:  Continental.com was right.

Turkish 1723
Istanbul (IST) to Berlin-Tegel (TXL)
Saturday, March 31st
Duration: 2 hours, 50 minutes
Aircraft: A340-311 (TC-JDJ)
Seat: 2B (Business Class)

Our flight included dinner.  Normally, I stash my menu in my bag and photograph it off the plane with (hopefully) better lighting.  This time, I left it under my screen and a flight attendant took it back as he was walking through the cabin.

I left the United lounge shortly before the revised, scheduled boarding time.  The flight status TVs throughout the lounge had out of order signs next to them (despite being on) that didn’t exactly inspire my confidence.  Our departure was a bit further delayed, giving me a moment to snap a few pictures of the plane and take a quick walk to the end of the pier before boarding commenced.

Poor business class award availability for this flight notwithstanding, the cabin was quite empty:  15 of the 28 seats were occupied.

Turkish 51
Tokyo (NRT) to Istanbul (IST)
Friday, March 30th
Depart: 12:28PM
Arrive: 6:51PM
Duration: 12 hours, 23 minutes
Aircraft: 777-3F2ER (TC-JJL)
Seat: 2B (Business Class)

Like Air New Zealand’s safety video featuring the All Blacks (when your flight’s IFE is working properly), Turkish Airlines has a slightly off-beat one of its own with Manchester United.

The obligatory, pre-departure flight show:

The menu read as follows:

Since I had requested a vegetarian meal, my appetizer came preplated rather than served off of the cart.

After the meal, the flight attendants closed the window shades and turned on the mood lighting for our long flight across Asia.

About two hours out from Istanbul, we had a second meal service.

Overall, I was impressed by the Turkish Airlines business class product’s superb soft product, but I felt the seat left a bit to be desired.

New planes with new interiors goes a long way at providing a compelling hard product.  When I took this trip in late March, the 777-300ER I was on was about 13 months old; in comparison, the Thai 747-400 I took to Tokyo was about 21 years old.  That said, as a hard product person, the question I had for myself was “who would put up with a middle seat in paid business class in this day and age?”  It’s a question I ask myself every time I see the legacy United’s “new” 8 abreast business class product on its 747’s and 777’s.  (I shudder to contemplate United’s old business class product for long-haul travel, even if I enjoy their p.s. service domestically.)  In comparison, Air New Zealand fits 26-28 lie-flat business class seats, each with direct aisle access, on its 777’s in the same space that Turkish Airlines uses to fit 28 angled lie-flat business class seats, consisting of 8 window seats and 4 middle seats without direct aisle access.

Because of my short redeye into Tokyo, I actually wound up going to bed early and somehow managed to wake up after sleeping about 8 hours.  This left me with a few hours to kill in my hotel room, eating breakfast at my hotel, and then finally a few more hours to kill at the airport.

Star Alliance carriers share much of the check-in space at the south wing of Terminal 1.  I arrived at the terminal a bit before the three hours prior to departure mark and saw that Turkish was assigned to the same check-in area as Air China.  After a highly choreographed changeover, check-in opened and I was advised to relax in the United Club until my flight began boarding.

For once, I found a United Club offering a fare different than cheese, crackers, and trail mix.

The lounge was nearly empty while I was there.

The Tulip lives.

For my hop to Tokyo, I selected the Thai-operated redeye.

Having relaxed in the Thai business class lounge until 45 minutes before departure, I decided to head to my gate.  Boarding didn’t start until around 25 minutes before departure, leaving me standing around the gate wondering how they could manage to board an entire 744 in 25 minutes when United can’t seem to board an A320 in 35 minutes.  Nonetheless, we managed to depart miraculously on-time.

Thai 640
Bangkok (BKK) to Tokyo (NRT)
Thursday, March 28th
Depart: 10:10PM
Arrive: 6:20AM
Duration: 6 hours, 10 minutes
Aircraft: 747-4D7 (HS-TGK)
Seat: 12A (Business Class)

This flight is a surprisingly short flight, until one studies a map:

Bangkok to Tokyo is a 2889 mile direct flight.  For comparison, San Francisco to New York is 2586 miles and Los Angeles to New York is 2475 miles.  While American and United serve a midnight snack (normally a chicken sandwich or a fruit and cheese plate) on their Flagship and p.s. routes respectively, Thai offers two meals on this flight.

The menu read as follows:

Due to the short flight time, I chose to skip the dinner and focus on sleep instead.  Breakfast service started about two hours before landing.

Zürich Airport has a terrific aircraft observation deck prior to the main security checkpoints.  (Since it seems the emergency exits for it dump out onto the tarmac, the area has its own screening checkpoint.)  As I had some time to kill and I preferred to look at planes rather than my laptop inside of the Senator lounge, I spent a bit of time there.

A number of the benches are marked with major cities and their distances from Zürich, including my next destination, Bangkok.

The Swiss Senator Lounge in Zürich was no different than the Lufthansa Senator Lounges I’ve seen, with the exception that chocolates were substituted for pretzels.

Swiss 180
Zürich (ZRH) to Bangkok (BKK)
Tuesday, March 26th
Depart: 10:45PM
Arrive: 2:40PM
Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes
Aircraft: A340-313X (HB-JMG)
Seat: 10A (Business Class)

First class boards from the forward entry door.  Business class and economy board from the middle door.

Swiss Business Class is configured in a staggered configuration, giving some seats direct window and aisle access.  I chose 10A over the wing.

Unlike every other airline I’ve experienced to date, Swiss provides a card with instructions on how to use the seat.

The seat was superb in all aspects except for its underseat storage as my laptop bag could not be stuffed sufficiently into the opening in front of me to satisfy the cabin crew for takeoff/landing purposes.

The amenity kit was nothing extraordinary:

With tradition, the takeoff flight show:

The menu read as follows:

I had ordered a vegetarian meal in advance, which featured the artichoke ravioli on the main menu.

Dinner ended while we were north of Turkey, over the Black Sea.  I finished watching my movie and went to bed, enjoying the two meter long bed.

I woke up about an hour outside of Bangkok to have breakfast of a croissant, some yogurt, and juice.  (Considering the time change, this wound up being my lunch.)

Overall, I was astounded by the quality of the Swiss business class product, from seat, to cabin crew, to food served.

With an hour and a half to kill before my flight, I popped into the SAS Lounge at Copenhagen Airport. As a Star Gold member, I was admitted to the Scandinavian lounge area rather than the Business Class lounge. While I did have access to the Servisair and Novis Lounges at the airport with my Priority Pass card (from having an American Express Platinum card), the lounge was nice and the Internet connection fast so I had no reason to justify lounge hopping.

