From Los Angeles, I had onward travel with American Eagle, so I stopped by the American Airlines flagship lounge before my flight due to my same day international itinerary.

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.

Prior to our departure from Osaka, we stopped by the Sakura lounge.

The food options were extensively well-labeled for allergens, dairy, and meats.

For our two nights in Osaka, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency. I had ended up booking this hotel without paying too much attention to its location, ultimately selecting it on the basis of a good cash and points rate being available, over the Sheraton. The hotel is a bit out of the way, on the western edge of the city. There is a shuttle service to Osaka Station, but it ends relatively early.

Breakfast was at the hotel restaurant:

In the evenings, a selection of snacks and cocktails were available in a sectioned off part of the lobby.

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.

In the tradition of this blog, it’s time to summarize where I went and how I got there.

I flew about 261k miles this year, up from 2013’s 228k miles.  Unlike last year, where most of those (90% or so) were revenue, roughly 98k miles were on award tickets (~62% revenue).  All but 75k miles were in premium cabins, but with the marked uptick in travel, this was a better ratio (28.7%) than 2013 (32.1%).

This past year involved 4 trips to Europe, 2 trips to Hawaii, 2 trips to Asia, 3 trips to both Europe and Asia (but does Anatolia really count?).

My award redemptions were numerous:

• I went to Prague, Berlin, and Poland.
• I visited Turkey cheaply thanks to Avianca.
• I went to Japan with some predevaluation United and American miles.
• I visited Taipei and Paris over the summer.
• I went to Oktoberfest and Bangkok in September.
• I booked a last minute trip to Europe in December.

I earned points and miles throughout the year:

• I had about 77k EQMs on United, as the new PQD requirements deterred me from shooting for 1K.  I picked up about 50k redeemable miles on my United credit card, mostly from a mix of “every day” spend and some United purchases.  I would have managed Premier Silver without the waiver.
• American finished at just over 100k EQMs, thanks in part to the 10k EQM bonus from spend on my Citi AAdvantage card (which earned ~140k miles between spending and the signup bonus).

Airfare spending continued its rise to 5.6cpm, up from 5.22cpm last year.  Hotel spending dropped, even as nights stayed roughly constant (82, down from 83), to $68.55/night from last year’s $84/nt.  Rental car spending nosedived from $2.2k to about $1.3k.

Last year, I predicted a few things:

• More award travel.  26k to 97k miles is quite a jump.
• Requalification for Executive Platinum and Premier Platinum.  Check.
• Fewer hotel nights.  This didn’t pan out, although I didn’t requalify for SPG 50.
• More credit card spending.  Check.

In 2015, I expect:

• Total travel to drop and the fraction of award travel to rise.
• Requalification for Executive Platinum.   Based on pre-3/1 earnings change travel alone, I would not be completely shocked to make Premier Silver on United.
• I’m evidently bad at making predictions about hotel stays.

For my last night in Milan, I booked another night at the Sheraton Milan Malpensa Airport hotel.  While my experience a few months prior was lackluster, the airport is really convenient for early morning flights.

This time around, I was upgraded to a deluxe room.

After checking in, I took a look at the club on the third floor, where a spread of snacks and beverages was available. The next morning, I returned to the club for breakfast.  One of the TVs was playing news coverage that Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 bound for Milan had been hijacked.

I finished my breakfast and walked over to the airport terminal, ultimately thankful that the media coverage of the hijacked flight didn’t translate into pandemonium at the airport.

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).

Back in November, a small Norwegian regional carrier, Wideroe, stopped charging fuel surcharges on Star Alliance-operated tickets across the Atlantic.  Needless to say, the frequent flyer community pounced on the opportunity to save hundreds of dollars per round trip.

While I had previously visited Milan in October (thanks in part to Emirates’ fifth-freedom route between New York and Milan driving down fares), I found it hard to resist a $189 round trip, all-inclusive fare.

Originally, I had booked EWR-FRA-LIN/MXP-EWR, expecting to grin-and-bear two transatlantic flights in coach.

Thanks to some weather waivers in the northeast during the days leading up to my trip, I switched over to the nonstop to Milan Malpensa, rather than take a long layover in Frankfurt.

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.

This trip was originally built around a segment starting from Zürich back to the United States.  During my trip, though, I kicked around dropping my United-ticketed return leg in favor of an American Airlines award.  As I had some domestic (yes, domestic) award travel in three-cabin first class on AA already ticketed, it dawned on me that I could add on flights from Zürich to New York for a marginal cost of 30k miles, some taxes, and a helping of British Airways-imposed fuel surcharges.

I’ve never been thrilled by BA’s fuel surcharges, but spending $340 in lieu of an additional 32.5k isn’t a terrible deal.  While a similar analysis could be done for making use of my stopover on my United award, UA didn’t have saver award availability on my desired dates of travel (nor did it ever end up opening up).

Meanwhile, as I kicked around rebooking myself, Lufthansa opened up some first class availability to New York from Frankfurt, so I jumped from the United-operated nonstop from Zürich and abandoned my aspirations of flying BA First (for now).

When I arrived at the lounge, the attendants directed me to the Business Class side of the lounge. The Lufthansa Group family of airlines are sticklers for making passengers show their Star Alliance Gold cards to have access to the senator lounges and my experience was no different.

Once inside, I visited the buffet for a light snack.

For my flight to London, I booked an Avios award in Club Europe for 9k Avios points.  While coach would have been good enough, this decision–similar to my flight from Berlin–was driven by award availability rather than personal preference.

After clearing security, I made my way to the Galleries First lounge.  As I was checking in at the front desk, the clerk suggested I might want to visit the Galleries Club lounge on account of traveling in Club Europe rather than the Galleries First lounge via my Executive Platinum card.

“Isn’t this one supposed to be nicer?”

“Well, yes, it is.”

I’m still puzzled why this conversation happened.

I made my way into the lounge to look into the dinner options I had available.

Terminal 5 would have sweeping views of British Airways’ various aircraft, but most are unfortunately obstructed by the terminal’s architectural features.

With boarding about to commence, I made my way from the lounge to the remote terminal 5 pier.  Virgin Atlantic has taken to advertising in the middle of British Airways’ “home.”

Sadly, not my chariot to Zürich was not a 747.

Club Europe’s legroom leaves a bit to be desired.

Once in flight, I got to discover the joys of children in premium cabins.  A family seated next to and in front of me had brought two children with them.  As to ensure I had a pleasant flight, they took turns screaming, crying, climbing over the seats, and throwing toys throughout the cabin.

We arrived at a remote stand in Zürich.  My luxury car rides to planes aside, it was one of the more pleasant remote stand experiences I’ve had, thanks to stereotypical Swiss efficiency.

For my flight to London, I booked a ticket in Club Europe with 9k Avios points.  This choice wound up being driven by award availability (or the lack thereof in coach), rather than any particular desire to fly intra-European business class.

Between possessing oneworld Emerald status and being ticketed in business class, I was able to fortunately avoid the lengthy check-in line.

As I was checking in, I asked where the British Airways lounge was located and found myself directed back from where I came.  The lounge isn’t very prominently signed nor is it particularly close to the British Airways gate, which is a bit of a challenge by the standards of how small Tegel is.

I also got the feeling that I might have been here before.

As my exposure to oneworld has mostly come from American Airlines, I’m still learning the ropes of what exactly I should expect from British Airways’ “terraces” tier of lounge.  Observations so far?  Juice and wine of unknown quality seem to be on-hand.

After settling into the lounge for 30 minutes, they announced it was time for boarding.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t get my 4.5k extra Avios worth of legroom out of this flight.

For my flight to Berlin, I booked an Avios award with 4.5k points.  For the short hop, an hour in coach was far better than spending ten hours on a train.

Niki also seems to have a confusingly expensive set of food options to purchase on board.  I’m not sure why I would ever spend 39 Euros to have a cake in flight rather than simply buy one on the ground.

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.

For Christmas and New Years, I decided I would try booking earlier than last year (the Friday before Christmas weekend).  This didn’t actually prove to be particularly useful:  My final outbound flight wasn’t booked until the night before.  To give a glimpse of my trip construction, with an outbound on 12/22 and a return commencing 12/30:

• 12/11: ZRH-EWR (UA J)
• 12/15: LAX-SFO-FRA (UA F) / ZRH-EWR (UA J)
• 12/21: LAX-MUC (LH F) / ZRH-EWR (UA J)
• 12/22: LAX-MUC-VIE (LH F, J) / ZRH-EWR (UA J)
• 12/27: LAX-MUC-VIE (LH F, J) / ZRH-FRA-JFK (LX J, LH F)

It looks messy, but on a map, the final flights are close to the “I better book something, just so I can get there” flights I chose:

With the then-impending United devaluation in February, I was thrilled to pick up two seats in Lufthansa First.

As I wanted to move between several European cities during my trip, I booked three flights with Avios, eventually finishing the itinerary with:

As a business class passenger, I had access to the United Arrivals lounge.  As only United’s International First Class lounge has showers airside, I would have otherwise not had access to one before catching my connecting flight.  While Continental brought showers to the merger, it’s worth noting that there are only a handful available at the premerger President’s Clubs in EWR and IAH.

The United Arrivals lounge is located on the arrivals level of Terminal 3, which is some distance away from the International Terminal where most of passengers with access will be clearing customs.

After showing my boarding pass to the attendant, she began printing out another boarding pass.  Thinking this was my boarding pass for my connection, I asked her for it, only to discover that it was a duplicate of my HKG-SFO leg, used by the lounge to keep records of its visitors.  Using a computerized system would be too much to expect.

I made my way to the back to use one of the showers.

Afterwards, I grabbed a coffee and prepared to head out.

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.

San Jose Airport launched “The Club” in early 2013 to coincide with ANA’s SJC-NRT service.  It’s a Priority Pass lounge, so I stopped by when I had some time to kill waiting for a flight.

SJC has two remarkably pleasant terminals and generally functional internet access, so I’m wary of the value obtained by buying a day pass for $35.  (Visiting with Priority Pass is free for the main cardholder.)

In mid-October, I found myself on another trip to Pasadena.  As my hotel chain choices were restricted to Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood, I chose to stay at the Westin Pasadena again.  During my previous stay in October 2012, I was a mere SPG Gold member and was upgraded to an Executive King.

I wound up arriving to the hotel rather late in the evening, having previously been delayed on my way from San Diego by my train hitting a truck.  I even tweeted about it!

As I made my way from Union Station to Pasadena, I glanced at spg.com’s room availability for the hotel that evening, finding that they had executive kings, suites, and speciality suites available.  I was consequently a bit surprised that I received a rather small, standard room after being told that I had been “upgraded” when I checked in.

Starwood’s list of SPG Platinum benefits includes:

“Upgrades to best available room at check-in, including Standard Suites.”

Unfortunately, at many hotels, elites aren’t upgraded and are left to be vexed by their first world problems.  One Mile at a Time has written about this phenomenon extensively.

I decided to venture down to the front desk to investigate.  The front desk clerk was apologetic, but insisted the hotel was “completely full” after asking me to confirm my room rate–I had booked my stay with a best rate guarantee.  He even went so far as to show me a random number on his computer screen that was to prove it to me.

Unphased, I asked what would happen if I booked a Rose Suite (or two) at that moment online with my phone.  At this point, he realized that he was now a bit in over his head with his earlier claims, so he grabbed his manager.  After the two of concluded that the hotel had suites available (and wasn’t planning on walking guests making bookings at 11PM that very night), I had a new set of room keys in hand.

While Starwood specifies “standard suites” in its benefits language, I received a Rose Suite upgrade after all was said and done.

The suite’s first bathroom was just off the entrance foyer.

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.

As I had a somewhat “early” departure (10:25AM) from Milan to New York, I decided to stay at the Sheraton at Malpensa Airport the night before.  Room rates were on the pricier side, so I booked a cash and points award for $55 and 3.5k points when I spotted some availability open up.

Reviews of the hotel on FlyerTalk suggested that the front desk was a disaster and I feel they were spot-on.  With one person ahead of me, check-in inexplicably took about 30 minutes.  Further, after finally getting to my room, I decided to investigate the club lounge, finding that my room key didn’t work as my key hadn’t been made correctly.

