Tagging Miles

My Memorial Day Weekend Flying – Intro and By the Numbers

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I just got back from a spending my Memorial Day Weekend flying around the block (so to speak), over the long weekend. It was mostly a mileage run, to maintain American Airlines Executive Platinum status, but had a bunch of fun throw in as well. I’m putting together more notes on the various components of the trip, but thought I’d share a brief into and I’ll build out some of the below bullets in a non-traditional trip report, for a non-traditional trip.

gcmap crazy memorial day wknd

  • 144 hours of total travel (home airport to home airport) – roughly 60 hours in the air.
  • 3 hotel stays (1 SPG, 2 Hyatts) — Which included varying arrival experiences
  • 3 business class flights (all different seats)
  • 3 first class flights (all different seats)
  • 1 Euro Biz flight
  • 1 Economy (intra-Brazil) flight
  • 3 different airlines
  • 3 continents
  • 8 lounges (2 centurions, 2 Lufthansa J, Lufthansa FCT, 1 admirals club, 1 non-airline club-MXP)
  • 4 nights on planes
  • 7 airports

To get an idea of the miles, here’s what Great Circle Mapper says:

gcmap crazy memorial day wknd-2

Of course, not all of these flights were revenue, but the majority of them were, so I’ll be earning a bunch of miles, roughly 39k EQMs at least. I did however shift the pendulum from earning to burning for the last flight, upgrading to Lufthansa First Class, primarily because I wanted some wiener schnitzel for lunch:

wiener schnitzel at Lufthansa First Class Terminal

Wrapping Up

I’ll have more info coming in the next few days, but I figured I’d start this out here.

My most ambitious mileage run ever – #90minturninCAI

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This past weekend, my wife and I embarked on our most ambitious mileage run ever. We flew from Washington-Dulles (IAD) to Doha, Qatar (DOH) to Cairo, Egypt (CAI), and back, with the least amount of time on the ground possible. You can see the play by play via twitter by searching #90minturninCAI

Routing. Map via gcmap.com

Routing. Map via gcmap.com

By the numbers

  • ~16,415 Butt in Seat Miles
  • 24,622 Elite Qualifying Points
  • 4 segments
  • 2 itineraries
  • 43 hours wheels up to wheels down at home airport
  • 90 80 minute connection
  • 6-8″ of snow for the drive home

In all fairness – we flew in premium cabins the entire itinerary, but really the core stress point was the originally planned 90 minute turnaround in Cairo. Of course, there were more stress points. I thought it might be interesting to use those as a way to offer the highlights of our international mileage run.

The stress points

First stress point: was self-induced. We got out of the house a couple minutes later than anticipated, about 8 minutes into the drive to the airport, ADT called to tell us there was an alarm at the house. Being so close, I decided to turn around and investigate for myself. It turned out to be a false alarm, one of many I’ve had with ADT. That delayed us in total just under a half hour. We still made it to the airport in time, even having enough time to grab a burger in the Virgin Atlantic lounge.

Burger and chips

Burger and chips at the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse

  • Brief comment about that: It screams irony that Qatar Airways partners with Virgin Atlantic for the use of their lounge at Washington-Dulles. This even though British Airways (competitor to Virgin Atlantic) is a fellow OneWorld member. Add to it that Qatar Airways recently bought a 10% stake in IAG, the company that owns British Airways. All said, Virgin Atlantic’s lounge was our second favorite at Dulles, but a very close second to Etihad’s lounge. Server service, a la carte (aka you order what you want, but still gratis) menu.

Second stress point: was trying to get boarding passes for our flights ex-Cairo, which, was on a separate itinerary. When we landed in Doha, we figured that the lounge had a cadre of folks that could help, so we skipped the transfer desk, went through “transfer security” and made a bee-line for the lounge (after a picture of the big yellow teddy bear).

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Big Yellow Bear at Doha

  • Big mistake: The staff in the lounge was unable to help, and advised that we go to the transfer desk. So we grabbed a bite to eat in the lounge, and made our way back down.
Lounge

Lounge

It’s a lot harder leaving the “security zone” than entering. To leave (aka get to the transfer desk) we were directed to an unused security checkpoint, but when we started walking through and we were told to turn around. We did as told and were met by a large woman, as well as a guy in a uniform, telling us to go back (the way we were trying to go), so we could “re-enter” via one of the operational security checkpoints, we complied. Once “out” of the security zone, we went to the transfer desk, who was surprisingly efficient in providing our boarding passes. Then it was back through security, which, again, was easier getting in, than out.

