One down...

First flight of the mileage run season completed, and working on the next.  I’m currently on the transcontinental from Boston to LAX, about half way in.  My plane geek side is enjoying seeing AA’s 737 retrofitted main cabins for the first time.  They now have several rows of “main cabin extra” which offer a few extra inches of legroom.  It’s free with status, or a small upsell if you don’t.  On longer flights, it’s worth it to avoid getting your laptop snapped shut on your fingers when the person in front of you reclines their seat. 

            Managed to get some sleep on both flights so far, and feeling pretty good.  Thought it might be a good time to go back and explain more of what got me here in the first place.  (If you don’t care, and you’re more interested in strange travel stories, you can skip ahead a few paragraphs to my rant about what to pack to fly for no reason, which is more entertaining and has yoga pants in it)  As most things do, it starts with an argument.  Well, not an argument so much as an almost…sorta…but not really…but then again yes labor dispute between the airline and the pilots. 

            There was plenty of news coverage, slow flights, etc.  In response, to try and appease its frequent flyers, they’re offering double elite qualifying miles (DEQM) through the end of the year, as well as bonus miles towards future flights.  The short story is when all is said and done, the combination of my status level and the promotion is earning me triple miles towards future flights and double miles toward status.  Plus, the fares are at their lowest of the season.  I spent weeks checking fares, holding and re-holding, and doing a lot of math.  Okay, it was basic grade school level math, but it still counts.

            The basic conclusion was this- done right, the airline would be paying me to fly.  And I’d get back to Executive status.  Win-win.  The miles earned will be enough to redeem for two round-trip economy class tickets, or one first class trip.  The metric used by frequent flyers to tell if they’re getting a good deal is how many “cents per mile” (cpm) you’re spending on the ticket.  Anything under 5 is pretty good, things getting near 3 are mileage run territory, and anything under that is hard to pass up.  With some free AmEx gift card use, my tickets this month are averaging 1.5 cpm (redeemable) and 2.3 (elite-qualifying). Not bad, but the real value comes from the elite upgrades you get as a bonus for passing the 100k mark.  Their combined value is $3,000 minimally.  Then there’s the value of just having the status for the year, which is significant.  Moral of the story- I now know how much I value my weekends at…. Though I can’t figure out how I feel about it.

            Okay, enough math for this morning, but it had to be said.  Onto something else.  How about what to pack when you’re flying without leaving the airport?  This topic is brought to you by my perusing a thread with this title this week where people were sharing what was in their survival kit.  There were some unusual, but probably useful items- Japanese Gatorade, and a passport on a domestic flight….just in case you get re-routed through another country. (speaking of flyertalk.com, the guy in the row in front of me is currently browsing through it…should I say hi?)  

Anyhow, here’s my list:

-Laptop, iPad, iPhone & chargers

-Change of clothes (or 2 in case of forced layovers)

-Pillow I’ve been carrying around in luggage since a JetBlue redeye years ago

-Advil, Tylenol PM, Benadryl …okay basically half a CVS

-Toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, etc.

-Snacks (mostly healthy, but there are also gummi bears involved.)

-Yoga pants because they’re good for overnights and also because there’s an honest-to-god yoga studio in the SFO terminal 2.

-Biggest sweatshirt I own

-Game face    

            Looking forward to completing the first round-trip transcontinental of the challenge!  Still going strong.

Still airborne, in good company...

First off, wishing you a late happy new year. I'll admit I started and didn't finish several entries over the last few
weeks but finally buckled down today and put this together. And yes, getting to "100,000" is everything I hoped and more :)
***********

So, here I am again on a flight from Seattle/Tacoma back to LAX after a short weekend at “home.” I haven’t been as good at updating here in the new year. Would you believe that its because I’ve been too busy flying?

No? Well, it was worth a shot.

I’ve been doing some rather long distance flying, necessitating some short nights and long Mondays. This weekend, however, is turning out to be a nice break from that. Thanks to Alaska’s multitude of flights between these cities, not only was I able to take an earlier flight without paying a change fee, but as a bonus I got a nice bit of exercise on my brisk run through terminal C. I ascribe both of these benefits to, as well as the above, my cunning use of FlyerTalk.com, along with its community of ultimate flight mavens.

Let me go back now and explain. Earlier today I realized that I had cut my airport timing a little close (or so I thought at the time) and spent some time trying to figure out how to shave precious time off of the check-in process. Now usually I wouldn’t even think twice about this, knowing how much time it takes and counting on the short(er) AA priority access lanes. However, as I have before ranted on about, American Airlines does not fly between LAX and SEA, choosing instead to codeshare with Alaska. Hence, all of the hard-earned benefits I generally expect (upgrades, club access, priority access and boarding, etc) are no longer available. Further, SEA can have some killer lines.

Enter FlyerTalk.com …

This website is home to the travelers who know it ALL….seriously. They also in large part are the rare breed who consider travel to be the goal in and of itself. These are the people who can put me to shame, the ones who think it completely reasonable to fly an itinerary from BOS-LAX-BOS-ORD-SAN-BOS without leaving the airport, or to fly for a week and sleep 5 of the nights on planes, especially for events such as DEQM. What’s that you say? This acronym doesn’t just jump right off the page at you as blatantly obvious? DEQM is the magical pot of gold at the end of the frequent flyer rainbow, the piece de resistance that tops off the airline calendar, the mysteriously announced “Double Elite Qualifying Mile” offer. A DEQM offer near the end of the elite qualifying year especially will lure these flyers into “milage run” itineraries that make the average person airsick just thinking about.

But I digress…DEQM will do that to a person… *breathe* Okay, as I was saying before, I was wondering how to get to my flight in SEA quickly. To that end I logged on to FlyerTalk.com and asked if anyone had a suggestion and was nearly immediately rewarded with several replies. One in particular read: “Keep you BP (boarding pass) in your pocket and go to the elite lane at the far right hand end, show the first officer your AA EXP (Executive Platinum) card and if they give you any trouble say the ticket counter told you it was fine.” Good advice. I followed it to the letter and successfully line-jumped, getting through security early enough to take the 2:15 instead of the 3:00 (with a little terminal jogging, but hey, I won’t need to go to the gym today.)

The moral? There isn’t one really. But if one were to exist it might be that perhaps even the most scattered of people, the ones who spend so much time seemingly isolated on planes racing around the world, and jumping from one rental car to another, still manage to be there for each other at the drop of a hat…or the click of a mouse.

Well, we’ve begun our decent so it’s time to sign off. Thanks for reading, and special thanks to my anonymous advisors today, hope sometime I’ll know enough to return the favor.