The hotel has a long central corridor with small hallways jutting out periodically for guest rooms.  The building itself spans nearly the entire length of Malpensa Airport Terminal 1, and I managed to be given the furthest possible room from the elevator bank.

During my visit to Italy, I never quite figured out the alarm cables that were setup in every hotel shower.  In principle, it might be a good idea.  In practice, I’m not quite sure how useful an out of reach string is when you slip and fall in the shower.

The club lounge had a sizable breakfast buffet of hot and cold food items, so I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before checking out and walking to the terminal to catch my flight to New York.

Overall, I had a few takeaways from this hotel:

• The location is superb (for those transiting Malpensa Airport).
• The “high speed” internet service was terribly slow when it was working but management seemed unconcerned.  At some point in the evening, a note was slipped under my door informing me that the pay-per-view cable service was out of order.  I’m a bit doubtful that more guests were worried about that than their broken internet connection.
• SPG Platinum recognition was nonexistent.  I didn’t initially have lounge access and I did not receive my Platinum points amenity initially.

I stopped by the American Arrivals lounge after clearing immigration for a quick shower and snack before heading into London.

I applied two systemwide upgrades to my itinerary.  For my flight to London, my upgrade cleared a bit over two days prior to departure.

American 98
Chicago O’Hare (ORD) – London Heathrow (LHR)
Wednesday, October 9th, 2013
Depart:  9:45PM
Arrive: 11:25AM
Duration:  7 hours, 40 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-223ER (N775AN)
Seat: 12H (Business Class)

The menu read as follows:

As I was trying to maximize the amount of sleep I could get on this flight, I skipped most of the dinner offerings and selected just a cheese plate to snack on.

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.

With Emirates introduction of JFK-MXP-DXB service, a fare war broke out in the fall, driving base fares for New York to Milan to laughably low levels:  $10 round trip.  Of course, thanks to a $516 fuel surcharge, it’s not a complete steal.  I booked one of these trips with American, giving myself one night in London and four in Milan.

American’s fares had a bit of an annoying quirk in them, requiring transit on AA198 and/or AA199 on the transatlantic leg for “New York” (Kennedy and La Guardia).  As AA198 and AA199 are “direct” flights from and to Chicago O’Hare respectively, one could book somewhat strange looking itineraries such as LGA-ORD-JFK-MXP.  I was interested in visiting London (again), so I picked a departure out of Newark, which allowed me to connect in London on to British Airways.

Way back in 2012, Radisson ran a stay one night, get one night free promotion.  I wound up picking up a night at the Radisson San Jose Airport, as I was heading out of SJC particularly early in the morning trying to beat Hurricane Sandy’s landfall on the eastern seaboard.  The hurricane won the race, unfortunately.

This stay left me with a free night redemption at any US, Canada, or Caribbean Radisson to use by the end of 2013.  As my life is mostly composed of Starwood and Hyatt stays, I delayed redeeming this award until the use-it-or-lose-it factor kicked in.  I had a trip to San Francisco planned, and at the time, Radisson wanted $265 for a night at the Radisson Fisherman’s Wharf.

The hotel’s rooms were recently renovated, so the exterior appearance is a bit deceiving.

Somehow, I ended up with two beds, despite only needing one.

My room had a view of the bay and the parking lot.

American only serves Lihue from Los Angeles, unlike Honolulu and Kahului which see redeye flights to Dallas.  Consequently, getting back to New York required spending a chunk of a daylight on an airplane.

American 266
Lihue (LIH) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
Depart:  1:15PM
Arrive: 9:45PM
Duration:  5 hours, 30 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-223 (N193AN)
Seat: 2F (First Class)

With a pile of Starwood points to burn, I chose to stay at the Westin Princeville Ocean Resort Villas for five nights during my visit to Kauai.  As a newly minted SPG Platinum, I had received a 35% off redemption certificate.  Coupled with Starwood’s fifth night free for award nights, my five night stay cost a “mere” 52k points when the rate was $300/nt (plus taxes).

At check-in, I was told that I had been upgraded to a one bedroom suite.  As this is a timeshare property, I was expecting minimal Platinum benefits but found that the property consistently overdelivered.

My room’s patio had an partial ocean view.

The hotel is located on the lush north shore of Kauai.

Princeville is a short drive from Hanalei.

For beach lovers, the one drawback of this hotel is that it does not have ready beach access of its own.  The hotel itself is situated along a cliff, but there is a trail to a public beach nearby.

Additionally, the hourly shuttle to the St. Regis allows Westin guests to visit the beach on Hanalei Bay.

I took the shuttle over on my last night to see the St. Regis’ champagne sabering, but it felt a touch inconvenient compared to choosing a hotel with its own beach, such as the Sheraton Kauai.

St. Regis’ champagne sabering begins with a brief historical lesson before the main event:

For SPG Platinum members, the hotel offered a free continental breakfast plate.  There are some out of date posts on FlyerTalk suggesting that breakfast is not served every day (and consequently can’t be offered as a benefit).

The breakfast seating area was frequently overrun by birds, the best efforts of the guests and staff to scare them off notwithstanding.

The complimentary continental breakfast plate had a nominal value of about $18.  The hotel offers its breakfast buffet for about $25, but allows Platinum guests to upgrade to the buffet for just the price difference.

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.

In late August, cheap fares to Dublin returned, so I picked one up in anticipation of working on my American Executive Platinum requalification.  As I was packing flights into my fall schedule, I wound up scheduling this trip the day after my drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, leaving me with effectively a long layover in New York City.

The main ticket (NYC-DUB-LAX) was booked with American, in hope of clearing into business class with a systemwide upgrade.

As far as the trip title goes, I:

• Departed New York on Wednesday for San Francisco
• Departed Los Angeles on Thursday for New York
• Departed New York on Friday for London
• Returned from Düsseldorf the following Thursday

15316 miles in 9 days… an average speed of 70 miles per hour, a need for speed.

As I mentioned, I visited Santa Barbara, overnighting there before heading south on Amtrak to Los Angeles.

Before catching the train, I had to return my rental car to the Hertz office at SBA.  The new terminal’s nice.

In September, I decided to drive from Oakland to Santa Barbara, mostly along CA-1 from Santa Cruz to Santa Barbara.

I had a visit to San Francisco where I chose to stay at the Hyatt Regency SFO.  It’s a short walk from the Burlingame Caltrain station.  While it only sees weekend service, this was fine for my purposes.

As I wanted to check-in early in the morning, my room had a view of the 101 expressway.

From the train station, we took to walking around Vancouver until it was time to head to the airport to catch our flight back to Seattle.

With Vancouver so close to Seattle, how could I pass up the opportunity to visit Canada?

From Seattle to Vancouver, there are three realistic options:  Planes, trains, and automobiles.  (Sadly, “boat” is unlikely to be very timely.)  As a truck had recently caused a bridge carrying I-5 to collapse, driving seemed potentially out of the question, so I looked at my options for Amtrak and Alaska Airlines.

Amtrak has a fantastically generous award chart on its “special routes,” 1.5k points for a coach one-way and 2k points for a business class one-way.  Amtrak was selling seats for $81 each the night before, so I was happy booking two with points instead.  With the low marginal cost of 500 points per ticket, I splurged on business class.  I’m glad I did:

• Business Class has its own check-in line at Seattle King Street Station.  In contrast, the coach line was still a sea of humanity minutes before boarding.
• Business Class is allowed first off the train and consequently, first through Canadian immigration.
• These tickets come with a $5 voucher for the cafe car.  While prices aren’t terrific, we didn’t have the luxury of time on our way from the hotel to the station.

Unlike the Amfleet cars that I see all too often on the NEC, the Cascades train has a unique livery.

The seats can’t rival p.s. Business Class, but they’re far better than coach on an airplane.

The route is scenic, spending a considerable amount of time along the coast.

Along the way, we were treated to a glimpse of the collapsed I-5 bridge.

Overall, the train took 4 hours; it’s agonizingly slow compared to New York-Washington on the NEC.  I slept on the train, just as I was going to if I had stayed at the hotel.

For Memorial Day weekend, I decided to go to Seattle (with a small dash of Canada added in as well).  For our three nights in Seattle, we stayed at the Hyatt at Olive 8.

I had booked this reservation speculatively before my Hyatt Diamond status ran out at the end of February 2013.  While my status dropped away for purposes of enjoying a free breakfast that View from the Wing raves about, it seems to have lead to a considerable upgrade to a 740 square foot Premier Queen room.

Just so we’re clear, allow me to repeat: 740 square feet.  Larger than my New York apartment.

To the right of the hallway, there’s an entrance foyer as well.

I’m often told that I don’t showcase the photos of my destination enough.  Back in May, I went to Colorado Springs.  Here are a few, with a very minimal trip report as a lead-in:

I flew a very delayed, but remarkably pleasant Jetblue flight from New York to Denver, overnighting at the Hyatt Place Denver Tech Center before driving down to Colorado Springs the next morning.

I managed to do a bit of sightseeing on my Sunday afternoon before driving back to Denver airport:

I drove to Pike’s Peak, but snow necessitated a road closure several miles from the top.

As I wanted to get back to New York in the early morning, I wound up booking an early afternoon departure from Honolulu, connecting in Los Angeles.  United’s nonstop to Newark was scheduled to arrive too late and connecting in Dallas makes for a 10-11AM arrival time to La Guardia, let alone Manhattan.

American 162
Honolulu (HNL) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Monday, April 22nd, 2013
Depart:  12:20PM
Arrive: 8:55PM
Duration:  5 hours, 35 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-223 (N690AA)
Seat: 1B (First Class)

Lunch service began with a salad and a roll.

For my entree, I selected the cheese ravoli.

I chose the cheese plate for dessert.

The Great United Devaluation is coming on February 1st, so tomorrow (January 31st) is the last day to make award bookings under the award chart.

For reference, a comparison between old award chart and the new award chart show the damage.

Some key takeaways (from North America):

• Europe business class is going from 100k to 115k (United) / 140k (Partners)
• Europe first class is going from 135k to 160k / 220k.
• Asia business class is going from 120k to 140k / 160k.
• Asia first class is going from 140k to 160k / 240-260k (North-South Asia).
• Australia/New Zealand business class is going from 135k to 140k / 160k
• Australia/New Zealand first class is going from 160k to 160k / 260k.

In light of the Starwood devaluation in March, I booked two nights at the Moana Surfrider in Waikiki.  To get there, I flew American from New York.

American 31
Los Angeles (LAX) – Honolulu (HNL)
Saturday, April 20th, 2013
Depart:  8:00AM
Arrive: 10:50AM
Duration:  5 hours, 50 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-223 (N608AA)
Seat: 6E (First Class)

As this was an early morning flight, first class was served breakfast, albeit with the enhancement of a paper menu compared to ordinary domestic first class.

On arrival, I took the opportunity to do a bit of plane spotting before picking up my rental car.

Having enjoyed my time in the lounge, I made my way to the end of the concourse to catch my flight to Newark.

Ordinarily, airport security abroad is a joy.  For our flight, bound to the United States, we got to enjoy another security screening before our gate.  There’s nothing quite like being asked to take off your shoes to give you a little reminder of home.

Lufthansa 412
Munich (MUC) – Newark (EWR)
Sunday, March 31st, 2013
Depart:  3:35PM
Arrive: 6:35AM
Duration:  9 hours
Aircraft:Airbus A340-642 (D-AIHU)
Seat: 3H (Business Class)

Upon boarding, I settled down into my seat in business class.

The menu read as follows:

I had ordered a vegetarian meal, so my service began with a salad and fresh fruit.

Shortly before arrival, we had a light stack, which in my case consisted of cheese and vegetables, along with a bowl of tomato soup.

While immigration was light at Newark when we arrived, Global Entry meant that I spent most of my time walking from the plane to the curb.

Prior to my flight to Newark, I stopped by the Lufthansa Senator Lounge.

The lounge was sharp and new feeling.

There was some cold food on offer, as well as the signature Lufthansa pretzel.

For my three nights in Munich, I opted to stay at the Westin.  Due to a rate quirk, I wound up with two double beds rather than a single bed.

Overall, the hotel was well-situated by being a short walk away from the Arabellapark U-Bahn Station.

Prior to passing through security, I took a moment to go visit the observation terrace.  The weather outside left a bit to be desired for visibility, but fortunately, most of the observation area is covered.