Third stress point: This was the key stress point leading up to the trip – the 90 80 minute turnaround. In reality, the turnaround was supposed to be 105 minutes, but I handicapped it to 90 minutes because I wanted to be safe. It turned out that we left Doha late, then in Cairo we taxied forever—heck, we might’ve landed in Alexandria and taxied to Cairo! When we finally got off the plane, it was 80 minutes before our scheduled departure.

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Departing the plane that we were trying to make in just 80 minutes!

 

We hustled down the stairs (Cairo uses remote gates, unless you’re flying Star Alliance), onto the bus, and waited impatiently for the ground staff to release the bus. Luckily the first bus is reserved just for First Class, and left as soon as all first class passengers were on board.

Once off the bus, the fun really began. We hustled to the Transfer area (so fast that I neglected to get a photo), and provided our next flights’ boarding passes to the transfer agent. The conversation went a little like this:

Cairo Immigration Officer: Where did you just fly from?

Me: Doha.

Cairo Immigration Officer: Where are you flying to?

Me: Doha.

Cairo Immigration Officer: Ok, where did you just fly from?

Me: Doha.

Cairo Immigration Officer: But your boarding pass says you’re flying Cairo to Doha.

Me: Yes.

Cairo Immigration Officer: Why are you flying to Doha if you just came from there?

Me: We’re on a mileage run.

Cairo Immigration Officer: Oh.

A couple minutes later, another gentleman came, took our passports from the Immigration officer, and said he’d return in 5 minutes. He disappeared into the terminal, and a colleague of his returned about 4 minutes later. He asked if we’d like to go to the lounge, to which my response was that we would much appreciate it. As he walked over to fill out some paperwork with the immigration officer, he asked if my wife was pregnant. That one threw me for a loop. Had I been anywhere else, I would’ve responded: “Would that make this process faster?” instead I said no (the honest answer—no surprises here), and he just nodded.

A few more minutes of waiting, he returned to us and escorted us to the VIP lounge. And when I say VIP lounge, I mean the only lounge in the airport. Imagine unsecured wifi, a bunch of seating, food that you probably wouldn’t want to eat, and plenty of non-alcoholic beverages. Oh and smoking in Cairo airport general seems to be fully permitted. I wasn’t complaining. Heck, I almost wanted to hug the guy, until he said he had to take our passports to check us in. Be back in 10 minutes he says.

Now, I’m usually easy-going. Ok, fine, more often than not, I’m uptight. You disappear with my passport a second time in the span of 10 minutes, I’m really uptight. But I’ve got to play the confident captain role—as I’ve started joking about, since, I am a licensed sea captain, and you’ve got to appear confident, even if you might not be—so here I am, checking e-mail on my phone, counting down the minutes. I think I tweeted:

When the gentleman re-appeared, roughly 11 minutes after he disappeared—and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here, because he was waiting for the elevator a good 60 seconds just to get down—and now I thought my wife was going to give him a hug. We finally had our passports. He directed us to the gate, and casually escorted us to the gate. In fact, he talked a different immigration officer through waving us by to get onto the bus back to our plane.

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After having a celebratory glass of rose champagne, I considered the mileage run a success. But we still had another flight to go, with a winter storm warning back home.

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Celebratory Glass of Champagne

Fourth stress point: Despite headwinds, and probably not departing Doha on time, we landed on time, on a rather snowy runway.

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Is this Washington-Dulles or did we mistakenly land in the Arctic?!?

 

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Maybe another plane got lost and landed in the Arctic? Or maybe we really are at Washington-Dulles!

Of course, while I’m sure it took significant skill to land safely at Washington-Dulles, there was yet more to come. In what was perhaps the most surprising positive thing of the trip, our people mover to Customs wasn’t delayed, nor was it packed full. We were through customs in no time. We would’ve been to the car faster, except that the walkway to the Daily Lot 2 was not fully plowed and I was walking in dress shoes (my wife was smart enough to have worn sneakers). Before long we were in the car and on our way on the snowpacked roadways of Dulles International Airport. We live roughly 50 miles from Dulles, although the route we ended up taking was probably more than 75 miles. The routing is probably immaterial, but I’ll just say – we actively decided that we would take the safer, less congested, and more circuitous route, rather than getting stuck with the most direct, congested path (like this):

Roads were horrible, as one might expect when snow is coming down at 1-2″ per hour. Just look at the weather map:

I don’t want to belabor the point – but slow and steady wins the race. Even if you’re driving a Mini Cooper in snow. It just becomes a bit more difficult to win the race when your plowing snow with your splitter/front fender, because that is how poorly the roads have been cleared.

