Tagging Miles

Watch the Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday.

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10 July 1918, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force came into existence. And you may ask, how did the Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday? With one of the most spectacular flyover parade in memory.

I’m sure you’re imagining a simple flyover like the Superbowl (like this perhaps):

Cut to 1:05 or so (and yes, I realize that is Notre Dame vs Navy rather than the pro’s!)

No, no, no, this was far more spectacular! 

Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday

This was a pretty big event in London, I dare say it might have even been bigger than the World Cup games thus far. The event had the Queen in attendance, and included more aircraft than I could identify. Some old, some new, some trainers, some cargo, some fighters, including helicopters as well! In total there were 100 aircraft.  Perhaps most spectacular was what I think were the Typhoons flying in “100” formation.

Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday

A picture of what I think were Typhoons flying in formation. Photo from @Conor_Chaplin

The Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund put together a nice time lapsed video highlighting how big a deal this was in England. Its a quick well done video worth a watch:

If you’d like to watch a slightly longer one with BBC commentary, then this may be more to your liking, it certainly includes more #avgeek shots.

The Royal Air Force went all in!

Surprisingly, I only happened to notice this in the wee hours of the morning on Twitter, but when I looked closer, it was completely apparent to me that the UK went all in. There’s an entire page and an app to follow the Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday! They even put out this rather fantastic graphic identifying all of the aircraft that they had planned for the event!

Royal Air Force mark their 100th birthday

All the aircraft for the Royal Air Force’s 100th birthday. (Courtesy of the RAF).

Bottom Line

This was perhaps an air parade that won’t be topped in our life times. It was truly phenomenal to watch fixed wing, rotor, jet, and propeller aircraft in the sky over London. It was also a great reminder of how impressive and far the world’s aviation experience has come in the last 100 years. The RAF has aircraft from the US, UK, and Europe, which does make it an impressive variety.

What was your favorite aircraft? 

Qantas Airlines Latest Flying Art Series Livery

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Like any Aviation Geek (#AvGeek), I love a great livery, and Qantas Airlines latest flying art series does not disappoint! It is in acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Australia.

Qantas Latest Flying Art Series Livery

Qantas Dreamliner Emily Kame Kngwarreye – courtesy of Qantas

Qantas Airlines Latest Flying Art Series Livery

The Dreamliner Emily Kame Kngwarreye is the 5th aircraft in Qantas Airlines Flying Art series. The series has been previously adorned 737’s and 747’s, so its nice to see Qantas rolling out their flagship 787 in a special livery.

Qantas released a nice video introducing the new Dreamliner

Wrapping Up

I think a lot of folks enjoy unique liveries. We’ve seen some pretty cool Star Wars ones from ANA for example. But I think when the livery also highlights values or heritage of a particular country or destination, its more meaningful, like the Flying Honu livery ANA announced. Qantas’ focus on aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is particularly remarkable, not just in the beauty of the liveries, but also in the story that they tell.

Qatar Airways QSuite flying not just to LHR, CDG, and JFK!

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Ever since Qatar Airways QSuite was announced I’ve been trying to roll it into a trip so I could try out what is touted as the most luxurious business class product in the sky. 

In a rather spectacular surprise, I got to fly QSuites (review forthcoming) on a flight I never expected it on. My wife and I were set to fly from Colombo, Sri Lanka to Doha, Qatar, as we continued our journey home. At check-in, I asked nicely if we might be able to get window seats, knowing that the 777-300ER seatmap was 2-2-2.

QR 77W 2-2-2 Seatmap

QR 77W 2-2-2 Seatmap

Except that he was saying things that didn’t make sense – saying we could sit on opposite sides of the aisle from each other – 1A and 1E. I asked a clarifying question and he kindly shared his screen.

Qatar Airways Qsuites

I dug a little deeper on this one once we got into the lounge, and found that we were flying on tail number A7-BEN, by popping the flight number into Flightradar24. 

QR665 over the past few days courtesy of Flightradar24.com

QR665 over the past few days courtesy of Flightradar24.com

I could then see that on 4 January, A7-BEN was operating our flight. Logically, I wanted to know where else this plane has been:

Flights operated by A7-BEN courtesy of Flightradar24

Flights operated by A7-BEN courtesy of Flightradar24

QR7 was–I think–the first flight announced to be operated by Qatar Airways QSuites, so that was a pretty big corroborating factor. Ultimately it was in fact a QSuites configured 777-300ER.