The Scandinavian lounge is on the upper level, primarily overlooking the Business lounge.
The upper level has a few seating areas.  One overlooks the concourse and looks into the lounge itself.

Another seating area spanned back to have landside views.

The middle area had a small area for snacks (salads, pita components, drinks, desserts) and a fireplace.

The gate for my Swiss flight was a bit removed from the central part of the terminal (where the SAS lounge was), so I left a bit early only to discover that our inbound aircraft was late.

Swiss 1273
Copenhagen (CPH) to Zürich (ZRH)
Saturday, March 24th
Depart: 8:15PM
Arrive: 9:33PM
Duration: 1 hour, 18 minutes
Aircraft: A321-111 (HB-IOF)
Seat: 6F (Business Class)

The flight was rather empty with 3 business class passengers (for 6 rows of seats) and a mostly empty economy cabin.

For a coach-style seat, the legroom was quite good.

Even for a short, intra-European hop, the flight came with a meal.  I had ordered a vegetarian meal and with the sparse cabin, I didn’t get a look at what the other passengers were served:

The chickpea, pepper, cucumber, hummus, and lime dish had a short life as the best airline meal I’ve ever had.  (The title was seized by the dinner service on LX180, Zürich to Bangkok, two days later.)

When I was booking my trip in December, I was squeezed by two factors:  Limited advanced business class award availability and increasing swaths of fuel surcharges on many Star Alliance carriers for Aeroplan awards.  For the outbound leg, the former was a larger problem than the latter, as I wound up scouring every United, Swiss, Singapore (before the good new days of occasional JFK-FRA J award availability), and, yes, even US Airways-operated transatlantic city pair for award availability.  Even as the search dritfted towards fuel surcharge-imposing carriers, Lufthansa and Air Canada, my options were limited.

While it was not perfect, I came across UA 122 from Newark to Copenhagen, operated by a premerger Continental 757-200.  I wasn’t particularly thrilled by its 5:30PM departure at the time of booking, but it was a lie-flat, fuel surcharge-free seat across the Atlantic on the day I wanted to fly.  United announced yesterday that the route would be cut in September.

Three months later on the day before departure, I glanced at my email around 6PM and thought “I should remember to check-in soon” and pulled up my Aeroplan itinerary to be reminded of the departure time.  It’s somewhat fortunate I did think to check-in, as I would have probably not considered leaving my office until the plane was already taxiing.  Somehow, I had thought my flight was around 8:30 or even 9PM.

Therein lies the problem with this flight and many transatlantic flights for that matter in my book:  It’s too early if you’re loosely sync’d to the eastern time zone.  For our particular flight, FlightAware says it arrived at 7:17 CEST or 1:17AM EST.  Ordinarily, I’d consider going to bed around 1 or 2AM EST, not waking up for a full day in Europe.

Having written enough of my first world problems in flight scheduling, it’s time to discuss the flight itself.

United 122
Newark (EWR) to Copenhagen (CPH)
Friday, March 23rd
Depart: 5:49PM
Arrive: 7:17AM
Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes
Aircraft: 757-224 (N14121)
Seat: 3B (Business Class)

With departure comes the flight show.

The English menu read as follows:

The amenity kits are styled in the premerger, Continental package.

I had ordered an Asian vegetarian meal in advance of this flight.  When the purser came around for meal orders, she had already checked what had been loaded aboard.  I chose the Indian curry over selecting something from the menu.

Due to a bit of turbulence slowing things down, our meal service ran about two hours from departure, just prior to us starting our transatlantic track.  In retrospect, the meal service during my first class experience on United p.s. in December felt like an eternity despite having a better flight attendant to passenger ratio. United’s three-cabin 757-200’s used for p.s. have a single flight attendant for a first class cabin of 12 passengers; Continental’s two-cabin 757-200’s used for mostly transatlantic BusinessFirst service have a single flight attendant for a cabin of 15 passengers (after discounting a seat used for crew rest purposes).

I awoke off the coast of Denmark to the start of our breakfast service.

This trip and its sampling of international business classes brought me newfound appreciation for the value of a good seat.  Overall, this seat seemed a bit cramped compared to premerger United lie-flat seats on United’s 747, 767, and “select” 777’s and I’m not abnormally tall.

Arrival services in Copenhagen were a bit disappointing as unlike many other BusinessFirst-serviced cities, United has not made arrangements for showers or day rooms for arriving passengers in Copenhagen.  With at least one widebody ahead of us, passport control took roughly twenty five minutes, from which I made my bleary eyed way into the city to explore before my flight to Zurich.

As one of the gotchas of the switch over to the legacy Continental systems of the merged United Airlines, the powers which be decided to reduce the distances between many city-pairs.  While some of these were understandable changes (when the airport moved but the mileage did not change) but many were inexplicable.  The Atlantic shrank.  The continental United States shrank.  The Pacific shrank.

A while back, United ran a major ad campaign in New York.  When reports first surfaced of this problem on FlyerTalk, I was unable to find any photos on Google Images of one particular billboard.  As a result, I was quite thrilled when I, bleary-eyed from a redeye into Newark, came across a sign in the concourse:

Yesterday, United announced to FlyerTalk they would reverse the mileage changes and retroactively fix flights which had credited in the meantime.

Admittedly, much of my discussion on this blog frequently focuses on very first world problems.  For example, my upgrade did not clear on my American flight to San Francisco last night.  (It’s hard to complain when I was on a $109.40 all-in fare.)

Meanwhile, United moved its computer systems over to premerger Continental’s to provide a unified passenger system.  My miles, upgrades, and reservations transfered flawlessly while they did not for others.

colpuck on FlyerTalk reminds us that if (temporarily) losing our miles is the worst thing that can happen to us, we’re in pretty good shape:

Last night while we were fretting over the system merger and deciding whether or not the world would come to and end it actually did for some. Tornadoes moved through AL, KY, and IN killing 73 people. Greg Cook hugs his dog Coco after finding her inside his destroyed home in the East Limestone, Ala. on Friday, March 2, 2012. A reported tornado destroyed several houses in northern Alabama as storms threatened more twisters across the region Friday (AP Photo/The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr.) Mr. Cook has his dog and we have our airline. We have all lost some and we have all won some. It is just a question of degrees.

As an additional perk to those of us flying home on American, they gave us access to the International First Class lounge at LAX.

American gave us a tour of their newly opened Flagship check-in area at LAX.  While normally reserved for Concierge Key members and passengers traveling in international or transcontinental, 3-cabin first class, they permitted us to come back to use the check-in area for our flights home from LAX (if, of course, we were traveling on American).