By virtue of having Star Alliance Gold status by being a United 1K, I visited the Swiss-run Senator Lounge.  I previously visited in March 2012 on my way to Bangkok.

The lounge had a number of hot food items available, mostly centered around pastas of various sorts.

Hiding in the back of the food area, there were two soups and bread slices available.

The Senator Lounge has a display of A340 models taking off near its entrance.

After a while, it was time to go to my gate to catch my Lufthansa flight to Munich.  Inside of Europe, business class leaves a lot to be desired.  Our late evening flight was markedly lightly loaded:  We had eight passengers on our 737–two in business class and six in coach.

In the tradition of this blog, it’s time to summarize where I went and how I got there. I flew about 228k miles in 2013, approximately 202k of which were revenue miles. Across my revenue and award travel, all but 73k miles were in premium cabins.  This is a worse ratio (32.1%) than 2012 (22.2%).

Overall, my travel for 2013 involved four trips to Europe, three trips to Hawaii, and one trip to Asia.

I had several redemptions:

• I traveled to Zurich and Munich for Easter.
• I toured Europe over Christmas and New Years Eve.  (Hopefully, a trip report will be forthcoming.)
• I had 9 SPG award nights on the Hawaiian Islands (Maui, Oahu, and Kauai).
• My two Hyatt Suite Night Awards were redeemed at the Park Hyatt Milan and Park Hyatt Zurich, for one night each.
• I finally made a dent in my Club Carlson balance and benefited from free bonus nights at the Radisson Blu Palais Vienna, Park Inn Berlin, and the May Fair London.

I earned points and miles from a variety of sources.

• On United, I finished the year with about 102k EQM or about 208k redeemable miles by flying (or United purchases on my United credit card). I retained United 1K for what will likely be the last time.  Based on my United spending, I would have managed to earn Premier Silver (according to the 2014 PQD requirements).
• On American, I finished the year with 101k EQM. Thanks to a few Choice Fares, I picked up 215k redeemable miles. I retained American Executive Platinum.
• With SPG, I earned 52k points from hotel stays.  Somehow, I managed to hit an obscene number of stays and nights with SPG this year:  34 stays, 54 nights (inclusive of credit card bonus nights).
• With Hyatt, I earned a meager 17k points from hotel stays (13 stays, 15 nights).
• I earned about 38k Avios from paying my rent with my British Airways credit card.
• From signup bonuses, I had two suite nights from Hyatt and approximately 100k Club Carlson points.

In terms of total spending, airfare crept up from 4.42cpm to approximately 5.22cpm.  Hotel spending jumped considerably, as I wound up staying in hotels for 61 stays and 83 nights this year (to be contrasted with 54 nights last year).  Average costs per night remained nearly constant.  Rental car spending dipped ever slightly.

As far as my predictions my own travel in 2014 go:

• I expect to see far more award travel compared to previous years.  2011 had approximately 10k, 2012 had 31k, and 2013 had 26k.  I already have 23k miles of award travel for 2014, with more to come as I lock in trips before the Great United Devaluation at the end of January and US Airways’ Exit from Star Alliance.
• If I maintain a decent level of revenue travel, I expect to requalify for American Executive Platinum and United Premier Platinum (via the credit card spending threshold) in 2014.
• 2014 will likely have far fewer hotel nights and I will not be aiming for SPG Platinum 50 in any way.  This year, a confluence of several long hotel stays and American Express stay/night credits quickly pushed me from qualifying on 25 stays to hitting the 50 night mark.
• I expect to earn far more points from credit card spending than I have in the past.

With a ten hour layover in Zürich, I took to wandering around the city.  The weather could have been far more cooperative.

After arriving in Zürich from New York, I stopped by the Swiss Arrivals Lounge before heading out to explore the city.  I took a quick shower before enjoying the breakfast spread.

In the late morning, the lounge had three other non-employees in it.

My trip to Asia last year involved a terrific long-haul flight from Zurich to Bangkok on Swiss, spurring me to choose their business class product again for my flight to Europe.  While it’s definitely hard to find fault with a lie-flat bed in the sky (especially compared to being in the back), Swiss features a two meter long bed, making a good thing–a lie-flat bed in the sky–even better.

Swiss 15
New York Kennedy (JFK) – Zürich (ZRH)
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
Depart:  10:24PM
Arrive: 10:44AM
Duration:  7 hours, 20 minutes
Aircraft: Airbus A330-343X (HB-JHL)
Seat: 5K (Business Class)

As I was settling into my seat, one of the flight attendants came by to offer reading material.  When I visit German-speaking countries, I’m generally pegged instantly as an English speaker.  This trip and this flight proved no different.

The menu read as follows:

As I was planning on visiting the Swiss arrivals lounge in Zurich, I chose to skip breakfast on board to sleep in.

In traveling.to tradition, the flight show:

Drink service was slow to start after takeoff, but the meal service followed rapidly afterwards.  Even from an outstation, the food served was fresh and flavorful.

I had ordered a vegetarian meal in advance, so I received the Swiss gratin from the menu.

The cabin crew left the lights on for about 30 minutes after the meal service ended, but I was still able to catch 5 hours of high-quality sleep–as far as transatlantic redeyes are concerned.

With my flight to Switzerland departing just after 10PM, I timed my arrival to JFK around 8:30PM.  With vast swaths of flights bound for Europe around that time, Terminal 4 was best described as a sea of humanity.

Once past the teeming security lines, I went upstairs to visit the Swiss lounge.  The long, narrow layout left the front entrance feeling a bit crowded, but afforded terrific views of the tarmac.

The evening menu read as follows:

In mid-March, I found myself with Good Friday off without a trip to go on.  As I became spoiled last year by $440 trips to Europe, I wasn’t thrilled by the $1000 coach fares available for a simple weekend trip.  With a huge stash of United miles sitting around awaiting a devaluation in hand, I booked an award trip to get there.

I had the good fortune to see Swiss business class availability open up shortly before the trip for my outbound flight, so I tweaked my trip to give myself an extended layover in Zurich before heading to Munich.

While much has been discussed about free one-way trips to Hawaii on coach award itineraries, Hawaii to Europe business class awards have a small step-up from the continental United States from 50k miles one-way to 57.5k miles.  Compared to building a standalone, premium cabin award to Hawaii at 40k miles one-way, the add-on was a bargain.

Overall, the air travel for this trip ran 100k United miles and $134 in taxes and fees.

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.

Locating a sanely priced hotel was the main logistical consideration in this trip. During my previous visit to Maui in 2011, I had stayed at the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas thanks to Starwood’s Free Resort Nights promotion earlier that year. For this trip, I spotted a cash and points rate for the nearby Westin Resort for 4.8k points and $90 per night. To contrast, the cheapest available nightly room rate was $359 (plus resort fees and taxes). The other neighboring properties’ rates were in excess of $400 per night.

I had booked a basic room (as part of my cash and points booking) but was upgraded to an ocean view room with a private balcony during check-in.  (The hotel unfortunately did not have any rooms free with queen/king beds.)

The hotel’s pool and open air lobby have several artifical waterfalls.

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.

For my 9 hour layover, I once again stayed at the Westin LAX. As I came down to the lobby to see the first shuttle to LAX pulling away, I had 15 minutes to kill.

Rather convieniently, the hotel has trackers for the two shuttles servicing it:

It doesn’t indicate whether the shuttle is on the arrivals or departures level of the loop, but it’s better than nothing.

A few minutes after I booked this trip, I called the Executive Platinum desk to apply one of my systemwide upgrades expiring at the end of February 2013 to my reservation to upgrade my OGG-DFW-LGA segments.  At the time, the agent suggested I upgrade my JFK-LAX-OGG segments as well, as there was upgrade space available.  At the time, I tempted fate and observed that my upgrade success rate on AA185 was 100% (since making EXP).

As Friday approached, my upgrade hadn’t cleared.  At check-in, I was number 5 on the upgrade list with 2 seats left.  I overlooked two key points:

• AA prioritizes upgrades by time of request.  I booked this trip 10 days in advance.  I generally had 14-21 day advance purchases for my trips in 2012.
• I was traveling on a holiday weekend.

Since AA added Admirals Club access with all business and first class tickets on JFK-LAX/SFO in September (aligning the product with United’s p.s. offering), I’ve kicked around dropping my American Express Platinum card as I mostly fly this particular route on AA and my upgrades generally would clear… until now.  Between this and having access to the Admirals Club during Sandy’s IRROPs, I’ve found it invaluable.  As I entered the club, I inquired as to whether there was an C (three-cabin business class upgrade space) inventory available.  There was, so the agent went about confirming my upgrade and called me back a few minutes later.

While I’ve written about AA’s Flagship Service on JFK-LAX/SFO before, I couldn’t help but notice that even the cheese plates have been upgraded.

American 185
New York Kennedy (JFK) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Friday, January 18th, 2013
Depart:  9:45PM
Arrive: 12:17AM
Duration:  5 hours, 32 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 767-223ER (N339AA)
Seat: 10D (Business Class)

Since Hawaiian Airlines entered the New York market, there have been a number of fare wars for flights to Hawaii.  As I got to January 8th without any particular plans for MLK weekend, I decided to go to Maui.

While there were other cheaper fares to Hawaii, I ultimately picked a $555.80 roundtrip to Maui on American for two reasons:

• Unlike its Hertz locations for rental cars, Maui had award availability for its hotels.
• American worked out schedule-wise on both ends.

Thanks to some systemwide upgrades and AA’s generous elite upgrade success rates for Executive Platinum members, the entire trip was in premium cabins.

This trip’s title stems from the conversation I had with my seatmate from Los Angeles after he asked me why I was going to Maui.  After explaining my “hobby,” a thought occured to me:  This trip to Hawaii would be the furthest I traveled in a three-day weekend.  Traditionally, I’ve taken 5 day weekends to go to Hawaii or the Phillipines.  Europe’s a bit closer, but even I’ve taken 4 days to journey there.

US Airways is once again offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles, targeted for Dividend Miles members who purchased or gifted miles in 2012.  This brings the total cost approximately $19 per thousand miles.

These sorts of promotions are quite common.

Since moving to New York, I’ve flown to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving.  To save on airfare, I taken to flying on Thanksgiving morning itself.  While last year’s trip was an uneventful journey of domestic first class, this past year’s was more interesting.

To begin this story, I paid $159.80 for one-way coach ticket between New York and Los Angeles on UA927.  While the absence of complimentary upgrades on United’s p.s. service increases my odds of flying in the back of the plane, I booked the ticket figuring I’d get paid to fly (by being bumped) or get an operational upgrade.  With the flight completely sold out in coach for weeks leading up to the departure, the odds were good.

I made it to the airport and fought off fatigue (6:30AM departures are not my cup of tea!). In light of the holiday, the premium cabins were still on-sale, leaving me to go hat in hand for an op-up rather than a bump.  My inquiry as to “whether we’d need volunteers today” (to dance around asking about my upgrade chances explicitly) lead to a new boarding pass on the spot for 9B.

United 927
New York Kennedy (JFK) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Thursday, November 22nd, 2012
Depart:  6:30AM
Arrive: 9:37AM
Duration:  6 hours, 7 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-222 (N525UA)
Seat: ~~16D (Economy)~~ ~~9B (Business Class)~~ 3C (First Class)

Ah.  Row 9.  The seats with just too much legroom.

I settled in, read the breakfast menu, and began drifting off to sleep.

On our taxi out, the purser came back to the business class section with a simple pronouncement:  “I need 4 volunteers to sit in first class.”  The statement registered and I was moving forward, now to 3C.  With the plane steadily taxing to the runway, I was handed a new menu, which read as follows:

With the plane beginning to turn onto the runway, the purser came to my seat to take my order.  I chose the cereal, making my breakfast markedly similar to the one I had in p.s. Business Class in August.

The two course breakfast seemed better structured than the single-tray approach from August, but having not had a recent business class breakfast service, I could not determine whether this was one of the few distinctions of the first class product.

I fly on AA185, the late evening JFK-LAX flight, on a regular basis.   While the flight is conveniently timed for making it to the airport with plenty of time between work and the departure time, it unfortunately arrives after midnight (with scheduled arrivals closer to 1AM).