Qatar Airways Qsuites

Other Qatar Airways QSuites Aircraft

I don’t know for a fact how many other Qatar Airways aircraft are configured with QSuites at the moment, but I would make reasonable guesses that the following flights are operated by QSuites. Interestingly enough, some of these aircraft have visited a bunch of other cities recently, including Kuwait City, Mumbai, even Karachi!

(Note, each aircraft tail number has a hyperlink to Flightradar24 so you can see where its operating now).

Conclusion – Qatar Airways QSuite flying not just to LHR, CDG, and JFK!

Ultimately, it was more an academic activity since I couldn’t really change anything, however, I think the above steps are helpful if you’re trying to chase a particular product or aircraft. This same strategy could also be used to chase Emirates’ new First Class on the 777-300ER.

Qatar Airways Qsuites

Munich Airport’s L Gates – Not ready for prime time!

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This past week my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Munich, Germany for Oktoberfest. I’ll have posts on that soon(ish), but I really wanted to get this brief post out soonest, since I know Lufthansa is putting a bigger focus on their Munich hub by launching A380 Flights. I will just say – Munich Airport’s L Gates are not ready for prime time, and that’s where I think most of the growth will be.

30 minutes Check-in to train

For starters, if you are flying to the US from Munich via Lufthansa, you go to Terminal 2. Checking in for me at least took a little longer, but I expected this with Oktoberfest still going strong. What I didn’t expect, was that even in the Business Class security screening line–and yes there is one that specifically calls out business class passengers– it took us roughly 25 minutes to get through. Part of it is that the millimeter wave technology they are using seem to be slower, and take up a ton more space, so you get less throughput. The other side was I made a bad choice in that we had a new security screener. 

Arriving at Munich Airport’s L Gates

Once you get through normal security, you still have to take a train to get to the L Gates. There you go through immigrations officially exiting Germany. Needless to say, you need to pack some extra patience.

Munich Airport's L Terminal

There’s still a bunch of construction, as you can see, which limits the amount of immigration booths they can open–though in full disclosure, they had less than half open when we first arrived. Overall, the situation was less than stellar.

A final point about Munich Airport’s L Gates

A couple of week ago, American Express announced that they had worked out an arrangement with Lufthansa for American Express Platinum and Centurion card holders to gain access to their lounges in Munich. This arrangement meant that American Express Platinum holders could gain entry into the Lufthansa Senators lounges, and Centurion card holders could gain entry into the Lufthansa First Class lounges.

Lufthansa has a Business, Senators and First Class lounge in Munich Airport’s L Gates. We obviously didn’t have access to the First Class lounge, but opted to gain entry into the Senator’s lounge, really, just because we wanted to test the American Express Platinum access. Unfortunately, it took 5+ minutes for the person at the front desk to figure out how to provide us access to the lounge. It even took going to a colleague within the lounge to figure out the necessary codes to enter in the computer. I’m not even sure I understand why it took all the effort.

A final note is that there is an additional screening area, that looks like a “lite” version of the US Pre-clearance area of Dublin or Abu Dhabi airports. The gates for US bound flights are segregated with a separate security screening area. I wonder whether Munich may be trying to get on the US Pre-Clearance list.

Wrapping Up

Overall, I was rather unimpressed departing Munich Airport’s L Gates. I totally get that Oktoberfest is a rather busy time of year for them, but as the photo above demonstrates, they were rather unprepared. I suppose I would understand that, if such a busy time of the year were a surprise, but, alas, Oktoberfest is on the calendar years in advance. Overall, I’d advise against choosing Munich as your point of departure from Europe back to the United States. I realize that it may be new and exciting, as Lufthansa begins flying A380’s from Munich, but it may be a lot more pain than its worth.

