According to Flyertalk member SFOFastAir, allegedly a United employee, new irregular operations guidelines were recently introduced. And it sounds like they might be pretty darn good. Here’s what (s)he said on Flyertalk: New guidelines for handling customers during IRROPs were published this week. The new guidelines have just about everything that I’ve seen that FTers…
Is Southwest’s Standby Policy a Major Blow to Elites?
I flew home from Las Vegas on Tuesday and needed to get back a bit earlier than my ticketed flight. Having absolutely no idea what Southwest’s standby policy was, I looked it up online before heading to the airport. As I was on a Wanna Get Away fare, standby required a buy-up to the Anytime…
Who Wants a Cocktail? I’m Giving Away 5 United Drink Vouchers
My 2013 Premier 1K credentials arrived today and I thought I’d spread the wealth and give away five of my beverage vouchers included with the kit to one lucky person. As you can see, they’re valid for one alcoholic beverage each onboard United Airlines flights through January 31, 2014. All you have to do is…
Stick With United as a 1K or Switch to Virgin America as Elevate Gold?
Reader Elizabeth emailed me the following question yesterday: I am a 1k flier on United. I’m thinking of leaving them for Virgin Atlantic, as I moved from California to the UK in 2011 and have grown increasingly unhappy with their service. I fly back to the US from LHR 6-8 times a year. I have…
A Southwest Airlines Trip Report? Yep, They Impressed Me
I wouldn’t normally write a blog post about a simple domestic airline flight. But as I haven’t flown Southwest in about six or seven years, it was basically a new experience and it ended up being an impressive one. I flew from Reno to Las Vegas today and chose Southwest because of an ideal flight…
Vintage Airline Seat Map: American Airlines Boeing 727-200 From 1985
Back in November I posted the pre-deregulation version of American’s 727-200 with 16 seats in first class and 111 in coach. Those were the days of generous legroom in coach, almost being equivalent to that of first class. Here, now, is how American’s -200s changed in the post-deregulation era for this installment of Vintage Airline…
United’s Premier Accelerator Rates Have Dropped… But Still Pricey
I never really paid attention to United’s Award and Premier Accelerator program until just recently. If you’re not familiar with it, the program allows you to purchase redeemable MileagePlus miles with the option to add Premier Accelerator giving you an equivalent amount of Premier Qualifying Miles (PQMs). The offer appears on each of your ticketed…
Looking Back at 2012 and What’s in Store for 2013
On Monday I posted a quick snapshot of my 2012 flying showing a map of my travels. I’ve been LAX (pun sort-of intended) in updating my FlightMemory over the years, but I plugged my 2012 data yesterday to reveal the following: In total, I flew 126,452 miles during the year. That’s less than 2011 and…
A Quick Look at My 2012 Flying
I’ll have a more detailed post tomorrow looking back at 2012 and my initial thoughts on what’s in store for 2013, but in the meantime… here’s a quick look at my domestic flying in 2012: What the above doesn’t reflect is the repetition on some of those routes. I did five LAX-IAD-ATL-IAD-SFO-LAX runs all by…
Vintage Airline Seat Map: United Airlines Boeing 747-100 (1998)
Here’s the last Vintage Airline Seat Map of 2012 – a high-density United Airlines Boeing 747-100 seen flying the skies in 1998. I was working for United at the time and recall it primarily doing turns from Chicago to Honolulu and back as UA1/UA2. I had the pleasure of flying this configuration once from Chicago…