Recently, I adopted a new approach to getting to sleep quickly after arrival:  Stay near the airport.  With the help of Kayak, I was able to find a $80 rate at the Westin LAX when Starwood’s going rate was $100.  With SPG’s Best Rate Guarantee, I picked up the lower rate and 2k SPG points.

.

There are a few things you do not want to see when you go to rent a car.

This is one of them:

This should make things interesting.

In the tradition of last year, it’s time to summarize where I went and how I got there.  I flew about 217k miles in 2012, approximately 186k of which were revenue miles.  Across my revenue and award travel, all but 49k miles were in premium cabins.

I had several redemptions:

• The tail-end of my trip to Australia and New Zealand occurred in 2012.
• I indulged in booking business class awards for redeye flights from the US West Coast rather than paying hundreds of dollars for coach.
• I flew to Asia via Europe in business class for 50k Amex MR points.
• I stayed in a variety of Starwood hotels as outright awards or with cash and points.

I earned points and miles from a variety of sources.

• On United, I finished the year with about 115k EQM or about 230k redeemable miles by flying.  I retained United 1K.
• On American, I finished the year with 124k EQM.  Thanks to a number of promotions, I picked up 280k redeemable miles.  I retained American Executive Platinum.
• With SPG, I earned 40k points from hotel stays (17 stays/21 nights) and credit card spending.  I retained Gold and missed Platinium.
• With Hyatt, I earned 30k points from hotel stays (12 stays/13 nights).  I failed to retain Diamond.
• By paying my rent with my credit card, I completed my spending requirements for the 100k British Airways credit card offer, earning an additional 25k points in the process.
• I picked up 40k US Airways Dividend Miles with the US Airways Mastercard.

My total spend on flights occurring in 2012 (inclusive of OneWorldMegaDo) was $8231.15 (down from last year’s $8798.76), offset further by a gain of $1.1k in unspent United travel vouchers.  I spent $4532.77 (up from last year’s $2703.62) on hotels (41 stays and 54 nights) and $2144.72 (up from last year’s $1727.10) on rental cars (inclusive of insurance, but not gasoline, for 25 rentals, 46 rental days).

So I just went to check-in for my flight on American Airlines tomorrow.  While I’ve had mystery errors during check-in with United (particularly since 3/3), this is a first for AA:

The EXP desk says the reservation is fine (unlike those United experiences), so tomorrow probably won’t be nearly the adventure it could be.

View from the Wing that Avios is offering a 6 day sale for 25% off points needed for award bookings originating from London.  The upcoming 30% transfer bonus from Membership Rewards starting December 3rd doesn’t quite coincide with the promotion.

The fuel surcharges for awards haven’t been reduced, so it’s important to determine whether this promotion makes sense (from the consumer-side).  As I’m US-based, my inclination is to book a one-way ex-London (to satisfy the promotion) and book an award with AA/UA to Europe.  With more careful planning, a full-fledged roundtrip booked under the promotion could be nested within a roundtrip award (or revenue trip) booked elsewhere.

As a justification for why one might pay for British Airways’ fuel surcharges on an award, there’s currently no saver business or first class availability on AA metal across the Atlantic at least without AA.com getting more creative than it currently knows how to be.  The taxes and fees of a standard award for LHR-JFK one-way on AA metal currently run $282.80 in a premium cabin.

British Airways metal offers far more plentiful premium cabin space.  Picking a random date to book a business class award on LHR-JFK, I turned up two different prices, one with AA and one with BA:

With a 20k point price disparity, the BA-booked award is a clear winner between the two.  The $269.10 in “fees” above and beyond a standard AA-ticketed and operated award is less than ideal, but the point disparity can largely justify it.  I can routinely earn Avios points at 0.75cpp (paying a small processing fee to charge my rent to my BA Visa) but I currently earn AA miles at 1.54cpm (by flying; if I had the AAdvantage cards, I could similarly run my rent through them to achieve 0.94cpm).  This brings the implicit cost of the miles for these awards to $225 and $770 (or $470 with an AAdvantage card), covering the difference in “fees.”

A LHR-SFO one-way booking in business class tells a similar story.

The BA-operated fuel surcharge across both carriers widens to about $301.  The gap in the implicit costs between AA-ticketed and operated and BA-ticketed and operated narrows to  an optimistic $188.75 to a realistic $488.75 ($281.25 versus $770/$470).

As I lack status with British Airways, the redeposit fee of 40 USD deters me from speculatively booking to my heart’s content (as I might with AA/UA awards), but this promotion leaves in inclined to firm up my plans more quickly than I would otherwise.

The next leg of my business trip adventure involved a single night at the Sheraton La Jolla.

While property is visible from La Jolla Village Drive, its actual driveway is on a side street with minimal markings.

Like a few other Sheratons that I have stayed at, guest rooms were scattered among a few standalone buildings.

Most, but not quite all, of the doors to the right were “enhanced” rooms.  As an SPG Gold member, I received an “upgrade” to one of the rooms on the right with a view of the pool.

While my room was comfortable, I couldn’t help but shake that dated feel when contrasted with Westin.

In a rare business trip, I found myself spending 3 nights at the Westin Pasadena.

As I was checking in at 11AM, having made my way from the first flight in from New York, I did not have especially high expectations for my room.  The front desk found me a high floor room, 921.

At the door, I tried my keycard.  Nothing.  Figuring my swiping technique was somehow lacking, I tried a few more times.  Nothing.  To see if the lock was even powered, I swiped a Starbucks card.  Still nothing.

Thoroughly confused, I went back to the front desk.  The apologetic front desk clerk realized that I was actually supposed to be in room 912 and that the rate card was incorrectly marked for 921. My return to the 9th floor was far less eventful.

Lately, I’ve been noticing that I’ve been spoiled by the decor of Westins.  I’m perfectly willing to admit that it could just be an elaborate marketing gimmick (or success, for that matter), but the rooms at Sheratons lately have felt much more… tired.

Before I find myself taking back everything I said about Westin, the white balance of my camera was off.

While I didn’t choose the hotel, Starwood’s current Better by the Night promotion, offering triple points on 3+ night stays, worked out nicely.  Ordinarily, I’m much more stay rather than night-driven, as I tend to make only brief stops in locations and to try to maximize stay-based bonuses (and progress towards elite status).

Last weekend was an adventure, to put it mildly. I was visiting San Jose on a $233 United fare that I had booked back in June, out Saturday and back Sunday night.

Standing in line at LGA to board, I ran into another FlyerTalker who I met on the $120 NYC-PDX fare.   While I mostly napped on my LGA-DEN leg, I ended up getting asked by my seatmate about what she could do in San Jose… for 6 hours while waiting for her flight back.   Under most normal circumstances, this question would puzzle someone; but I apparently have a “FlyerTalk vibe,” so there was no confusion about what was going on.

Saturday night, I get an email from United telling me my Monday morning CLE-LGA flight is cancelled, beginning my string of flight cancellations up until Wednesday morning.  Placed on a map, my various reroutes gave impressive coverage from a single, SJC-NYC one-way trip.

Due to automatic rebookings, it’s very likely I overlooked a few flights:

1. Morning SJC-LAX flight, connecting to UA1001, LAX-EWR.  UA1001 cancels at 8AM.
2. Rebooked at SJC to AA, AA1922 to AA746, SJC-DFW-LGA.  AA746 cancels at 9:30AM.
3. Rebooked AA1530, SJC-ORD, then connecting to AA392, ORD-LGA, on Tuesday.  While I was eating lunch, AA392 got cancelled 2 days in advance.
4. At the ORD Admirals Club, I got rebooked on AA366 for Wednesday.  I ultimately move it to AA398, the 6AM Wednesday departure, over the phone.  It got cancelled Tuesday morning.
5. I got rebooked on AA2488, ORD-BOS, ultimately  moving onto the earlier departure, AA1184, on Tuesday.

As this itinerary ultimately left me with two overnights in Chicago, I wound up staying at the aloft Chicago O’Hare (which is identical to past alofts I have visited) for 4k SPG points and then the Sheraton Chicago O’Hare on a 2.8k/$45 cash and points rate.  I booked a two room suite, which is uncommon for a basic points redemption.  Check-in required prompting to receive internet for free ($9.95/nt otherwise) as my Gold amenity.

My one and only complaint with the room itself was its proximity to the elevators.

Otherwise, I had exactly what I was promised, a two-room suite.

As I was staying on a weeknight, the hotel was charging about $210/nt for prepaid, nonrefundable rates and $249/nt for flexible rates.  In comparison, using the cost of replacement for the points, my nightly rate was approximately $123/nt and fully flexible (cancel by 6PM on the day of arrival).

Nonetheless, as ill-advised as flying into a hurricane might be, buying a walk-up fare on American Sunday morning for ~$480 would have cost about as much as my two nights in Chicago, a one-way car rental from Boston, gas, and tolls ultimately did for my return to New York.

At the National Air and Space Museum, it was time for “Fond Memories with the Tulip.”

For my trip to Washington D.C. last month, I took to hotel hopping, both to get the best prices and to maximize my stay amenities. As I had taken a late evening train down from New York, I arrived at the hotel just after midnight. Interestingly, the front desk commented that I was the last Diamond to arrive for the evening, but even with a number of rooms available for sale online, this didn’t translate into an upgraded room.

The layout of the hotel left something to be desired.  In the morning, I ventured out of my room in search of the Regency Club to have breakfast.  From the elevator bank that I took to my room in the evening, the top two floors were marked but inaccessible.  As I was wandering around, I found a housekeeper, whose only suggestion for where the lounge might be directed me to the exercise center on a different floor.  Only after discovering a second elevator bank with access to the top floors was I able to get to the Regency Club just before breakfast ended.

For my stay of 4 days/3 nights in Kauai, I booked the Sheraton Kauai Resort.  A bit more than a month out from arrival, I came across a $309/nt base rate (plus taxes/resort fee) for Labor Day weekend.

As I wasn’t entirely thrilled by a $300+/nt rate, I continued to explore my options with Expedia periodically, eventually stumbling upon a $225/nt rate for the Sheraton offered by Expedia.  Starwood offers a fairly generous best rate guarantee, requiring a booking only after a claim is approved.  I took the 10% discount (over 2k SPG points), which brought my nightly rate down to $202/nt.

Overall, my room wasn’t anything extraordinary compared to a normal Sheraton property.  As of late, I’ve taken an appreciation for the fresh feel of Westins (at least amongst Starwood properties).

My trip intersected with the Kauai Marathon, making getting in and out from the property a bit more difficult in the morning one day.  I chose to eat at the hotel’s restaurant, finding the $25 breakfast buffet to be disappointing (and leaving me appreciating the Hyatt Place I had just stayed at).

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.

For my trip to Hawaii this past Labor Day weekend, I flew to Kauai by my now traditional route: Honolulu.   While the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani looked “good” at $189/nt plus resort fees for a flexible rate compared to other hotels, the Hyatt Place Waikiki dropped its nightly rates to $139/nt with no resort fee three days before my departure.  As the hotel was limited to valet parking, I parked at the Ewa Hotel Waikiki next door.

The open-air lobby is the first I’ve seen at a Hyatt Place.

As a Hyatt Diamond member, my basic city view room was upgraded to a high floor, partial ocean view room.  Considering the location of the hotel relative to other buildings, I doubt there was much room for improvement.

Breakfast was served at a covered buffet.  The open seating area lent itself, however, to attracting a variety of birds looking for handouts, the signs discouraging feeding the birds notwithstanding.

Overall, I was quite pleased with my stay, but it seems rare that the nightly rate of the Hyatt Place falls below the other Starwood properties in the area, particularly when cash and points rates are considered.

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:

With a 10AM departure out of Brussels back to New York, staying near the airport was a good strategy.  Convienently, at the time of booking the air travel, Starwood had a cash and points rate available for the Sheraton Brussels Airport hotel at 4k SPG points and 60USD.  In comparison, the hotel’s nightly prepaid, nonrefundable rate was typically running around 190 Euros for weekday stays.

The hotel is quite close to the airport.  Since the arrivals level is undergoing construction work, the advertised claim of “39 steps from the airport entrance” wasn’t quite accurate due to poor signage, but getting to and from the terminal on the departures level was straightforward enough.