Celebrating Star Wars Day AvGeek Style

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There are only so many days of the year that you can have fun combining two awesome interests. Celebrating Star Wars Day AvGeek Style is one of those such days! Below is a round-up of some of the entertaining attempts at celebrating May the Fourth from across the Aviation Industry:

Celebrating Star Wars Day

All Nippon Airways shared a few shots of their awesome Star Wars Liveries, including their more recent C-3PO Livery:

Aviation Commons, while not an airline or airport did share a nice menagerie of photos which I suspect is from one of the inaugurals of the R2-D2 787; so we’ll include it because its just plane cool:

British Airways went the video route:

Others attempted cameos on other planets, like Qatar Airways, which, may be more familiar with Tatooine than most:

While Air France regrettably had another service cancellation — luckily, this time it wasn’t due to a strike:

Dallas-Fort Worth Airport had a special visitor that I’m sure was entertaining for nearby planespotters:

Although I don’t think that is even close to what Denver International Airport:

It was so much so that one tweet just isn’t enough:

Of course, the FAA had to get involved too:

And then some were less imaginative, like American Airlines, who’s twitter team is great, but, unfortunately the marketing team may be a bit behind:

Of course, if you thought that was a “who could try less hard” well, Delta Airlines may have beat them:

But fear not–it could lead to the Dark Side after all–Southwest Airlines redeemed the US Legacies:

and finally, Alaska Airlines gave a handful of passengers the co-pilot that they’ve always wanted:

What was your favorite Star Wars Day tweet?

What is the Worlds Best Business Class?

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Read

ing a post yesterday evening, something struck me. Lucky made the assertion that Qatar Airways’ Business Class was already the worlds best business class. This even before you factor in their new Qsuites. It occurred to me that I’ve been flying a bunch of business class lately, and Qatar wasn’t the top of the list for me.

Qatar Airways Business Class

While I haven’t flown on Qatar’s new A350, or A380, I have flown a bunch on their 777-300ERs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Qatar Airways, after all, they really do treat their business class passengers well. Just look at the amenities:

best business class, qatar

It is also one of the few business class products that include a mattress pad:

Qatar Bed

While I don’t have photos of it, I have flown the 787 with the new B/E Aerospace Super Diamond seat. Its a great seat. The In Flight Entertainment (IFE) is also very good.

And the ground service isn’t bad, with pretty nice lounges. 

But, I’m still not convinced that Qatar’s the best business class.

Cathay Pacific Business Class

I’ve flown Cathay Pacific in business class on both the 777-300ER longhaul and regional business on the A330. 

Cathay Pacific’s food is wonderful, the IFE is above average — in fact, its how I keep up with Game of Thrones. 

I also enjoy the lounges, including The Wing in Hong Kong; although in all fairness, my experiences with Cathay Pacific has primarily been the First Class lounges (which I gain entry via my Executive Platinum status). You can’t beat a champagne lounge after all!

The Best Business Class – EVA Air

While it wasn’t the Hello Kitty airplane, I flew EVA Air from Houston to Taipei, a 14+ hour flight. Onboard the experience was phenomenal. 

The Seat is great; its nearly as good as the Cathay Pacific Seat.

Weekend in Taipei

Eva Air 777-300ER Business Class Seat.

There is of course the pajamas, First Class caliber champagne and Rimowa Amenity Kit:

The service was spectacular. The flight attendants were responsive with a touche of proactiveness, though not overbearing as some can be. I was impressed that when I requested my steak after I had a snooze, there was no problem, and the steak was still nicely prepared.

Eva Air 77W 777-300ER

The bedding by the way is nice. The duvet was one of the best I’ve had in the air.

EVA Air 777-300ER, 77W

The IFE was more than sufficient for multiple 14 hour flights, and the headphones were great.

Overall, I think EVA Air is truly the best business class.

Who do you think has the Best Business Class?

United Takes Safety Seriously

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A recent flight shared by Runway Girl Network brings a lot of questions and fewer answers. One thing is clear, United takes safety seriously. But should the flight have still flown?

United 31 – The Issue

According to Runway Girl Network, the aircraft servicing United 31 suffered a “broken knob on an exit door”

United rebooked all passengers in row 31 and back. Perhaps ironic that Flight 31, blocked out rows 31 back. Essentially, this blocked out 9 rows of passengers in economy, translating to 63 seats that were unusable, based on SeatGuru.

United’s Response Onboard

United’s response was to block off all seats from row 31 and back. Onboard, based on photos shared from Runway Girl Network, the experience seemed quite honestly eery. Take a look below:

United 31, RGN, Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

United 31, RGN, Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

United 31, RGN, Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

Courtesy of Runway Girl Network

Was this the best solution?

