Jul 07 2015

Last month I wrote about the man who had his life savings confiscated at the airport because his carry on bag smelled like pot.

There were over 90 seizures alone at the Cincinnati airport in 2013 where this happened. So the seizure of $44,000 from a nail salon owner at New York JFK shouldn’t be surprising.

The salon owner, who says he “has never used, bought, or sold illegal drugs” saved the money over two decades and was bringing it to California to load to his two brothers there.

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Jul 07 2015

A collection of the most interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.

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Jul 06 2015

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.

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Jul 06 2015

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.

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Jul 06 2015

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.

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Jul 06 2015

A collection of the most interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.

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Jul 06 2015

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).

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Jul 05 2015

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.

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Jul 05 2015

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!

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Jul 05 2015

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.

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