At the end of checking in, the front desk clear had completely forgotten about the SPG Gold amenity.  Figuring that internet would run 10-20 Euros, I asked about it.  He stated my options and I indicated I wanted the internet (as paying 10 Euros for 250 points is a miserable value).  At checkout, the fee for internet access wound up appearing on the bill as apparently my amenity hadn’t even been entered by the clerk the previous day.

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.

Ordinarily, when I’m flying American, I use my American Express Platinum card to visit the Admirals Club while waiting for my flight to board. One of the (many) perks of Executive Platinum status with AA is access to the Flagship Lounges on international itineraries. (If I maintained oneworld Emerald status with a carrier other than AA, I would have Flagship lounge access even on trips entirely within the US.)

Sharing a wall with the Admirals Club, the views of the tarmac are similar.

In addition to the normal, complimentary Admirals Club spread of pretzels and fruit, the Flagship lounge has a selection of hot foods and cheeses around dinner time.  Overall, it struck me as being much more suitable for snacking rather than a full fledged meal.

While the sign was almost certainly necessitated by New York liquor licensing, part of me was left wondering whether its prominence was driven by prior incidents?

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.

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.

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.

Switching to the nonstop to Honolulu meant I had an overnight to find myself accommodations for.  At about $100/nt (plus the resort fee and taxes), I chose the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani again (I had last stayed here for my Honolulu overnight in September).

This time around, I actually had a city view room (rather than parking lot view) with a small balcony.

My stay served its purpose:  To get a few hours of sleep before my flight.  My only complaint?  The front desk doesn’t sell stamps.  Combined with the early departure from Honolulu, I had to wait to San Francisco to mail a postcard.

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 my stay in Manila, I chose the Hyatt Manila and used one of my Diamond member suite upgrades to confirm a better room for myself.  I received a Regency Suite King room.  At 74 square meters (per their website description), the suite was bigger than my Manhattan studio.

The bedroom:

The room had excellent views of the city from the 26th floor.

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):

In retrospect, I misnamed my trip to Thailand and Japan via Europe this past March.  Business class to Asia via Europe is a cakewalk compared to flying coach to Asia via the Pacific.  Back in November, I convinced myself to book a trip to the Philippines, in coach, via the middle of the Pacific (to take advantage of United’s generous routing rules).

While I was originally planning on writing a brief post on only my hotel stay in Manila, I picked up a lucky bump in SFO on my outbound, giving me a reroute via Tokyo in United’s First Class (and then a less luxurious coach experience on ANA).  With the bump and a same-day confirmed flight change, my trip came out to be:

While I had tried to convince myself on my return from Frankfurt to Dulles in January to “not cross oceans in coach,” I finished the weekend having flown 9689 miles in coach and 10255 miles in first class.

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.

My flight from Istanbul was delayed, so I wasn’t on the ground in Germany past customs until about 9PM, hardly enough time to go into Berlin, catch some sleep at my hotel, and make my flight 12 hours later, so sadly, I chose to go straight to my hotel.

This left me wandering around Berlin Tegel Airport, looking for the hotel shuttle stand.  I made a loop around the concourse having found none.  I checked the hotel website again and realized I had to arrange the shuttle in advance, so I went out to the cab stand instead, finding a driver very excited to practice a few lines of English with an American.

The room had two halves with a moving partition (hence the two beds pictured).

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.

With about 23 hours in Istanbul, I signed up for the Turkish Airlines-provided city tour to get a quick glimpse of the city before my flight to Berlin.

After paying for my visa and entering Turkey, I located the Turkish Airlines Hotel Desk.  For passengers connecting in Istanbul, Turkish Airlines offers a choice of either a hotel room or a guided tour of Istanbul, coordinating both offers from the “Hotel Desk.”  (Its name is not completely intuitive to its purpose for those looking to take the city tour.)

Since I was interested in taking the city tour the next day, I had made my own hotel arrangements, selecting the Holiday Inn.  While it is billed as an airport hotel (and it offers a shuttle), it is about 6 miles from the airport itself.

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 stay in Tokyo, I chose to stay at the airport.  While the first part of my plan (checking in early to freshen up) did not go quite as expected, it was convenient for the second half of my plan:  Being able to get to the airport at a leisurely pace for my late morning departure.

As a Hilton HHonors gold member, I was given a voucher for a complimentary breakfast at their restaurant.  The buffet was a vast collection of Japanese and Western dishes, but I chose to not take photos as it was rather busy and I didn’t feel like explaining what I was up to.

Bleary-eyed from my redeye, I dropped off my bags at my hotel and then wandered into downtown Tokyo.

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.

For reasons that weren’t clear to me when I was wandering around (and even now), Times Square is to be found in Sukhumvit Bangkok as well.

For my night in Bangkok, I chose the Aloft in Sukhumvit.

Overall, my room felt like a cookie-cutter replica of my previous Aloft stay last summer.

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.

To continue my trend of proving I wandered outside of the airport, I present Zürich.

For my stay in Zürich, I chose the Holiday Inn Express near the airport. The S-Bahn into the city was a short five minute walk from the hotel, so I was minimally inconvenienced.

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 I alluded to earlier, I booked a second business class Star Alliance award with Aeroplan in December during the business class for the price of coach “glitch.”  Coupled with the Aeroplan transfer promotion, the award cost 50k Membership Rewards points (all from my Amex Platinum signup bonus) in addition to taxes and fees.

When I booked my trip to Sydney and Auckland, I transfered 76k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.  At the time, Aeroplan was offering a 25k mile bonus if 100k miles were transfered from a single program.  I went ahead and transfered an additional 24k points to Aeroplan, waited a few days for the points to post, and then transfered an additional 26k points to Aeroplan.  Fortunately for me the booking glitch lasted while I waited for my bonus points to post, allowing me to book this Asia 1 business class award (normally 125k miles) for 75k Aeroplan miles which I obtained by transferring 50k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.

From credit card signups, promotions, and actual flying, I’ve wound up with globs of frequent flier miles and I want to make the most of them.  Since I was on a United revenue ticket for my trip to Europe in January, I did not make use of my US Airways Grand Slam-obtained Dividend Miles as I had originally planned to.  Since US Airways places Thailand and Singapore into its “South/Central Asia” award category (and thereby requiring 160k miles instead of 120k for first class), planning a trip there using Dividend Miles instead would not be as efficient.

Since this trip was booked roughly three months in advance, scarce award availability on other transatlantic flights and fuel surcharges from Aeroplan on Lufthansa-operated segments led me to pick my routing via Copenhagen and Berlin on United.  As I have never been to Denmark and last visited Berlin in 2005, both stops were reasonable concessions to make.

A further constraint of award travel are the routing rules imposed by the airlines.  IATA-set maximum permitted mileage (MPM) figures between city pairs can be used to validate revenue ticket routings.  The MPM for EWR-TYO is 12511 miles via the Atlantic and 8084 miles via the Pacific.  For comparison, the great circle distance is 6751 miles.

On a similar vein, MPM’s can be used to validate award tickets with some carriers.  United permits the MPM to be exceeded by 15%.  Aeroplan permits a (comparatively) meager 5% overage.  Since this is an Aeroplan award ticket, these rules gave me 13136 miles to work with in each direction for travel via the Atlantic (practically speaking, this means “via Europe” both ways due to distance restrictions and the Star Alliance route structure).  I made the most of it on my outbound leg (at 12979 miles) and comparatively less on my inbound leg (at 10666 miles).

As a continuation of this mental exercise, we could validate the itinerary as a EWR-BKK award.  The MPM for EWR-BKK is 11734 miles via the Atlantic and 10648 miles via the Pacific; the MPM+5% is 12320 and 11180 respectively.  While this works for the outbound journey, my now convoluted return from Bangkok (BKK-NRT-IST-TXL-EWR) exceeds the limit at 13555 miles.

Given these constraints, I arrived at my trip itinerary:  Newark to Copenhagen to Zurich to Bangkok to Tokyo to Istanbul to Berlin to Newark.  Aeroplan permits two stopovers (a stop over 24 hours) in addition to the destination itself; I’m stopping in Zurich, Bangkok, and Tokyo.  I have extended layovers in Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Berlin.

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

For our third night, OWMD stayed at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza.

Earlier in the day while we were at the Museum of Flight, I had noticed suite availability and attempted to confirm an upgrade.  I was told to call back later, and so I did… on the bus to the hotel from LAX.  At check-in, I was given a Century Suite.  At 700 square feet, it’s larger than my Manhattan studio.

Having had a few hours to kill between breakfast and my timeslot to visit the Flagship Check-in area at LAX, I chose to take the tour of the hotel they offered.

For our second night, oneworld MegaDo stayed at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue.  Shortly before the festivities started, I managed to confirm a suite upgrade using one of my four soon-to-be-expiring certificates that I received with my Hyatt Diamond status during StarMegaDo3.  I received a small, but comfortable one bedroom corner suite.

oneworld MegaDo started off in Dallas, where we stayed at the Hyatt Regency.  Having taken an early flight in on US Airways, I was glad that they were able to find me a room.

The weather made for a very bleak day at DFW.

While the type of crowd that the MegaDos attracts tends to be more focused on points than food amenities, the Hyatt delivered an apple, pear, and bottle of water as the diamond amenity.

Prior to receiving the “Crazy Water” information card, I hadn’t appreciated the number of types of water that I could have.

As I was approaching the gate, the agents were starting to start their boarding calls, so I hastily snapped off a few pictures of the plane.

United 933
Frankfurt (FRA) - Washington Dulles (IAD)
Monday, January 16th
Depart: 5:56PM
Arrive: 8:18PM
Duration: 8 hours, 22 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-222 (N780UA)
Seat: 30H (Economy Class)

The gate agents started boarding by calling “all elites” so I joined the boarding scrum near the podium.  One of the agents was standing near the line checking boarding passes and directed me towards a large mass of people across the walk way:  “Your boarding group is over there.”  I looked confused, so he explained that they were “currently boarding first class, business class, and 1Ks,” and that I, as a Premier should go and wait.  In one of my few Do You Know Who I Am moments while traveling, I pointed to the rather prominent “1K” printed right in the middle of my boarding pass and walked to the gate to board.

At this point, it’s worth noting something about the layout of United’s boarding passes.  For 1Ks, there’s a “1K” printed in the dead center of the boarding pass and the words “Premier Executive 1K” under the passenger’s name.  While I was waiting, the agent came running over having realized his error, profusely apologizing for having only read the word “Premier” on my boarding pass.  It’s a good thing that the boarding order was being enforced; it’s just unfortunate that I, as someone who doesn’t probably look like an especially frequent flyer (except for those 103k EQM on United and 34k EQM on American last year), was misjudged.

Coach was fairly empty and I was able to console myself with an entire row of three seats to myself to compensate for the lost exit row seat after we had an equipment swap from old-to-new config.

At the back of the center Economy Plus section are six seats dedicated to crew rest with extra legroom and footrests.  (During flight, they pull the curtains in the back of the section around the area for improved darkness.)  With the empty flight, other passengers began eying the crew rest seats to be rebuffed by the crew.

We had a roughly hour delay at the gate waiting for mechanics to fix our air conditioning units before we pushed back.

With few international arrivals at that hour, the customs lines in the midfield concourse were not especially bad, but with Global Entry, I was through in about two minutes.

I had quite a bit of time to kill at the Frankfurt Airport.  I first visited the Lufthansa Senator lounge, finding it to be quite crowded when I first arrived.  (A number of passengers, including myself, had to wait a few minutes for a seat to open up.)  I then exited the Schengen area of the airport to visit the Tower Lounge.

The views of the airport are quite stunning.

In the distance, the tail of N780UA is hiding behind the terminal pier.

Compared to the Senator lounge with its never ending supply of soft pretzels, this lounge had a much more extensive snack selection.  (Unfortunately, most of my pictures of the food and drink selection have gone missing in action in the month since this trip happened.)

With a few minutes before boarding was to commence, I scurried to the other end of the pier to my gate so I could take a few pictures of the plane before departure.

Rather than give a full trip report for my short hop from Dublin to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, I’m going to let a single picture do the talking.

While waiting for my Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, I took the time to stop by the bmi Diamond Club.

The food selection was identical to the fare offered in the London Room at Heathrow.

