I recently asked readers for questions and I’ve been working through several with standalone posts.
There were also questions with fairly straightforward answers, and so I thought I would combine a few of them into a single post.
In 1998 a United DC-10 made an emergency landing at Washington’s National airport. It was a Chicago – Baltimore flight that was first diverted to Dulles (after being held over Cleveland) and then to National due to weather. It was low on fuel, had 300 passengers on board, and had little choice but to make the landing. Emergency equipment deployed to the airport’s longest ~ 7000 foot runway.
I remember at the time being surprised that National was the diversion airport given the airport’s postage stamp size and short runways. Widebodies don’t normally operate there. Indeed, I wondered as well how they were going to manage getting the plane out of National, though presumably that was done with minimum fuel (and passengers offloaded, and bused to Baltimore).
That’s why I was surprised to see what I understand is a Vietnam Airlines 787-9 intentionally fly from Washington Dulles to National airport this morning.
American AAdvantage is stacking a purchased miles bonus with a discount through July 13 that lets you buy miles for ~ 2.14 cents a mile.
I assume the two are combined in order to make it sound more exciting and a little more opaque in terms of doing the math.
Here’s the table showing the discount and bonus that applies at each tier of mileage purchase.
A collection of the most interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.
Business class, to me, is all about the seat. There aren’t many airlines where the food and wine are remarkable, though better business class offerings will be fairly good. Mostly you want personal space to work effectively and to sleep so that you wind up at your destination reasonably rested rather than beaten up.
The best business class experiences make the overall journey seamless, from checkin and security to a lounge to wait for your flight to priority immigration on the other end and even an arrivals lounge for a shower when you land (so you can go straight away to meetings, and because your hotel room may not yet be available with early morning arrivals).
I value my American miles for partner awards, but most members look to redeem American miles on American flights and that’s gotten very hard. It used to be exceptionally easy. Sometime in mid-2012 premium cabin awards to Europe really tightened up. About 18 months ago premium cabin awards to Asia tightened up, and awards to South America did as well.
About a week ago I wrote about American removing saver awards entirely from some domestic markets. Starting a month from now, there were only three days through the end of April where you could find a saver award flying Austin – Dallas. That’s a short, cheap one hour flight where American offers at least 14 flights a day.
Expert Flyer is one of my favorite tools. It has several important uses for frequent flyers — but since September Delta has prevented the site from displaying anything about the airline’s flights.
Fortunately they’ve brought back searches for Delta saver awards, and that means you can use their automated tool to email you when the award seats you want on a given flight open up!
As American retrofits its Boeing 777-200 fleet, their only aircraft that will retain a first class cabin is their Boeing 777-300ERs.
The 777-200s get a good business class seat (similar to American’s 787 business seat), but once reconfigured no longer have a first class cabin.
Effective December 17 American is putting reconfigured 777-200s in for 2 of their 3 New York – London flights, apparently to free up aircraft for Sydney service.
I’ll take a good quality restaurant breakfast (not the standard US airport hotel buffet) over a club lounge, foregoing evening options. But for a mediocre restaurant breakfast I’ll prefer the quick service of the lounge.
There are hotels that offer some amazing breakfast spreads, especially in Asia. If I had to pick one city with the highest average it’s Kuala Lumpur. The best single hotel breakfast I’ve had was probably the St. Regis Bali. And the chain with the best breakfast benefit for top elites is unquestionably Hyatt.
The choice here is ultimately going to be driven by availability, although there are plenty of airlines worth checking given the miles that are available.
Consider that it’s entirely possible to use a different airline for the outbound as the return — not just to try different products, but because schedules and availability may differ, especially for an outbound to North Asia and a return from Southeast Asia.
I’d generally rank the first class products of airlines flying from the US West Coast across the Pacific as follows:
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