I have to say, from looking at these photos, I totally get that it’d be a scary situation. In all candor, if the crew even just left the lights in the aft end of the cabin on as normal, it probably would’ve been less odd. But, United didn’t respond the best, see below:

Joking around is great. I do it all the time. But, given that this thread was in response to RGN’s photos as shared above, I feel like they were a little off the mark. But, the bigger issue, I wonder, is, should United have flown the flight anyway? I totally get that this only inconvenienced a maximum of 63 passengers, out of a total of 183 passengers. That’s still one third of passengers. Now, I get that First and Business Class passengers probably wouldn’t have cared much, I mean, they have their layflats. But for those 12 rows of economy passengers, these photos seem really, really eery and offputting. 

So I would offer:

Was United right to have flown this flight as they did, or should they have cancelled it all together?

 

My impressions of the United Polaris Lounge in Chicago

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the United Polaris Lounge in Chicago. We were flying on an award ticket from Liberia, Costa Rica, and weren’t quite sure if we could get in, but figured that we’d try none-the-less. It was a bit out of the way, but it was well worth the extra steps.

United Polaris Lounge

There were a variety of areas with places to sit and work.

United Polaris Lounge

The United Polaris Lounge also boasts shower rooms, which is a necessity for any world class lounge in my opinion.

United Polaris Lounge

Hallway of Bathrooms and Shower Rooms at the United Polaris Lounge.

There was also some self-serve food and beverage stations available (Some more plentiful on a Sunday night than others)

United Polaris Club

Perhaps the best part of the United Polaris Lounge was the bar, which was gorgeous. 

United Polaris Lounge

The bar at the United Polaris Lounge.

There was also a small area that was a self serve whiskey bar:

United Polaris Lounge

And the quality of beverages being served did not stop there. My wife enjoyed a wonderful glass of Laurent-Perrier Rose

United Polaris Lounge

It even had a special wall of lockers for the elite of the elite–I think Global Services, but I’m not sure if its even more exclusive than that–housing their preferred beverage.

United Polaris Lounge

Final Thoughts of the United Polaris Lounge

I have to admit, I was impressed. United has definitely set a new standard with respect to premium lounges. I really hope to see more of these lounges, maybe even one at my quasi-home airport of Washington-Dulles; which I hear is planned, just not sure whether we’ll see it before or after true United Polaris Business class seats fly to and from Washington-Dulles. 

Have you had the chance to visit the United Polaris Lounge? What did you think?

The Basics of Searching for Award Space

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It is very easy to get into intermediate and expert territory when it comes to finding award space and booking awards. That can sometimes be intimidating. This is my attempt at boiling down the very basics of searching for award space

I’ll start with a couple of assumptions:

  • You know where you want to go, at least roughly.
  • You have sufficient miles.
  • I’ll use Chicago, O’Hare to Bali, Indonesia (a nice aspirational destination) as the example.

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 1 – Know what airlines fly to your destination

Identify the airlines that fly to your desired destination. You’d be amazed at how many times I decide to go to a particular place, only to find out that while I wanted to fly on a particular airline (or miles), they prove to be difficult because either (a) the partner airline that flies charges fuel surcharges, or (b) no partner airlines release space, or (c) no partner airlines fly to that particular airport / city (like Star Alliance abandoning Cambodia)

To identify what airlines fly to your desired destination, I recommend using OpenFlights, which I’ve written about before, but be aware that it may not make the distinction between seasonal and regular flights (or what specific days an airline flies).

Below, you can see, for example, all of the routes that you can take to get to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Routes to/from Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia, courtesy of OpenFlights.org

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 2 – Know what airlines fly from home (or close by)

You’re probably noticing the trend here. I always recommend that you break your award search into each leg. The key to any award travel search is to break a trip up into its component pieces, assuming you cannot fly non-stop. Then I usually search for the over water portion first. Now this logic may not necessarily work when booking on some airline sites, like United’s new routing rules and engine. But for the most part, you’ll notice that overwater flights are the hardest to find.

So for getting from Chicago to Indonesia, you will for the most part be looking for TransPacific (TPAC) flights. 

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Trans Pacific (TPAC) options via gcmap.com

 

The exception, of course is United, which might come up with an option via Europe.

Basics of searching for award travel

United via Europe Option

Your chosen airline or alliance will limit your options—unless you have plenty of miles in various transferrable currencies). 