Conclusion

I’m writing this Saturday night, but after 43 hours from Washington-Dulles to Washington-Dulles, plus travel time to and from (perhaps magnified on the travel time from), I feel rather strongly, this was the best mileage run I’ve ever done, either alone, or with my wife. It beats the heck out of my last mileage run of 2014, as well as my wife and my mileage run to SFO. I won’t mince words. Mileage running is somewhat painful on the body, and it takes time. But if you’re going to do it. This is the way I recommend.

Flying the American Air 777-300ER to/from Hong Kong

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American Airlines 777-300ER

American Airlines 777-300ER

I wrote this shortly after arriving into Hong Kong, because I wanted my thoughts to be clear and present (of course then I let it sit a month). To start, the flight out was a 16.5 hour flight from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) to Hong Kong (HKG). The captain didn’t mince his words: “We’ll be together for a while” he said in his introduction. Cut to our departing the flight when I asked the crew how long they stayed – 42 hours they said… Guess my wife and I will be spending even more time than we thought with them on this short trip—and that’s not a bad thing.

About the Seat

I have been anxious to fly American’s 777-300ER (referred to as a 77W), particularly because of the reverse herringbone seats that Lucky and others believe are the best options out there. I flew Qatar’s 787 with reverse herringbone seats, and while the IFE was phenomenal, the seat didn’t strike me as “the best.” This experience cemented that feeling.

American Airlines Seat

American Airlines Seat

Yes, everyone gets access to the aisle. Yes, it’s a layflat (so quit bitching, you might say?), but the seat feels tight, and when sitting and trying to work, kind’ve uncomfortable. That part is because the aisle-side armrest is parallel to the aisle (whereas the rest of the seat is angled away from it), so if you are the type that likes to have both elbows on the desk or the table or the armrest when you type, well this seat isn’t for you. Of course, one thing that did help the working across the Pacific, was the very affordable wi-fi (I think less than $20 for the entire flight), which was something of a novelty for me.

Let’s cut to “bed mode”: This is a pretty comfortable bed in the sky. I’m 6’1”, and I could stretch out, and at no time did my stretching cause me to hit my head (as I’ve done when stretching out in other seats). The design was also good for “side sleepers” that like to bend their knees, there was plenty of room for one to do that.

But, be aware, getting out of the seat when in bed mode, well, be prepared to have to climb out of the seat kind’ve like Luke Skywalker climbed out of his X-Wing fighter. It’s kind’ve fun and kind’ve awkward all at the same time.

About the Service

Champagne

Pre-departure Champagne

I felt the service was par for a US Flagged carrier. The menu was ok, although there was no drink menu provided, which I thought odd, for a premier international route such as this. Being able to pre-order the entre is great, but there were some seat swaps which led to some confusion. There was no issue with my meal though, so I just sort of “observed” the confusion, but not necessarily was I a part of it.

Dinner

Dinner

I did feel that we were sometimes “forgotten” in the “mini-cabin” behind First Class. I’ll get to that in the next section though. Otherwise, the crew were very kind, not terribly talkative, because it seemed like they were working quite hard the entire flight.

Selecting a seat – Avoid the “mini-cabin”

When I selected seats for our outbound, I was kind’ve excited to try the “mini-cabin” experience. For reference, there are two rows of business class seats, behind First Class, but ahead of the galley area.

A snapshot of American Airlines' 77W premium cabins courtesy of www.SeatGuru.com

A snapshot of American Airlines’ 77W premium cabins courtesy of www.SeatGuru.com

Logically, you’d think that the mini-cabin, right behind First Class would be nice. Private, perhaps even quieter because no one should be walking the aisle, right? Wrong, well, except the last part. Sitting in 4a, as SeatGuru rightly warns, is less than desirable. The clinking and clanking of dishes in the kitchen was almost bad enough to put in earplugs. What really got me though, was that we received our meals last. We were not in the private mini-cabin, we were in the forgotten cabin! It became abundantly clear when we were boarding the flight home that the flight attendants knew it too. One specifically commented on our different seats and asked if we had felt neglected in the mini-cabin.

Conclusion

Overall, my wife and I really enjoyed the flights, so much so, that we’d have no issue flying the American 77W in business again. That said, I wouldn’t go out of my way to fly it, unless we were comparing it to American’s 772 with the angled layflat 2-3-2 business class seat. I found the seats especially comfortable to sleep in, but not especially convenient to work in. The cabin felt more claustrophobic than the Qatar 787, I think this was mostly due to the higher seat walls.