About 15 minutes before boarding was to start, I also stopped by the Dublin Airport Authority-run Anna Livia lounge across the hallway using my PriorityPass card that I got with my Amex Platinum card.  I didn’t have the chance to take any pictures.  As far as lounges go, it was quite small compared to the Diamond Club.

For my night in Dublin, I came across a 65 Euro room at the Radisson Blu.  Rather conveniently, Club Carlson announced their triple points promotion within a few hours of my booking.

Having only managed to catch a few hours of sleep at the Sheraton London Heathrow from when I checked in to when I had to be out in back to catch the bus to the airport (having been advised by the front desk clerks to get to the airport about 1.5 hours earlier than I needed to be), I was quite happy that I was able to check in right away.

In terms of my priorities for a hotel room, I’ve found a new one:  Blackout curtains.  Since I had only managed a few hours of sleep at the Sheraton London Heathrow from when I checked in to when I thought I had to head to the airport, I was dead tired.  Thankfully, I was able to make the room pitch black and catch a quick nap before heading into Dublin.

British Midlands operates two lounges at Heathrow, the Great British Lounge for international passengers and the London Room for “domestic” passengers.  Thanks to the common travel area between the UK and Ireland, flights to the Republic of Ireland are considered “domestic.”

Security was quick and painless and, quite unexpectedly, only had walk through metal detectors at the checkpoint.

At 7AM, the lounge was almost completely empty.

I was mildly expecting a more breakfast orientated food selection considering it was 7AM, but evidently hard liquor, pretzels, and potato chips make for strong alternatives.

At this juncture, it’s worth noting something about Star Alliance lounge access on this trip.  While I had access to the arrivals lounge by virtue of traveling in the business class cabin, my visits to the London Room and the lounges of Dublin and Frankfurt were due to having Star Alliance Gold status from United (by being at least a 1P).  In stark contrast to United’s Clubs which just need to see an international boarding pass, bmi and Lufthansa are sticklers for the Star Alliance lounge rules and require that they see the passenger’s elite card.

Knowing these rules, I brought my 1K card with.  During my conversations with the Dulles United Club agents who had just been trained on the legacy Continental systems, it seems cards will be needed to visit United Clubs on international itineraries.  It’s just another change United elites will “like” from this merger.

Since I had an early morning flight to Dublin, I decided that I would stay near the airport.  Initially, I was considering rooms with roughly 100USD/night rates as I just needed a bed and a shower.

Having accumulated a large stockpile of SPG points from the Starwood Amex last summer (30k for $4.5k in 3 months), ordinary spending, and Starwood stays, I noticed that the Sheraton London Heathrow is a Category 2 hotel.  For weekend stays, Cat 2 hotels are only 3k points per night, giving me a 3.3cpp valuation for my redemption while offering the added flexibility that a prepaid, nonrefundable rate would not have had.

My main annoyance with the hotel is that they do not run their own shuttle and instead rely on the Hotel Hoppa bus service which runs a few pounds each way.  Further, since I had not picked up any cash at an ATM, I had to wait inside at the information desk to pay with a credit card.  The customer in front of me had no hotel room for the night and patiently listened to the agent sell him on all the great benefits of the London Heathrow Hilton (for roughly 160 pounds per night).  The guy agreed and stepped off to get some cash.  Rather than service me after I stated I just needed a bus ticket, he reminding me that the guy was coming back (yeah, right…).  Eventually, the other clerk told him to just take care of the line of waiting customers rather than hope that the guy would come back.

The front lobby is undergoing maintenance, so the bus drops off and picks up passengers at the back of the hotel.

When I came to the desk, I thought it was incredibly well designed to have three types of outlets.

Unfortunately, the US outlet was slightly out of spec and permitted my cables to float freely in the outlet without making electrical contact.  With my set of plug adapters, I reached a simple. albeit less than ideal solution.

To maximize my time in the city, I decided to visit the arrivals lounge and leave my roll on suitcase at the airport rather than stop at my hotel first.

Since UA924 arrives late in the morning (after 10AM), the lounge had only a few people in it and showers were readily available.

The lounge offers a few light breakfast options for those skipping breakfast on the plane in favor of additional sleep (like myself).

Overall, it’s a small lounge, but for a business traveler who just needs to take a shower, it doesn’t need to be especially comfortable for long term stays.  I’m somewhat curious to know just how full it gets in the early morning.

When I was booking this trip in late December, I was able to find business class upgrade space on United 924, the late evening redeye from Washington to London operated with a 777.  Unfortunately, the United 777 fleet is in a state of flux as they update the cabins:  Not all planes have received the new lie-flat business class yet and the forward cabins are smaller than the ones they are replacing.  Further, equipment swaps between the two 777 types can happen at any time.

At booking, I was in the old configuration 777.  For an upgrader, an equipment swap can be disastrous as one could fall from a confirmed business class seat to an undesirable middle seat in economy minus.

The day of my flight, I glanced at the mobile United site over lunch to figure out the nose number of the plane I would be on, from which I could back out the tail number.  The FlyerGuide wiki maintains a reasonably up-to-date page for the state of United’s fleet.  Given nose number 2481, I could determine that I was going to be on N781UA, which by January 12th, had the new business class.

I checked the full United site to figure out my new seat assignment, finding that I couldn’t see it online until I called an agent.  Fortunately, I was still in business class and had managed to get a rear facing aisle seat.  Having tried out the forward facing lie flat seats of United and Air New Zealand on my trip in December, I was looking forward to trying out the rear facing experience.

While my trip originated at New York Kennedy and I did choose to visit the United Club there, those details are written up in my December trip report.

United 924
Washington Dulles (IAD) – London (LHR)
Thursday, January 12th
Depart: 8:00PM
Arrive: 12:15PM
Duration: 7 hours, 13 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-222 (N781UA)
Seat: 7B (Business Class)

The flight show is an important part of any long-haul trip (especially when on an Embraer regional jet).

The menu read as follows:

Concerned for the potential worst of Skychefs, I had ordered a vegetarian meal.

As the main course:

For desert, I opted for the ice cream.

By this time, I realized we were about two and a half hours into the flight with a predicted early arrival to London due to strong winds so I began my attempt to get ever last moment of sleep that I could.  I skipped the breakfast but remained quasi-conscious as the sounds of the breakfast service kept me from falling back to sleep.  Needless to say, I’ve now concluded that meal service on transatlantic redeyes is a trap.

Passport control was quick, although the UK officer felt compelled to guess that my purpose of travel to Ireland was to “visit family” based on my red hair.

As I approached United 1K status last year, I began to eye a possible uses of the 6 systemwide upgrades that I would receive for crossing the 100k mile mark.  Unlike American’s systemwide upgrades which work on any fare, United requires that travel be booked into the “W” fare bucket (or higher).

To quantify this a bit further, the cheapest round trip fare (without concern for validity dates, minimum stay restrictions, and so forth) on United for NYC-SYD is a “K” fare for $798 plus $620 in fuel surcharges.  The absolute cheapest “W” fare is $1698 plus $620 in fuel surcharges.  Given that confirmable upgrade space on United’s SFO/LAX-SYD routes is practically nonexistent, using a systemwide amounts to a $350 lottery ticket (each way) for a chance of sitting in business class on a United 747.

In December, I came across a fare sale from New York (and Newark) to Dublin, Ireland for $392 plus taxes roundtrip.  Even more importantly, W fares were only running $200 more (plus a small bit of additional tax as well) for the roundtrip.  I set off looking for a flight with a confirmable upgrade to business class around MLK weekend to Europe.  The routing rules on United’s fares for this route are quite generous, allowing one to connect in nearly any major European city in addition to connecting at a Lufthansa, Swiss, or bmi hub.

I came across United 924, Dulles to London Heathrow, allowing myself 22 hours to connect to a bmi flight onwards to Dublin.  Having noticed the early evening departures out of Frankfurt to Dulles operated by United, I arranged to fly from Dublin to Frankfurt for a 20 hour connection, allowing me to meet a friend for breakfast.

For those still following this itinerary, it looks like this when mapped out:

Having decided to tough out 9 hours of coach for my return flight, this itinerary cost $641.50 while earning 9433 EQM (18866 RDM; my miles for my bmi-operated LHR-DUB segment haven’t posted yet).  In contrast, a similar award ticket would run 50k miles to Europe (in business class) and 30k miles from Europe (in coach).  Factoring in the opportunity cost of not earning miles on an award ticket, this would yield a 0.649cpm valuation for using my miles.  Better redemption values can be found in domestic coach by comparison.

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.

I arrived from the Airbus Express from downtown to the airport and began my trek to find the Air New Zealand check-in desks at the other end of the airport.  I eventually came across a series of Air New Zealand counters and kiosks and got in line before wondering why I hadn’t seen any signs for premium cabin passengers.  I stepped out of line and returned to looking around, finding the business class check-in desk down a bit further and cloistered off from the rest of the airport.

The advantage of the business class check-in desk?  A dedicated passport control line and a slightly faster security line.  Compared to the hassle of a normal TSA security line, anything looks good.

Compared to the cheese and cracker fare at the United Clubs, the Air New Zealand lounge had a good variety of options.

With boarding scheduled to begin shortly, I headed to the gate.

We had a delay in boarding.  With moments to go before our scheduled departure, the gate agents announced that there was a problem with the avionics system and that there was no ETA, advising passengers with lounge access to return to the lounge.  I decided to stick around while a Canadian couple behind me left for the lounge.  As it turned out, boarding commenced shortly after the indefinite delay announcement.  The couple had just reached the lounge when the boarding announcement was made.  “Rebooting” (in their terminology) the aircraft electrical system caused the IFE to not be up and running during pushback and taxiing, leaving the crew to give the safety announcements the traditional way.

Air New Zealand 84
Auckland, NZ (AKL) – Vancouver (YVR)
Saturday, December 31st
Depart: 8:00PM
Arrive: 12:15PM
Duration: 13 hours, 15 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-219ER (ZK-OKF)
Seat: 5A (Business Class)

Once again, I was on a 777-219ER, so the Business Premier cabin was the nearly same as my Sydney to Auckland flight.  The notable addition to the scene is a tightly rolled memory foam mattress pad and a pillow.

The amenity kit came with the standard contents.

Immediately after takeoff, it was time for the obligatory airshow.

The menu read as follows:

Air New Zealand puts quite a bit of attention into describing the alcoholic beverages, especially the wines, served on board.

To open:

I had (obviously) requested a vegetarian meal in advance.

I decided to watch a movie and then asked to have my bed made up.  While the bed was quite comfortable, I had a slight cold and didn’t get the most optimal sleep I could.  When I awoke, the flight attendants were going around serving fruit juices and smoothies.

The egg was sadly a bit over cooked to the point of being browned and crispy in parts.

While my Vancouver layover was originally scheduled due to the mercy of award availability, it afforded me the opportunity to do my NEXUS iris scan on my way back to the United States.

When I was looking for hotels in Auckland, I came across the Best Western President Hotel Auckland at 50% off via American Express Travel, bringing the nightly rate to just over 60USD.  Had it been a complete disaster, I would have been able to walk away from the room and check-in to another Auckland hotel.  For the rate, the stay was comfortable, but obviously not the lap of luxury.

The front desk clerk was friendly during check-in, but the more manager-type working the desk began muttering “look at the rate for his room.”  I played dumb and asked what the matter was to “discover” that the going rate was just over double what the hotel was being paid.  I’m still not quite sure if the point of this exercise was to lower my expectations even further given the rate I was paying.

Having finished lunch in Sydney and quickly growing tired of dragging my bag with me, I decided to head to the airport a bit early.  Air New Zealand doesn’t support online check-in on its international routes, so I was left to check-in at the airport to obtain a boarding pass.  Rather unfortunately (and unknown to me when I was deciding to head to the airport), I couldn’t obtain a boarding pass until three hours before departure, leaving me with 30 minutes or so to kill waiting near the ticket desks.

Rather surprisingly for me, the Qantas employee staffing the Air New Zealand desk needed to see a printed itinerary showing that I had a ticket out of New Zealand.  Given Air New Zealand was to fly me in and out of New Zealand, they were privy to both ticket numbers of my Aeroplan award and should have had this accessible to them (or so I would have believed).