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 3 – Connecting the Dots

So now you know how you can get from Chicago to Asia, and you know what options you can connect onward to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia.

The most logical option, if you have the flexibility, would be to focus on those one-stop itineraries, which would be:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Chicago to Denpasar with different alliances: Blue: OneWorld, Red: Star Alliance, Gold: SkyTeam

Now, logically that’s easiest to work with. If you have to work with connections, well, now you start to run up against the risk of agents telling you that what you want is a multiple award trip. That would be leaning more toward an intermediate level. So, we’ll go ahead and leave things here.

Please, share your questions – how can I improve this first level basics of searching for awards?

Launching a new generation of weather information

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This past weekend, I had the chance to attend the launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R (GOES-R) weather satellite.

A bit of a Background on GOES-R:

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GOES-R is the 1st satellite in the next generation of NOAA’s weather satellites, it is the instruments onboard, which provide data from lightning strikes all the way to solar flares that sets this satellite apart.  Its main instrument the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) will provide a full Earth Disk every 15 minutes along with a few other cool weather scanning modes.  But ABI isn’t the only instrument that GOES has on board. The full complement of instruments are:

  • Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) – GOES-R’s primary instrument; will view the Earth with 16 different spectral bands, including two visible channels, four near-infrared channels, and ten infrared channels.It will track and monitor cloud formation, atmospheric motion, convection, land surface temperature, ocean dynamics, flow of water, fire, smoke, volcanic ash plumes, aerosols, and air quality.
  • Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) – Will be the first operational lightning mapper flown in geostationary orbit. GLM measures the total lighting activity over the Americas, which will help meteorologists identify potential tornadoes even further in advance, which has the potential to save many lives. This is one of those instruments us #Avgeeks will like as it’ll help with the routings of aircraft over the US.
  • Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) – “will observe and characterize complex active regions of the sun, solar flares, and eruptions of solar filaments which may give rise to coronal mass ejections,” Essentially, SUVI will be helping to identify “space weather” to better understand active areas of the sun.
  • Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS) – The information provided by SEISS will provide data to assess electrostatic discharge risk and radiation hazard to astronauts and satellites. 
  • MAGNATOMETER  (MAG) – will be measuring the space environment magnetic field, which is important for providing alerts and warnings related to the magnetosphere. Magnetosphere activity can impact navigation of satellites. 

Of note, while I’m sure many will still refer to GOES-R as that, once it is in its orbit, it will take on the identifier of GOES-16 as the satellite takes on a number once it reaches orbit.

Of course Al Rooker is one of the many people that is very excited about all the new toys.

Special Event

Attending any kind of spacecraft launch is cool; but this one was special for a few reasons. The biggest reason, is the fact that my wife, has been working on this satellite her entire career. So she had a very tangible relationship to the launch. That also helped us get access to the viewing area at Banana Creek.

The Launch

The GOES-R launch window was from 5:42 to 6:42 courtesy of the FAA; initially the plan was to launch as early in the window as possible, but Murphy’s law came into play. First, we had a series of 5 minute delays due to what ended up being a false positive for a valve. Then, the Eastern Launch Range (the US has Eastern and Western launch ranges that fall under the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Command) had an issue. We weren’t privy to what that issue was.

About 6:25 or so, we were informed that they were going to aim to launch right at the end of the window, 6:42pm on 19 November 2016.

Things were fairly quiet for a few minutes, then, less than 10 minutes out, they started going through a variety of checks, which were played out via speakers at the launch viewing area. 28 separate engineers and specialists reported status, with the ultimate announcement that GOES-R was “Go for Launch.” You could feel the energy of the crowd at this point. There were some cheers. Then the Eastern Range was asked if it was good for launch, there was a rather pregnant pause, and they too reported an affirmative.

The launch itself was kind of surreal. We heard the T-10 second countdown, rocket ignition and such, but, it definitely felt more real as we saw the rocket take flight, with an impressive trail. It was yet another few seconds before we actually heard the throaty rumble of the Atlas V rocket shooting through the sky.

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It will still be months, before GOES-R is sending data back that you’ll see on the local evening news, due to getting the satellite into its proper orbit and extensive testing. But it was clear on twitter that the meteorologist community is very, very excited at the prospect of GOES-R, now on its way. Here’s a video from our friend Geoff of the launch. 

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