The main perk of this area?  They drop you off at the very head of the TSA name checking line.  Consider my experience the week prior at LAX:  I waited 20 minutes to get my boarding pass and ID checked and then spent 20 seconds in the actual screening process thanks to TSA Pre.

…passengers swim.  In the weeks leading up to OWMD, there was an auction to participate in a water evacuation while at the AA training facility.  Having had the luxury of watching from dry land, I’m pretty sure I never want to have to bail out of an aircraft somewhere in the North Atlantic.

Nearly two weeks afterwards, I still haven’t started posting my photos from oneworld MegaDo (besides the Cathay Pacific 777 masthead for this blog).

At Dallas, American gave us some statistics about their customers (and us). As it turns out, some people are more insane than myself when it comes to frequent flying.

The American representative confirmed that those miles flown were entirely butt-in-seat.  To put those numbers in perspective, flying 1.033 million miles per year requires flying 2832 miles per day.  New York to San Francisco is only 2568 miles.

If constrained by flying only 271 segments per year, each flight needs to average 3814 miles.  New York to London is only 3451 miles.

Singapore Airlines just sent me an email detailing the updates to their KrisFlyer program.

“Thank you for your continued support for Singapore Airlines. In our regular review to improve the KrisFlyer programme, we will be making revisions to the Singapore Airlines and SilkAir Award and Upgrade Award charts. We will also be extending Saver Award for First and Business Class to more flights as part of this upcoming revision. The changes to the Singapore Airlines and SilkAir Award and Upgrade Award charts will include adjustments to Saver, Standard and Full Award levels in selected cabin classes. Some destinations will be re-designated to different zones. These changes will be effective for redemption bookings from 1 March 2012 for flights departing 1 April 2012 onwards. For more details, please refer to the Revised Singapore Airlines and SilkAir Award and Upgrade Award Charts and Revised Star Alliance Award and Upgrade Award Charts. We appreciate your invaluable feedback and are pleased to announce that we will also be enhancing our seat award redemption offerings. Currently Saver Award is only available for selected First and Business Class flights. With this improvement, you will be able to redeem Saver Award for First and Business Class on most flights, including First and Business Class on our B777-300ER flights; and Business Class on our A380 and A340-500 flights. This will be available for redemption bookings from 8 March 2012, for flights departing 1 April 2012 onwards. To find out more, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions below. We hope that you will continue to enjoy the benefits of the KrisFlyer programme.  I would like to thank you once again for your support for Singapore Airlines and we look forward to welcoming you onboard our flight again soon.”

While I don’t have any KrisFlyer miles nor much in way of Amex Membership Rewards points to transfer, I have to wonder whether they’ll finally release some business class seats on the 777-300ER, A340, and A380 to partners for redemptions.

I got to LAX a bit early (1 hour, 45 minutes or so before departure) and made my way to the premium check-in line.  Since the flight was showing F0J0Y0, I volunteered to be bumped to a rather surprised service manager.  Am I the only 1K traveling in business class who has ever asked about being bumped?

I then made my way to the priority security line to enjoy my Freedom Grope.  (I’m now 8 for 8 in being “randomly” selected for the backscatter at the United LAX terminal in the past 11 months).  I had the (mis)fortune of facing the nonpriority line to notice two facts:  The nonpriority line was markedly shorter and the nonpriority line only seems to have walk-through metal detectors.

As I had about an hour and a half before departure, I visited the United Club where my old standbys awaited me:  Crackers, cheese, carrots with ranch dip, shortbread cookies, trail mix, pretzels, and yogurt-covered raisins.  At least it’s consistent?

An hour before departure, I headed to the gate next door to look into my chances of getting VDB’d where I got to kick off the start of my trainwreck of a p.s. flight.  It seems these days that misadventures in business class are the best first world problems I can muster.

United 912

Los Angeles (LAX) – New York Kennedy (JFK)

Monday, January 2nd

Depart: 11:49PM

Arrive: 7:44AM

Duration:  4 hours, 55 minutes

Aircraft: Boeing 757-222 (N512UA)

Seat: 9C (Business Class)

Row 9 is the stuff legends are made of.

With three agents at the gate, one was busy for 50 minutes “setting up the flight” to avoid passenger questions.  The other two stood around helplessly, talking between themselves.  When it came time to start boarding, the two agents both openly announced to the other gate agent and the passengers in earshot that they did not know the boarding order.  While United has made changes to its boarding order, it’s not especially complex.

I made my way to my seat and began noticing the differences between this flight and my normal experience on p.s.  Three flight attendants were gathered in the galley at door 2R talking amongst themselves rather than greeting passengers or taking jackets.  While my jacket was stuffed into my carry-on bag in the overhead, numerous passengers were sitting with jackets in their laps.  Given the conveniently placed handle on the right (and only right) side of business class in front of 9C that a flight attendant normally temporarily hangs bags on, I can only believe that taking jackets is the rule and not the exception.

About five minutes into boarding, I wandered up to the galley to get something to drink as I wasn’t going to be interested in my choices of water, orange juice, or faux champagne.  One of the flight attendants, annoyed that I had disturbed their conversation, retorted back that my “choices were those on the tray,” gesturing at the three beverages that were prepoured in the galley.  At this point, it’s worth noting that customized predeparture beverages have been available on United since September 1st.

I returned to my seat to be asked by a husband and wife split across 9A and 9D to change seats…  with their 13 year old son seated in 10D.  Going from an aisle seat with practically infinite legroom to a window seat is hardly a fair trade, especially when the son (nor technically the parents) was not exit row qualified.  Needless to say, 9B wasn’t enthusiastic about their offer either.

We had an initial 35 minute delay for pushback because the ground crew was still loading bags.  Having missed our slot for departure, our wheels up time was further delayed by another 15 minutes.   After take off, I opted for the cheese plate as a quick snack while checking up on the Internet before turning in for the night.

While the hard product was every bit as comfortable as it normally would be, the experience on this flight was far below my expectations on p.s. and lackluster even for a domestic flight.

For my stop in Vancouver, I was booked to have an approximately 5 hour long layover.  I went into Canada to visit the NEXUS office to finally complete my iris scan, obtain my properly branded Air Canada boarding pass (rather than the one I had from Air New Zealand), and then reentered the United States.  Amongst those activities, obtaining the boarding pass actually took the most time:  The manned stations were swapped and the automated kiosk required that I massage the screen with my finger tips for minutes at a time to get it to respond to button presses to print the boarding pass and to try to standby for the earlier flight to Los Angeles.