After walking through the mall that is the Sydney Airport international terminal, I reached the two Star Alliance lounges, one run by Singapore Airlines and the other Air New Zealand.  I chose to go to the Singapore lounge first.  Upon entering, the desk clerk suggested that since I was flying on Air New Zealand, I go to their lounge and come back if I decided that the Singapore lounge “was nicer.”  Having been to neither lounge, deciding which lounge would be nicer in advance would be difficult.  As a business class passenger with Star Alliance Gold status by virtue of being a United 1K, I was directed to the empty business class lounge.

Besides two staff members who kept checking on the food and drink supply, I was the only person in the lounge.

The various crackers they had out initially were quickly substituted for a wider variety of offerings.

From the seats near the window, I had a rather nice view of a Thai A340 while views of other aircraft were obstructed by various jet bridges.

Eventually, I decided to leave to visit the Air New Zealand lounge.

Initially, the lounge was quite full as many of the passengers were waiting for the United flights to San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Nonetheless, I was able to find a recliner near the windows overlooking the tarmac.

As a testament to the utter confusion that code shares can cause passengers, a group of travelers sitting next to me near the window began debating when their “Continental plane to Los Angeles” was going to show up.

As the boarding calls for the United 747’s were made, the crowd thinned out.  I was quite appreciate that even while reasonably busy, the wireless internet remained speedy.

Air New Zealand 118
Sydney, Australia (SYD) – Auckland, New Zealand (AKL)
Wednesday, December 28st
Depart: 3:45PM
Arrive: 8:45PM
Duration: 3 hours
Aircraft: Boeing 777-219ER (ZK-OKA)
Seat: 3A (Business Class)

Based on the scarce award availability on this route even right up to the flight, I expected the business class cabin to be reasonably full.   I was very mistaken.

I was the only passenger on the left aisle.  Three other passengers were seated on the right aisle.  Most seats had a dedicated overhead bin, virtually assuring space for passengers in business class without resorting to placing bags in the various closets of the aircraft.  One of the business class flight attendants greeted me, introduced herself by name, and offered a Auckland paper while offering a predeparture beverage.  I took the orange juice.

Taxiing brought us past N197UA headed back to San Francisco having flown to Los Angeles and Melbourne since I left it.

The safety video featured the All Blacks rather than Richard Simmons.

Upon takeoff, it was time for the initial flight show.

The menu read as follows:

I had requested a vegetarian meal in advance.

Upon arrival, we had to wait a few minutes to deplane for our jetbridge to be brought up to the aircraft.  Overall, customs was quick and painless (and didn’t require use of the express card handed out by the flight crew).  The immigration officer asked me what I was doing in Sydney: (“Being a tourist” sufficed.  The biosecurity officer asked me what sort of science I do:  I started to offer an explanation, but he quickly passed on hearing it.

For my three days, two nights in Sydney, I booked a revenue stay at the Four Points by Sheraton Sydney Darling Harbour.

I was quite pleased by the location, as it was a short walk from the restaurants and shops of Darling Harbour while still remaining close to the central business district of Sydney.

From exiting customs at the airport, I took the train and immediately headed to my hotel.  I was able to check-in at 10AM, but the best room available was on the third floor.  I took it, happy to be able to take a shower.

LCD TV notwithstanding, the room was showing its age.  In terms of upkeep (or simply an oversight in design), the door bar had made a small, but sizeable dent in the plaster of the wall.  In more practical areas, I was most disappointed by the internet access, especially at 24.50 AUD per day.  The connection in the room was wired and was rather slow.  The experience reminded me of the present state of wifi on airplanes within the United States, except that the wifi on airplanes is cheaper (order $12.95 for a transcontinental flight) and faster.

After finishing exploring the Star Alliance lounges of SFO, I left for the gate to snap some predeparture photos of the plane in old-new livery.  I was slightly foiled by the pattern in the glass.

United 863

San Francisco (SFO) - Sydney, Australia (SYD)

Saturday, December 24th

Depart: 10:39PM

Arrive: 7:51AM

Duration:  14 hours, 12 minutes

Aircraft: Boeing 747-422 (N197UA)

Seat: 14K (Business Class)

Ordinarily, I’m an aisle seat person, but I chose a forward facing window seat on the upper deck.  Extensive analysis on FlyerTalk puts the length of the bed in this particular seat at 75 inches.  My laptop bag and a book from my rollaboard suit case comfortably fit in one half of the window bins of the seat.

The overhead bins on the upper deck are quite small, however, and could not accommodate my suitcase.  The flight attendant noticed me staring at the overhead bins for a moment before suggesting I remove anything I might want during flight and he would stow it in the closet.

After stowing my bag, the flight attendant returned with a tray of predeparture beverages (water, orange juice, and sparkling wine).  I picked the sparkling wine and settled in.

As the third passenger to board the plane, I had some time to kill before boarding finished.  I started by reading the menu before turning to a book I had with me.

As I had requested a vegetarian meal, I was served an off-menu first course with the on-menu vegetarian ravoli.

For dessert, I chose the ice cream.

I played with my laptop for a bit prior to going to bed.  The amenity kit was simple yet practical.  Honestly, with my suitcase in the upper deck closet, the only essential I needed was a toothbrush.

I woke up around 6AM Sydney time from a combination of the sun and a crying baby.  Both of these are largely my own fault as I left my window shade up and chose not to use an eye mask nor ear plugs.  Nonetheless, it was a reasonably high quality six hours of sleep as I made it through the next day and evening without feeling prematurely tired.  I prefer to sleep on my side, so my only complaint with the lie-flat bed is that there’s a smallish headrest that sticks out near the very top of the bed.

A flight attendant was by soon after to offer a hot towel and to start serving breakfast.  The vegetarian breakfast omits the yogurt listed on the menu for some reason.

Just prior to landing, it was time to checkout the air show.

Customs was quick thanks to the Express Path cards handed out to business and first class passengers.  Of the fifteen or so minutes I spent getting landside, most of it was walking from the plane, through the duty-free store, and then ultimately out of the customs/immigration area.

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.

With my flight from New York arriving from San Francisco a bit early, I had a 24.5 hour layover at SFO.  After the Club Carlson 50k promotion went live, I registered and began looking for a chance to stop by a Radisson to participate in the promotion.  Even as I plan to use the points towards a night for a substantially more expensive hotel abroad, I couldn’t bring myself to mattress run locally (even with the $100/nt rate that showed up at the Radisson Lexington in December).  Since I needed to overnight in the Bay Area, I chose to stay at the Radisson San Francisco Airport Bay Front hotel.

I “splurged” and spent $5 at the time of booking for a bay view room.

I’ve come to set a few minimum standards with my hotel stays.  I want a comfortable bed.  I want a fast internet connection.  I want peace and quiet for when I’m trying to sleep.  For hotels with airport shuttles, I want the shuttle service to be frequent and run during the hours posted (unlike what happened at the aloft Dulles North to me in July).

My shuttle arrived within a few minutes of stepping out of the terminal.   Check-in was fast and painless.  Upon entering my room, I heard the occupants next door.  Since it was 10PM and I had little intention of going to bed right away, this didn’t really bother me as I wanted to catch up on my email and use the internet connection for a bit.  Around 1AM PST, my neighbors were still talking and laughing.  I wound up calling the front desk and was able to get moved to a new room on a quieter floor.

By the time I called, I had heard four distinct voices next door.  As I was leaving, I passed another party of four going into that room carrying several cases of beer into the room.  Needless to say, asking for another room was the wisest move I made all trip.  With my basic priorities of hotel stays satisfied, I settled in for the night.

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.

Thanks to the Aeroplan glitch (or unadvertised “promotion”), I put together a quick trip to Sydney and Auckland in business class for myself during Christmas and New Years.   While the award is hardly maximized, it worked out reasonably considering the limited business class availability across the Atlantic and Asia between Christmas and New Years by traveling via Europe.  Considering I spent 76k Membership Rewards points (and bought 4k Aeroplan miles), the itinerary is a steal compared to spending 130k United Mileage Plus miles.

When I had been looking at possible routings over the weekend before I booked, my transpacific segments were constrained by United and Air New Zealand’s then award availability.  United had plenty of seats from the US west coast to Australia at Christmas but none back for New Years.  Air New Zealand had good availability around Christmas, some availability around New Years back to North America, and almost nothing to or from Australia.  The fickleness of these award seats is represented somewhat in my routing via Vancouver.  Originally, I had been considering returning from Auckland via San Francisco, picking up a United flight back to Newark.  Around lunchtime, that seat disappeared, leaving me looking for new transpacific openings; I found AKL-YVR.  To get back to New York, I tacked on an Air Canada segment to Los Angeles and, thanks to Aeroplan’s allowance of two stopovers in addition to the destination, added a stop in Los Angeles to wait for flights with suitable transcontinental award availability.

In the intervening two weeks, Air New Zealand did open up seats to San Francisco and Los Angeles direct from Auckland, I kept the routing via Vancouver.  The one upside of paying UA’s normal award rates is that I can call and make changes for free as a 1K; changes to these Aeroplan awards might require more miles, miles that I don’t have (any more because I spent them on a trip to Asia in March :D).  If nothing else, I’ll be able to stop by to get my NEXUS iris scan done and see what Air Canada has in way to offer at its Maple Leaf Lounge.  Around 2AM EST Wednesday, I noticed that UA had opened up some availability right after New Years in p.s. business class.  When I got up to call Aeroplan at 7AM to adjust my outbound flight to p.s. as well to consolidate the change fee, the “promotion” had ended, but I was able to change out my Continental segments for ones on United p.s.  While I’ve flown numerous times in both of these cabins this year, p.s. still holds its distinction for me.    With these tweaked segments, my new itinerary is New York Kennedy to San Francisco to Sydney to Auckland to Vancouver to Los Angeles to New York Kennedy, traveling 21947 miles in 10 days.

I’ve added a trip report index spanning this year to the blog.

In preparation for my trip to Australia, I needed to get an electronic travel authority to Australia.  Applying for one directly from Australia online costs 20AUD, whereas United waives the fee for 1Ks.  After spending around $5k with United this year, it’s a small 0.4% return on investment.

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.

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.

As my second Seattle-area Hyatt visit last weekend, I stayed at the Hotel Sierra Redmond.  For this stay, I booked a one bedroom king with a balcony.

The bathroom and vanity:

As a one bedroom, the sitting area was more well defined.

A simple, yet functional desk:

A more nicely finished kitchenette than the Hotel Sierra Bellevue:

The front desk desk also asked for my preference in Diamond amenity, although the clerk spent a minute trying to see if it could be credited to US Airways (like the rest of my stay was).   Since the acquisition of Hotel Sierra two months ago by Hyatt, it seems the check-in clerks have been reasonably well-trained.  Three days after my stay, I received an email offering me the ability to sign up to earn “Stash Hotel Rewards.”  A quick glance at the website showed that it seems to be an independent hotelier rewards program, leaving me to chalk up the email as a legacy of the acquisition.

I had my NEXUS interview last weekend at the Blaine, Washington enrollment center.  Admittedly, the Canadian officer was rather puzzled by my place of residence in New York but went along with it after I explained why I wanted NEXUS:  “I find cheap airfares for weekends and go jetsetting.  I’d like to visit Canada with minimal fuss at the border.”  In an impressive show of government efficiency, I was approved at my interview last Sunday and received my card this past Thursday. Since I got into the Seattle area on Friday night, I went hotel hopping to score two last hits for the U.S. Airways Grand Slam.  I managed to find two Hotel Sierras (now owned by Hyatt) in the area at $90 per night two weeks in advance.  While I didn’t manage to find a third Hyatt stay in my schedule to stack the “Possibilities” promotion, these stays worked out nicely as other hit-eligible hotels in the area had more expensive rates. When I checked-in, the front desk clerk recognized my Hyatt Diamond status and asked for my choice of Diamond amenity:  500 Hyatt Gold Passport points or a $5 market credit.  With no desire to eat an overpriced bag of candies or a drink, I took the points.  The clerk was also able to tie my US Airways number to the stay.  From my reading of Hyatt’s policies, it is necessary to do this at check-in rather than in advance as Hilton allows. I booked a king bed studio and received one. Hotel Sierras seem to have marketed themselves more into the extended stay arena and feature kitchenettes:

I woke up rather late so I came in to the breakfast area right at its official close time (10AM), so it meant that they had stopped putting out more food.  Since I was going to be meeting a friend for lunch, this wasn’t that much of a problem.  I was able to grab a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee and be on my way.