I then walked in search of the Maple Leaf Lounge so I could take a shower.  Having not studied a map of the concourse ahead of time, I wound up walking past it only to more carefully scan my surroundings for the entrance on my way back.

My chief priority was to take a shower after my flight from Auckland.  Fortunately, the lone  shower was unoccupied.

Unfamiliar with Air Canada’s meal policies, I made myself a small salad to tide myself over if there wasn’t a vegetarian meal on the earlier flight.

The lounge itself was reasonably empty.

When I approached the gate, I found that my standby had cleared.

Since I was seated in a bulkhead in business class, I had placed my laptop bag and camera in the overhead bin, forgetting that I would want to take a picture of the meal.  Amongst the choices of chicken, beef, and pasta as standard options.  I chose the pasta.  The meal came with cold (gasp) nuts to start, a roll, a salad with balsamic vinegar and oil dressing, and a small slice of chocolate cake.

Air Canada 554

Vancouver (YVR) – Los Angeles (LAX)

Saturday, December 31st

Depart: 3:21PM

Arrive: 5:52PM

Duration:  2 hours, 31 minutes

Aircraft: Embraer 190 (C-FMZU)

Seat: 1A (Business Class)

While I’m normally indifferent to in-flight entertainment options, a glitch in the air show map gave me a chuckle.

Based on my flight last night, there’s a joint Citi-AAdvantage promotion offering 30 free minutes of wifi per flight until February 16th.

United is advertising 20-25% off redemptions to Europe and Central/Southern Africa.  There are a handful of restrictions:  tickets must economy saver tickets, the trip must include a Saturday stay, and tickets must be booked by January 16th.

Rather oddly, they’ve further subdivided the discount into 20% off (“peak” days) and 25% off (“off-peak” days).  Given we are already discussing discounted economy awards, it’s surprising that to have even further distinction in award levels in a two-tier award chart.

The bottom line?  One can travel to Europe for 45k miles roundtrip in coach.

FlyerTalk and Million Mile Secrets have found a 60k Mileage Plus explorer offer offering 50k miles on first purchase and 10k miles after $25k in spending.  dabearz73 on FlyerTalk suggests logging into one’s United account and then going to the offer website.

I currently have the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature card and formerly had the Continental OnePass Plus Mastercard.  I’m able to see the 60k offer when I’m logged in.

After spending the day and early evening in San Francisco, I took the BART back to reclaim my bag from the left luggage service and to head through security.  With three Star Alliance lounges to choose from, I decided to visit all three.

My first stop was the United Club in the international terminal.

After coming up the escalator, I turned right and found a nearly empty lounge area with about four other people in it (including for a brief bit, a screaming infant).

At least the United Club food and drinks are consistent?

After a bit of time, I decided to head over to the United Club in terminal 3 to visit until the SilverKris lounge opened.  The decor is essentially identical, but there’s a nice mural just past the front desk of the zodiac constellations.

After checking out this lounge and opening up my laptop to purchase some American Airlines tickets for which my hold was about to expire on, I decided to head over to the Singapore Airlines SilverKris lounge.  Since I actually had an international boarding pass departing directly from SFO, I had access to the lounge.

The front desk clerk had to make copious notes onto a roster at her desk with details from my boarding pass and United 1K card.  It left me feeling rather glad that United is able to just scan the boarding pass to determine whether a passenger has access to the lounge.

As they had just opened for the evening shift, I was the first passenger at the the lounge.  The seating area for the lounge is quite small and it’s understandable why Singapore Airlines is so restrictive when it comes to letting Star Alliance Gold elites enter the lounge.

I was quite pleased by the food offerings here compared to the United Clubs, especially for such a small lounge.

I was quite surprised to see open bottles of liquor, even in a lounge, within the United States.

The window had a mix of old-new and new livery United planes.

I traveled just over 144k miles this year, approximately 125k of which were revenue flights:

I wound up with four redemptions:

• 2 nights at the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas as part of Starwood’s Free Resort Nights promotion.
• 1 upgrade from coach to p.s. business class on a redeye (20k UA miles)
• New York to Sydney to Auckland to Los Angeles to New York in business class from Aeroplan (76k Amex Membership Reward points)
• A trip to Asia (via Europe) in business class for early 2012 from Aeroplan (50k Amex Membership Reward points)

I earned miles and points from a number of sources:

• United/Continental had 102.5k EQM (mostly from flying, a bit from UA spending) or about 205k redeemable miles from flying.  I earned the 50k signup bonus on both the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature card and the Continental One Pass Plus card.  I picked up another 25k Mileage Plus miles from rental cars (until the end of August, 1k per rental from Hertz) and spending on my credit cards.
• American had about 35k EQM from flying (or 70k redeemable miles).
• US Airways Grand Slam yielded about 119k redeemable miles for about $400 in marginal spend.
• I earned 30k SPG points from the Starwood Amex signup bonus (for $4.5k in spending over 3 months).  I picked up another 12k SPG points from 10 revenue stays (including Foursquare/Facebook check-in bonuses) and credit card spending.
• I earned 55k Club Carlson points (50k bonus, 5k for the stay itself) for staying in a US Radisson Hotel by New Years.
• I earned 75k Membership Reward points for the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card and 50k for the Amex Platinum card for $1k in spending in 3 months for each card.
• I’m well on my way to 50k Chase Ultimate Reward points from my Chase Sapphire card (for $3k in spend over 3 months).
• I picked up 40k Alaska Airlines miles from the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card after my first purchase.
• I earned about 10.2k in Hyatt Gold Passport points from 5 revenue stays.

To give perspective on my ability to meet credit card spending thresholds, I spent approximately $22k on credit cards.  My total spend on flights occurring in 2011 (inclusive of StarMegaDo3) was $8367.49 for revenue flights and $431.27 for award flights.  I spent $2703.62 on hotels (19 stays and 23 nights) and $1727.10 on rental cars (inclusive of insurance, but not gasoline, for 19 rentals, 34 rental days).

Until a few months ago, Aeroplan permitted its members to book into United’s (domestic) first class cabin on two-cabin aircraft while traveling on business class awards.  When it came time to piece together this award in early December, I had few options to get across the United States around Christmas.  Economy seats were scarce because of the holiday and first class awards were practically unbookable due to the mileage penalty.  While better than economy, United’s domestic first class isn’t exactly that thrilling, especially at a price of 45k additional Aeroplan miles.  This left me originally booking a flight on Continental, which codes its “first class” as business class for ticketing purposes.

Two weeks later, United opened up several business class seats on its p.s. service from New York Kennedy to San Francisco.  Then, a week ago, United opened up several business class seats from Los Angeles to New York for my return leg.   With p.s. availability for both domestic legs available, I splurged by ponying up the $90 Aeroplan change fee to switch.  p.s.’ business class is on par with United’s old international (non-lie-flat) business class seats and, in my experience, been a far better experience than Continental’s domestic first class.  The flight change left me departing New York on Friday, December 23rd, rather than Saturday, December 24th.  I left work and caught the train to the airport.

Frequently flying has caused me to pick up a few quirks exhibited while traveling.  The first of these is something of a fetish for boarding passes.  A proper boarding pass is on crisp, clean paper stock.  The boarding passes printed on 8.5 by 11 inch paper, or worse, stored entirely on a cell phone, are fare to ephemeral for me.    The premium side to United’s check-in desks had two agents.  One was assisting another party; another was happily tapping away at his computer, leaving me to use the kiosks that offered printed boarding passes on thin, flimsy sheets of paper.

For this trip, TSA did not disappoint.  I offered my boarding pass and NEXUS card to the name checker.  She proceeded to look at the picture, look at me, waive the card under her UV light, mark off my boarding pass, finally handing the two back to me.  As I approached the plastic bins, she summoned me back, demanding to see my ID once more.  I handed my NEXUS card back to her.  This time, she looked at it for a while, took a look at the back, and concluded that because she “had never seen one of these,” it was an unacceptable form of ID.  I tried to explain that it was a trusted traveler card, but was rebuffed by it being for “my safety” that I show proper ID if I wanted to fly that day.  If it weren’t interfering with my traveling experience, I would call the JFK Terminal 7 TSA staff’s urge to cite “my safety” as their reason for doing anything amusing, but sadly, it isn’t.

Once past the name checker, I headed off to the United Club since business (and first) class passengers have access to it.

There are a few works of art just outside of the entrance to the club.  The first of these is an obvious p.s. destination; the second leaves me wondering if this is a secret symbol of San Francisco.

There’s a longish hallway from the entrance desk out to the edge of the terminal, overlooking the tarmac.

The club had the usual United Club fare available.

The JFK Club’s bar area:

The club has nice views of the tarmac:

After spending a few minutes in the club, I realized I hadn’t checked how full the flight was, mostly on an assumption that if it was oversold, United wouldn’t have released a Star Alliance award seat on it.  I checked with the front desk agent who told me that they would be fine.  On a hunch, I left the club 50 minutes before departure and checked with the gate agent.  He recognized me from all of my ex-JFK p.s. segments (and VDB voucher bookings) and told me that while they’d be “full,” they wouldn’t be so full as to need to bump anyone.  As I was wandering back to the door to take a picture of the departure screen, he waived me back over:  “Would you mind sitting in first class this evening?”  As it turned out, the four people in my row in first class were op’ups.  Ordinarily, I’m an aisle seat person, but I chose a window seat so I wouldn’t disturb my seatmate so much if I decided to play with my seat during flight.

United 389

New York (JFK) - San Francisco (SFO)

Friday, December 23rd

Depart:  7:28PM

Arrive: 10:06PM

Duration:  5 hours, 38 minutes

Aircraft: Boeing 757-200

Seat: 3D (First Class)

Ever since United announced that p.s. would shift to a two-class, lie-flat configuration, I’ve been considering possible itineraries that would book me into the first class cabin.  Christmas came a bit early for me.

Earlier this year, I was on an oversold JFK-LAX flight that led to me being rebooked from coach into business class on this very airplane (N512UA).  It was my first trip in a premium cabin and I concluded at once that I was overwhelmed by the few levers that the business class seats had to offer.  I’ve since learned how to manipulate all the levers and knobs for the p.s. business class seats, but this seat offered even more options:

I know.  I have terrible first world problems.

The seat has respectable legroom.  Besides having so much as to make it possible to lie down on the floor in front of you, it’s hard to ask for more.

Our purser came by before departure to offer predeparture beverages and dinner menus.

The wine list read as follows:

I had previously requested a vegetarian meal, so my first and second courses came from United’s Asian vegetarian offerings.  (Oddly, they don’t offer an ovo-lacto vegetarian option on request for p.s. flights, even though their menu was provided for one.)

In between the first and second course, the purser came by to offer white and whole grain rolls (not pictured here).  One thing that is in the picture, however, is a can of Coca-Cola.  The purser provided the passengers in the cabin with poured glasses as well as the accompanying cans (for those beverages which came out of cans).  While some would argue that it’s not as stylish, it’s far more practical when one wants a refill.

The food was far tastier than the dim lighting would make it appear to be.  Dessert was an ice cream sundae, which I took with hot chocolate syrup and whipped cream.

I swear there’s some ice cream under there.  As a follow-up to all of this food came the traditional United  cookie:

The Tulip lives!  We touched down nearly an hour early to the smoothest landing I’ve had all year (absent hearing the thrust reversers or looking out the window, it was not apparent we had landed).  As fun as it would have been to head to Sydney a day early since the flight was still boarding, I left the airport for my hotel, the Radisson San Francisco Airport Bay Front for the night.

There’s a rather nice video on YouTube featuring images of United’s old, Tulip-bearing livery circulating.

Earlier this year, the TSA announced prescreening programs for the respective elites and known travelers on American and Delta itineraries departing from DFW, MIA, and ATL.   Continental is now taking signups for their own program that they are “working with the TSA to provide…to customers…in the upcoming months.”

Back in August, I applied for the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card.  I met my minimum spend of $1k for a 75k Membership Rewards point bonus and was temporarily foiled in September with the pullback by Amex on the “bump the bonus” practice frequently discussed on FlyerTalk.  After a few exchanges with Amex via secure message, they credited the points I was promised in August.

With the devaluation of British Airways award chart into Avios and a salvo of Aeroplan devaluations (award chart increases, no domestic first class access on international business class awards, and suddenly imposed fuel surcharges on most Star Alliance carriers), I was left wondering what I’d do with all of these points, particularly as I was eyeing the 50k signup bonus for the Amex Platinum card.

Amidst this gloom came a discovery on Friday afternoon that Aeroplan was charging economy miles for business class awards (similarly business class prices for first class awards).  Over the weekend, I managed to piece together a comparatively simple Aeroplan award from Christmas through New Year’s in business class for 80k Aeroplan miles (acquired by transferring 76k Membership Rewards points and purchasing 4k Aeroplan miles for $120) and paying $222.77 in taxes and fees:  EWR-SFO-SYD (turn) - AKL (stop) - YVR - LAX (stop) - EWR.

Thanks to the summertime devaluation of blocking access to domestic first class seats on business class awards and scarce p.s. business class availability from New York, I booked my transcontinental segments on Continental which codes its domestic “first class” cabin as business class for ticketing purposes.