During StarMegaDo3, the existing Hyatt Diamonds raved about the value of having a private line agent.  A few weeks ago, I decided to request to have one assigned to me without fully recognizing the immediate value.  I now do.  On Tuesday evening I noticed that my stay for this hotel had credited to Hyatt (according to FlyerTalk, this is apparently typical with Hyatt) and without the Diamond amenity, so I sent an email over to my PLA.  I received a response the next day asking for confirmation of my US Airways number and found that everything had been taken care of a few hours later when I checked my Gold Passport account.  No phone calls.  No hold music.  No frustration at ensuring my Gold Passport number is recognized by the automated prompts.  Asynchronous, yet responsive interaction is something I wish I could have with the airlines I fly.

There’s been a TSA policy of asking passengers to say their name at the ID/boarding pass check for a few  months now.

I went through the checkpoint at JFK Terminal 7 tonight, I finally got a taste.  The TSO asked every passenger in the elite line to say their name, myself included, prompting me to remind him that it was on both my US passport and boarding pass.  Faced with a DYWTFT situation, I said my last name, but he was unhappy with my pronunciation.  He wasn’t happy with my first pronunciation so he had me say it again along with my first name.

I asked why and got the response “Don’t you want to be safe? Someone could be using someone else’s ID.”  While there’s been some discussion that it’s to catch users of fake IDs who don’t bother to know the name on it, the alternative ID hypothesis is probably similarly implausible.  “There’s a lot of dumb criminals,” he went on to say.  Rather than invoke the fact that the 9/11 hijackers used their actual names in an airport, I moved forth to receive my grope as Terminal 7 consistently has the backscatters on.

Since there are no Saturday night redeyes from Denver to the New York-area, I caught a 7PM flight from Denver to Los Angeles to connect to the LAX-JFK p.s. redeye.  As a reminder, Gogo has a sponsored 30 minute window of free wifi on p.s. flights for the remainder of September.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, my TSA experience couldn’t have been better.  The TSO administering the patdown was a physics student and consequently empathized with passengers who opted out of the naked-scan.

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:

For the trip from Chicago to Montreal to Denver, StarMegaDo3 was on a chartered Continental 737.  Continental assigned us its 737 in its retrolivery:

My legroom on this flight gave me a reminder to be thankful for my exit rows, economy plus seating, and first class upgrades:

Participants packed into the United Red Carpet Clubs to kill time while waiting for our flight:

The Hyatt in Montreal left a bit to be desired:

Even with 160 Diamond members running amok, I was disappointed that I wound up on the 5th floor (out of approximately 15).  With the exception of its RFID-operated doorlocks, the hotel disappointingly showed its age despite having the highest room rate amongst the three StarMegaDo3 Hyatts (189 CAD/nt base).

Air Canada held a reception at the near by Westin in Montreal, gifting each of us with a Air Canada 777 model:

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:

From my six Starwood stays during the earlier promotion, I had two free resort nights that I used for my stay at the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas, a Category 6 Starwood hotel that normally retails for a minimum of $329 (base) per night or 20k Starwood points.

After parking my rental car, I ended up in the main lobby to find that I was booked for the neighboring north complex:

At dusk:

The hotel lobby:

Under the free resort nights promotion, stays booked into the least expensive room on the property:  A “Deluxe Island View Studio Villa.”

While not necessary for my stay, the couch also serves as a double bed.

Since this property is actually a timeshare resort, it came with a kitchen for extended stays.

The bathroom featured a whirlpool and a closeable window out to the main room.

As is custom, I offer my unexciting TV picture.

Each of the complexes is built around open pool and lounge areas.  There’s a Koi pond in the foreground.

The hotel has an extensive beachfront:

For my hop from Honolulu to Kahului, I was an a United-marketed codeshare operated by Hawaiian Airlines.  HNL is an open airport:

Hawaiian uses Boeing 717’s for its inter-island flights.  They feature a first class as well, but for a 100 mile trip, I’m skeptical of the value.

My codeshare meant that I wasn’t able to check-in online or at a kiosk, but it fortunately turned up an exit row seat.  I didn’t feel like paying for Internet access while waiting for my flight and Hawaiian doesn’t indicate that its seats are exit rows on the boarding pass, so I almost walked past my seat when boarding.

To reach Honolulu, I flew on United 421 from Newark to Honolulu with a stop in San Francisco to change planes from an A320 to a Boeing 777.  Since United’s domestic non-p.s. first class is rather uniform, I’ll omit the standard photo of the seat and legroom for brevity.

United flights to Hawaii have a “Halfway to Hawaii” game sponsored by Hilton.  The prize is just a CD; previously, the prizes had ranged from wine to Hawaiian-produced nuts.

I stayed at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani.  While the hotel felt old and dated, the prepaid rate of $69 (after a $40 discount from American Express) seemed decent for a hotel on Kauakana Avenue in Waikiki.

The room could have used a bit of work on its view:  The parking lot.

I attended StarMegaDo3 last week.  To position myself for the start of its North American portion in Chicago, I trekked from from New York via Honolulu and Kahului.  Plotted with gcmap, my routing looks like:

In lieu getting my photos online of my trip out of New York to Chicago (via Hawaii) or of the events themselves, I offer the Wall Street Journal’s coverage (for the time being).

Unlike my previous trip to Las Vegas, I had a slightly more direct trip to Nevada.  Originally, I was booked on the last flight of the night (CO1534) for which my upgrade had cleared 48 hours out.  Having checked on the inventory evening before and the day of to estimate my likelihood of scoring a bump.  (As the last flight of the night with no hope of connecting as well, it would have been rather inconvenient, but a substantial travel voucher could have made up for it.)  Both Co1534 and the proceeding flight, CO885, were rather empty.  For the earlier flight, first class was booked at 17 with a capacity of 24.

Once my train got to New Jersey, I called Continental and same-day confirmed changed to CO885.  Overall, my call time consisted of entering my OnePass number into my phone, telling the agent what I wanted, and waiting about 30 seconds for my United-ticketed flight to be re-ticketed on Continental stock on the new flight.  In contrast to the 45 minutes I spent with my last Las Vegas-related SDC, I was pleased.

My upgrade cleared to seat 6A.

Our predeparture snack consisted of a drink and prepackaged almonds

The vegetarian dinner choice was cheese lasagna with an optional mushroom soup (which I passed on).

The desert was an apple-topped cake.

On my DEN-SJC flight operated by United, the salt and pepper came in two small plastic pouches in a black United paper sheath.  While the Tulip is supposed to be endangered, it evidently lives on in the first class cabin of Continental’s planes (at least for the time being).

To top off my last stay with last quarter’s Starwood promotion, I stayed at the Westin Washington Dulles.

I went hotel hopping with Starwood last weekend to combine a trip to Washington DC with picking up another free reward night during the last days of the Getaway Free promotion.

My match to Starwood Gold status from Hilton yielded a nice room on the 14th floor.  Tomorrow’s post will discuss the value of having a decent floor.

The desk had two sets of power outlets.  Two on the lamp and two in a retractable powerstrip that was embedded in the desk.

In the interests of maintaining elite status, being able to accumulate enough miles to actually book an award ticket, and having a good chance at a pleasant customer service experience, I’ve been flying American, Continental, and United this year.  There’s a limit to my loyalty, however.   When it came time to book my return ticket to New York last week, those airlines wanted about $400 for a one-way.  Amtrak would have been around $130 (Edit: One-way).  Jetblue was around $120 (Edit: One-way).  To see if I could do any better, I plugged in my entire roundtrip into ITA and found a Delta roundtrip for $157 all-inclusive.  In terms of cents-per-mile, it’s a terribly high price; but in terms of New York to Washington, it’s a respectable fare.

My Friday evening flight out of New York was canceled out around noon due to expected thunderstorms so I wound up on Amtrak anyways.

When I called Delta to cancel my segment inbound to Washington so I could get a refund and take Amtrak instead, I got a human being within a minute.  With American, I generally get a human just as quickly.  Sadly, with United and Continental, I’ve spent 30 minutes on hold a few times this year, even as an elite.  (Based on the discussion on a FlyerTalk thread, I shudder to think what non-elites face.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our predeparture beverage choices were water and orange juice:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our CRJ200 at IAD:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, I trekked out to Los Angeles in coach on American Airlines. This time, I managed to snap off a predeparture photo of the plane:

Once again, I was seated in 20A, providing a view of the sun setting over the wing:

I’m visiting Los Angeles this week, traveling by way of American Airlines nonstop to and from JFK.

As only a midtier elite, upgrades require using 500-mile stickers. I’ve been slow to accumulate them this year as most of my flying has been with United/Continental, so I’m riding in the back of the bus, albeit in the over wing emergency exit row where I have at least as much–if not more–legroom as I did in Continental’s domestic first class last week.

I was originally scheduled to leave Las Vegas Sunday morning. United and Continental recently aligned their same-day confirmed flight change policies, so I rescheduled my LAS-LAX-ORD-EWR segments into a single LAS-EWR redeye operated by Continental.

Based on this single data point, same-day confirmed flight changes with Continental are a pain. My inquiries in IAH for standby on the earlier flight and adding my name to the volunteer list on my scheduled flight messed up my reservation, requiring me to wait on hold while the elite desk fixed it and updated my itinerary.

McCarran International Airport offers visitors a few aviation related sights land-side. The Cessna 172 “Hacienda” hangs over the baggage claim area. I stopped to take a photo on my way to the security checkpoint for the D concourse.

Last night’s redeye was on a Boeing 737-924ER.

My upgrade to first class cleared at the gate. Taking off from runway 25R, I had to wait a bit for my left-side window seat to come into view of the Las Vegas Strip at night.

On my way to Las Vegas, I had a stop at IAH to switch over to a 757-300 scheduled to depart at 5:35PM.

My flight from PHL got in a bit early so I had time to leisurely enjoy the sprawling amalgamation of terminals to check on the 3:45PM departure to Las Vegas. While the gate agent there acknowledged my original flight would likely be oversold, she couldn’t process me as a volunteer thereby entitled to even the slightest compensation nor could I obtain anything better than a middle seat somewhere in the back of the plane. I declined and headed over to my original flight’s gate, now delayed to a 6:38PM departure due to a late arriving aircraft:

Unsurprisingly, once the podium was staffed, they sought out volunteers. Unlike United which generally offers a flat $400 in travel vouchers, Continental was offering $250 and a ticket for the 9:00PM departure. I’m seeing Penn & Teller tonight, so I was hoping for something a bit higher to convince me to miss the show and give up my first class seat.

This flight had a full vegetarian dinner available: Cheese ravoli with marinara, salad, and minestrone soup.

The meal was rounded out by blueberry cheesecake.

Just under two weeks ago, I was looking around to figure out what I would be doing memorial day weekend. A few friends from college were going to be driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for the weekend and I decided it would be fun to join them.

When I was booking my trip, the only inexpensive way of getting there from the New York area was out of Philadelphia marketed by Continental (but oddly not United). Since then, there was a brief, now-gone sale out of NYC to LAS on most major carriers earlier this week. I had never flown in or out of PHL and figured it would be a good learning experience to familiarize myself with how easily I could get from midtown Manhattan to catch a flight. While today I had the leisure of departing at 12:30PM on a Saturday, it’s helpful to know the route before trying this on a Friday evening.

For the more gory technical details: I booked into a “K” fare on my outbound trip and an “L” fare on my inbound segments. Both had provided the routing PHL-WAS/PHL/EWR/CLT/CLE/CHI-HOU/DEN/CHI-SFO/LAX-LAS. Today, I’m traveling to Las Vegas via Houston. Tomorrow, I’m returning via LAX, ORD, and EWR, then using the Continental-sold Amtrak code share to get to Philadelphia.

For my first segment, I’m on a Continental 737-800. My upgrades to first class cleared 72 hours prior to departure for all five of my flight segments.

While not entirely obvious from the angle of the photo, there’s about 10 inches of room between my knee and the seat in front of me.

Since I was only flying out of PHL, I couldn’t get a full vegetarian lunch on this flight. Between a choice of a chicken sandwich and a chicken salad that the flight attendents could simply skip adding the chicken, I went with the salad.