AMR, American Airline’s parent company, filed for Chapter 11 protection this morning.

My regional upgrade cleared a few weeks ago for last night’s LAX-JFK p.s. redeye, allowing me to grab one of the six exit row seats in business class. From Row 9:

That seat back pocket is so far away!  For comparison, I flew in seat 5B (next to door 2L) in July.

I’m a bit late to the party today, but I found the resubtitled version of the introduction done by Jeff Smisek, President and CEO of United, to be hilarious.

(Hat tip: Frequently Flying)

One of the main tipping factors for my decision to do OneWorldMegaDo was the ability to challenge for AA Executive Platinum from my status with United/Continental.  I sent an email with a screenshot of my Continental Platinum credentials on Sunday night and received my response today:

``` Dear Chris,

Thank you for your email to American Airlines. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

Thank you for sending us the documentation we requested. In appreciation of your participation in the 2012 oneworld MegaDo, we have registered you for a fee-waived AAdvantage elite challenge.

To earn AAdvantage Executive Platinum® membership through February 2013, simply travel 20,000 elite qualifying miles between October 9, 2011 and January 13, 2012 on flights marketed and operated by American Airlines, American Eagle, or AmericanConnection®. To date, you have already earned 12,375 elite qualifying miles toward your goal.

Once you complete this challenge, expect your credentials in three to five weeks. Of course, your new benefits will be effective immediately, once your account reflects that you’ve met the challenge criteria.

We hope you enjoy the oneworld MegaDo! See you in January!

Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond. I look forward to assisting you in the future.

Regards,

American Airlines ```

With my two trips to San Francisco booked, I’ll be sitting comfortably with Executive Platinum in early January.  The real challenge will be requalifying for United 1K and AA EXP next year with 200k flight miles.

The United Airlines representative on FlyerTalk announced that OnePass numbers would become the permanent account numbers of MileagePlus today.

Last year, I flew rather extensively for interviews on American.   I ended up adding my AAdvantage number at the airport with every flight, so I memorized its seven digits.  I got my OnePass number this year and memorize its eight digits.  Somehow, I cannot remember my Mileage Plus number’s eleven digits in their entirety, despite using it rather frequently this year and having it since 1999.

I guess it’s time to get my Mileage Plus Purge Data printout…

Amtrak sent out an email informing Guest Rewards members that its partnership with Continental Airlines OnePass is ending December 31, 2011:

While the Continental® OnePass® program will formally end in December, we’re happy to inform you that a new Amtrak Guest Rewards® partnership with the United MileagePlus® program is in the works. In the meantime, here’s what the changes mean for you as an Amtrak Guest Rewards member: •  December 31, 2011 is the last day that Amtrak Guest Rewards members will be able to convert Continental OnePass miles to Amtrak Guest Rewards points •  Members may convert OnePass miles to Amtrak Guest Rewards points in increments of 5,000 miles for 5,000 points •  To convert your miles, contact the OnePass service center. Eligible members* may convert Amtrak Guest Rewards points to OnePass miles at through December 31, 2011. Transfer of points and miles will not be a benefit of the new partnership with United MileagePlus. As always, thank you for your continued loyalty.

The Wandering Aramean points out that this asks more questions than it answers for other partnerships.  AGR Insider on FlyerTalk says a partnership with United MileagePlus is in the works.

Last month, I managed to get an invite on FlyerTalk to United Airline’s Fleet Week events at its SFO maintenance base.

United had four of its planes out for display: An A320 used for the plane pull, its A320 in United’s retrolivery, a Boeing 737 in Continental’s retrolivery, and an internationally configured Boeing 777.

Additionally, the Blue Angels were based on the nearby ramp for during their participation in the Fleet Week activities.

N456UA, a United A320, was used for a human-powered plane pull.

United had both of its retrolivery-bearing planes.  I had flown on N475UA, an A320 from Chicago to New York LaGuardia the previous week:

The Continental Boeing 737 in its Blue Skyways livery was nearby.  I was on this plane for StarMegaDo3.

The cockpit door was open; but when I went through,we couldn’t stop to sit down.

Keeping with the retro theme, a restored service truck was positioned nearby as well.

Additionally, N783UA, an internationally configured Boeing 777 was on hand for walkthroughs.

Earlier in the day, the emergency slide was opened up.

One of the massive hangers for United’s 747’s was open, albeit sans 747:

Slightly removed from the rest of the action was the engine maintenance building with a number of jet engines on display in various states of disassembly, including a jet configured in a testing pit:

My attitudes towards the prospects of OneWorldMegaDo have changed quite a bit over the past two months.  Between the exciting lead up to StarMegaDo3 and the ominous changes to Mileage Plus (that didn’t materialize), I welcomed the thought.  After United ditched its plans for us at ORD on StarMegaDo3, my expectations of the next MegaDo tapered off a bit.  The launch party came and the AA mileage bonuses and Hyatt bonuses didn’t really appeal to me as I had started to wind down my flying on AA for the year so that I’d be ready for a marathon of PLT requalification/EXP qualification early in the year.

That’s all changed.  The details of the status challenge program were announced.  Challenges are free and are based on “base miles” (whether this includes the 500 mile minimums for current elites is still unresolved on MilePoint) rather than elite qualifying points (so cheap fares are have a good earn rate).   More importantly for me, the offer is available to current AA elites and is based on flights flown between October 9, 2011 and January 13, 2012.   With five JFK-LAX one-ways already flown/booked for that time period, I’m over halfway done with my EXP challenge (pending actually booking my OneWorldMegaDo ticket, qualifying for United 1K in November, and sending over proof of my status to American).

FlyerTalk caught notice that US Airways is now charging 3.5 cents per mile plus a 7.5% tax recovery fee.  Previously, miles were 2.75 cents each plus tax.

This brings the minimum price of the grand slam hit (1k miles) up 81 cents; but more substantially, it raises the cost of buying miles under the 100% bonus promotion to get a business class trip to Europe from $1,478.13 to $1,881.25.

UA Insider announced next year’s changes to Mileage Plus on FlyerTalk, on MilePoint, and United’s website.

To first cover the issues… The rumored speculation about revenue requirements never came (To quote UA Insider, “Heard any good rumors lately?”).

• For Gold (50k) and Platinum (75k) elites, the redeemable mileage bonus is being cut to 50% and 75% respectively.
• “Complimentary premier upgrades” now work anywhere that there is non-premium, “domestic” equipment with the exception of transpacific, HNL-GUM, and TYO-SIN/BKK nonstops.  Since the domestic routes for p.s. (JFK-LAX/SFO) and BusinessFirst to Hawaii (IAH/EWR-HNL) are considered superior to ordinary domestic cabins, these routes are not eligible.
• Regional premier upgrades (former CR1s) continue to work on p.s. and are evidently expanded to include BusinessFirst to Hawaii.
• Full/nearly-full fare economy tickets clear for upgrades before instruments; instruments (including miles) clear before elite upgrades.  Companion upgrades have gone the way of United’s policy (e.g., advance clearance with the elite).
• Silvers (25k) have had their baggage allowance cut to one free, 50lb bag and cannot access Economy Plus seats until check-in.
• Lifetime million-mile status will be assessed by butt-in-seat miles as United uses.  Since Continental used EQM for its calculations, United intends to do a one-time adjustment of United lifetime balances to account for EQM.  The respective targets at 1, 2, 3, and 4 million miles are Gold, Platinum, 1K, and Global Services.  This marks an official path to GS qualification outside of the steep (>$50k/yr) revenue requirements.
• Platinum and 1Ks get their Global Entry fee ($100) paid for by United.

Historically, the “island hopper,” a domestic CO737 making 4 or 5 stops on HNL-GUM, has been eligible for complimentary upgrades (and by my reading of the rules, it still is).  Consequently, it’s possible to fly from New York to Hong Kong in (essentially domestic) First for the price of an economy ticket (EWR/NYC-ORD/LAX/SNA/SFO-HNL-GUM-HKG)

I had the chance to spend some time in one of United’s A320 simulators as part of a charity auction on behalf of the Captain Jason Dahl Scholarship Fund.  Jason Dahl was captain of United 93 on September 11, 2001.  The Dahl Fund provides aviation scholarships to students.   While I won’t post my simulator photos here at the request of the volunteers who helped out and made the opportunity available, I did come across a copy of a 1938 United Airlines advertisement by artist Arthur C. Radebaugh:

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Denver.

The Diamond amenity was three pieces of fruit from a family-run, local orchard.

On Saturday, my subtour group visited Wings over the Rockies, a local aviation museum built on the site of Lowery Air Force Base.

I arrived at the airport with enough time to visit the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge in the US-side of Montreal Airport.

In addition to seating, the lounge had a small snack area and self-serve bar.

Our charter aircraft was parked at YUL overnight and had to be towed to our gate.  Conveniently, it went past the lounge.

At the gate:

A ranking of North American airlines’ award availability was produced and is discussed at the Frequent Flier blog.

There are a few issues with assessing award availability.  The inclusion of Southwest and Jetblue, airlines whose frequent flier programs fix award prices according to the revenue cost of the ticket, puzzles me.  How does one fail to find a Southwest RR2.0 award (assuming a sufficiently large point bankroll)?

I didn’t return straight to New York from Kahului.  Instead, I ventured to Chicago via San Francisco and Las Vegas to pick up the start of StarMegaDo3.  My upgrades to First Class cleared for OGG-SFO-LAS-ORD, making the redeye from Kahului substantially more bearable.

Since I had the same aircraft and cabin crew for the LAS-ORD segment as I had for SFO-LAS, the flight attendants were understandably confused when they saw me get back onto the A320 to sit in the same seat in first class.  The routing ended up being a quirk of pricing:  The cost of OGG-SFO-LAS plus LAS-ORD was lower than the comparable OGG-SFO-ORD fare.  With a few minutes to kill before boarding commenced, I snapped off a picture of the welcome sign near the United gates:

The first night for StarMegaDo3 was at the Hyatt Regency Chicago O’Hare.  Because Hyatt had gifted Diamond status, the top-tier with the Gold Passport rewards program, it was difficult for the hotel to deliver substantial upgrades.

The Hyatt Diamond amenity, normally a choice of either a snack or 1k points, was restricted to just the snack.  It was delivered to our rooms while at the StarMegaDo reception at the Park Hyatt downtown.

While the reception at the Park Hyatt was too dark for my camera to capture well, the two Tulip-branded, United wine classes that we were given as swag survived my trip around North America long enough to make it back to New York with me… and to be photographed:

The Gogo company representative on FlyerTalk announced that passengers on United’s p.s. service (JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO) will have 30 minutes of complimentary internet access during the month of September.

Depending on how well publicized this is to passengers actually on board these aircraft, service quality should range from normal to a true tragedy of the commons.

I’ve been voluntarily denied boarding (VDB) four times this year on United, netting me a total of $1,800 in United travel vouchers.  Earlier in the year, I also turned down a $400 offer because the reroute involved a layover at ORD in the middle of a blizzard.  I’ve been offered two bumps with Continental, one at $400 to fly the next day and one at $250 to miss Penn & Teller.  Meanwhile, American’s never sought volunteers on any of my flights (although I’m 3 for 3 on same day standbys to earlier flights, possibly causing myself to miss out an unlikely chance of being bumped).

Apparently, my anecdotal data points can be confirmed with statistics; United’s VDB rate is bit over twice that of Continental or American.

I got an email this afternoon from Continental, advertising an auction for a 32GB iPad 2 and a Callaway Golf RAZR Hawk Driver.  Uninterested in either product (if I was, I would have bought one already), I ignored it.  Seth at The Wandering Aramean points out the senselessness of it:  The bid’s currently at 187,000 miles for a product which retails at $599, delivering a whopping 0.32 cents of value per mile.

While I wouldn’t personally bid that much, these auctions take a liability of United/Continental’s books.  A small part of me hopes that this might encourage the airline to sweep hundreds of thousands of miles away through cheap redemptions rather than jack up the award chart or slash award availability.  Of course, it’s possible we could experience the worst of all possible worlds, one in which bidding 187k miles on an iPad 2 is actually a good redemption value.

Registration is now open.  The promotion runs from September 14th through November 14th.

The 40th tier requires having elite status on US Airways.  While it’s possible to buy a 90-day trial of the lowest tier  for $200 (plus 7.5% in federal taxes), the additional 10k of redeemable miles isn’t almost certainly not worth it at 2.15cpm.  I currently have Star Alliance Gold via United/Continental, so the prospect of having another Star Alliance elite card isn’t especially appealing.

I’m a bit late to the party, but American announced the official changes to their million miler policy.

Currently, all redeemable miles with American count towards the million mile thresholds.  This is inclusive of credit card bonuses, elite bonuses, and other promotions.  On December 1, 2011, further progress towards these goals will be limited to butt-in-seat miles flown on AA or earned on its partners.  Additionally, to further push the Citi AAdvantage World Elite Mastercard, cards opened by December will continue to earn miles which count towards million miler status.

The benefits are mostly unchanged.  Gold (low tier) at 1MM, Platinum (midtier) at 2MM.  The bonus for achieving 1MM is now 35k bonus miles, exchangeable for eight 500mi upgrade stickers.  Previously, stickers were awarded to those reaching the threshold with domestic addresses; those with international addresses were awarded four systemwide upgrades.

While United’s policy appears to be more “generous” by giving Premier Executive (midtier) status at 1MM, its miles must be earned from purely butt-in-seat miles flown on United metal.  Until the lifetime policy is clarified as the merger continues, Continental lfietime miles do not count towards this threshold.

Yesterday’s rumored changes have turned into a 36 page long thread (as of this writing) on FlyerTalk.  The lack of a complete denial by United’s representative on FlyerTalk isn’t helping.  A few other bloggers have written on the topic as well.

First, for some perspective, it’s worth considering my travel on United/Continental this year.  I’m attending StarMegaDo3, which is going to net 4720 EQM for $750, but since there’s a bit more to the program than earning a few EQM.  (If I were after the EQM, I’d fly a few transcons for that much.  Booking my DEN-LAX-JFK trip home from it came out to 3337 EQM for $77.55, or 2.32CPM.)  As a result, I’m willing to drop those segments and fares from my statistics.  Year to date, I’ve paid United and Continental a total of $3,692.66.  As a result, I’ve booked and flown 70,887 EQM, in addition to still holding $200 in travel vouchers.  This brings my average CPM to 4.93, after a few recent splurges for summer travel and a trip to Hawaii.  I don’t hop on airplanes for the sole sake of earning airline miles and travel almost exclusively on Friday/Sunday evenings, so spending 5cpm is acceptable to me.

At this rate, I fully expect to make the 1K tier by achieving 100k EQM for no more than $5k in cash spending.

According to the rumor, UA’s tacking on a mandatory revenue requirement to its elite tiers as well.   To qualify for the top tier, “Premier Diamond,” I’d need to spend $8k, which would be easily obtained by dropping my flying on AA (which, in light of this instability with UA Mileage Plus, isn’t going to happen) or counting my spent travel vouchers ($1.8k).   To defend the cents per mile target, I’d have to fly 160k miles, which is feasible for the time being.  It leaves me wondering what might happen in the future when higher revenues are desired or I spend slightly less with the airline.

The changes partition would-be UA fliers into a few groups.

There’s the whales who happily and consistently pay for full fare tickets, especially those buying tickets in premium cabins.  For those with significant spending with the airline, UA’s already taking “care” of them via the Global Services program.  For those making more one-off purchases, the loyalty program does little to build UA’s competitive advantage.  For the passenger consistently purchasing, say, international first class tickets, an upgrade certificate offers no added value and the miles little-to-none.  Service and product attract these passengers.

UA also has mixed-fare fliers who travel on their own dime for personal travel and have paid business travel as well.  While the shift adds significant priority to full fare tickets, a hypothetical mixed-fare traveler may buy revenue tickets for a family vacation.  The two-faced nature of treating passengers as their fare for the day of travel does little to build long-term loyalty.

Then there’s the bottom feeders found on FlyerTalk who seek to minimize their spending while maximizing the miles returned, parlaying them into valuable first class tickets.  While my tickets might frequently fail to cover United’s costs according to their published per seat-mile statistics, the seats could have gone empty.  The marginal cost of transporting me is close to that of printing a boarding pass, possibly serving a meal in first class, and providing me with some miles which I will redeem for future travel.  When a flight is oversold, I’m much closer to a real liability to the airline as involuntary bumps must be paid in hard currency rather than the travel voucher scrip that I readily accept for minor inconvenience to cut costs.

Standing around in a revenue management office hoping for the whales to fly to keep the airline profitable does not seem sustainable in the long term.  OpenSkies is an exclusively business class airline that has survived for several years, but it its flights from Paris Orly to Newark and Washington don’t have to connect to a substantial domestic network.  While increased fares would cull the ranks of the mileage running crowd, it drives away general members who would just as well fly Southwest for less impairing the route network further.

Meanwhile, access to Economy Plus, redeemable mileage bonuses, and checked bag allowances are being cut for lower tier elites, there’s little reason to hit the $2k/4k/6k spending requirements for these tiers.

To get back from Las Vegas, I booked a ticket with American for LAS-LAX-JFK.  While it seems odd to fly west to go east, the fare rule I would have used to get back to JFK on a direct flight covered transiting LAX as well (so the price was the same) and the last flight from LAS to LAX sufficient to connect to a LAX-JFK redeye left far later than the last LAS-JFK flight (so I got more time in Las Vegas).

American’s corporate parent, AMR Corporation, loves to issue press releases emphasizing its “cornerstone strategy.”  In layman’s terms, it means eliminating most nonhub-to-nonhub flying for the airline.  Due to thunderstorms in Miami, our aircraft was progressively delayed by about two hours in arriving in Las Vegas, delaying our departure.  While it’s hard to fault American for not having an “extra aircraft” to spare as any sensible airline attempts to run its planes at capacity rather than leave them idle, there’s a bit of irony in my choice of a 737 rather than an MD-80 to avoid potential mechanical delays (and a subsequent risk of a mis-connect).  At least with the MD-80, the plane would have been coming from LAX or DFW rather than MIA.

Prior to heading to the airport, I saw my flight was already delayed an hour.  Upon reaching the airport, I called the American elite desk and switched over to the later (11:45PM) redeye from LAX to avoid mis-connecting to my original, 9:30PM departure.

We pushed back from the gate and then started heading towards the runway, only to park parallel to it on the tarmac due to a ground delay caused by the weather at LAX.  Out of my eighty or so flights touching LAX, this amounted to my first LAX-triggered weather delay.  A call to the American desk once again protected me onto the last seats of a LAX-DFW-LGA routing in order to ensure I’d make it to New York by Monday morning.  Surrounding me in the exit row were a number of passengers who had to make progressively tighter connections onto Qantas flights to Australia, so my potential woes paled in comparison.

My upgrade to business class cleared for the LAX-JFK segment, so I wound up in seat 7D.

I found this seat to be inferior to United’s business class seats on p.s.  The seat seemed either a bit narrower or the armrests a bit higher, leaving me between two less-than-optimal choices of where to rest my arms while sleeping.  A quick glance at SeatGuru confirms that American’s seats are quantitatively narrower and have less pitch than those on p.s.

Lucky reports that there might be some significant changes coming to United’s elite program starting next year.  The scary bit:  Elite levels have revenue requirements associated with them.

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.