We ended up booking this flight for just under $1,000 round trip, and this was palatable for me because I was able to hold the flights, and call up the Executive Platinum line to confirm the upgrades at booking. I had checked ExpertFlyer to verify the availability before calling.

With American’s every so often sales to Asia, the 77W is definitely the way to go, if you can confirm the upgrades!

Mileage Run Fatigue

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This weekend, I did a mileage run with my wife to San Francisco (SFO), literally, for about 40 minutes, and turned right around. I tweeted about it some, but really wasn’t as thorough as I would’ve liked, so I thought I’d offer some thoughts and experiences.

Getting to the Airport

So, I think we started this little “trip” off with high stress, when we opted to leave from dropping our dog off for boarding about 2 and a quarter hours before our flight was due to depart. Full disclosure: traffic in the Washington, DC area is bad normally, Friday its glacial. All of our usual routes were slow and our handy GPS was telling us that they were all 2+ hours. It did have an alternative option – driving through the city. So really, before our flying journey, we took quite the journey through northeast and northwest Washington, DC. I don’t recommend that. The Lesson: if we really did miss our flight, I had in the back of my mind that we had an option: The Flat Tire Rule. Its an undocumented rule that essentially says, if you arrive to the airport within 2 hours of your original flight, if there’s a seat on the next flight, you can get it, generally without any fees. Ironically, Points With a Crew wrote about that yesterday.

Long story short, this was the first time in quite some time that I’ve run to the plane. We literally parked the car in the daily lot, and bolted to security. In one of those rare experiences, TSA PreCheck had no line. We were through security, and still had a bit of a jog. By the time we made it to the plane, they greeted us by name (because we were probably within the last dozen to board).

Date Night at 40,000 feet: Dinner and a Movie

My wife and I like to think of these crazy weekend trips and mileages runs as Date night. When you think about it, there’s generally a movie playing, and if the flights long enough, whether you’re in First (we were lucky), or in Economy, you’re going to eat. The meal on the way out was lasanga (my wife), and Chicken Tikka (me). The first flight though, even being the longer flight from DCA-DFW, American chose to show a bunch of NBC shows I’d never heard of (which seemed to prove I’m not up to date with what NBC shows after 8pm, aside from Sunday Night Football).

For our first flight, perhaps the most notable points were: all 4 of us in row six were enjoying vodka based drinks, and one of the other folks in the row brought his own olives for his beverage. It’s not often you see someone break out a jar of olives from their carry-on, at least not for me.

After a brief stop at the Centurion Lounge in D terminal of DFW, we were on to our second flight. Again, we were the last folks to arrive in First Class (we enjoyed the lounge too much). The Lesson: If the Skytrain is going oneway (as it was on Friday night), there is an alternative. You can walk to the end of the D terminal (near D40), go up an escalator, and with the aid of moving walkways, walk to C terminal. We did that, and we cut an estimated 25 minute Skytrain ride to about a 15 minute walk. I learned this from my seatmate on the first flight from DCA-DFW.

The second flight was uneventful, except that we finally got our movie; Godzilla. I thought it was a great movie, very well done, although I kept thinking that the father was Robert Redford. He is not.

Where the Mileage Run started getting old

Arriving into San Francisco, we were tired and weary. We first went to the gate, because ExpertFlyer was showing the flight fully booked, and I was thinking Voluntary Denied Boarding (VDB), with a few hours in a hotel. I put us on the list, and we made our way to the Admirals Club for a bit. When we made it back to the gate, they had no need for volunteers, but, even better, our upgrades had come through – 3E and 3F here we came. At this point we knew we were 4 for 4 on upgrades, which was great, but we were exhausted. Our flight at 12:20am was 3:20am East Coast time, and we had started at 5:45pm the day before. We slept most of this flight.

Back at DFW at 5:30am, we stumbled off of the plane and found the Skytrain to head back to the Centurion Lounge for our just shy of 2 hour layover. Alas, we learned that the spa didn’t open until 9am (incidentally, the spa is open 9am-8pm, the overall lounge is open 5:30-9:30/10pm). After printing out our remaining boarding passes, one of the lounge staff reminded me of the chaise lounges.

AMEX Centurion Lounge at DFW's Chaise Lounges.

AMEX Centurion Lounge at DFW’s Chaise Lounges.

An hour later, we were back up, and hustling to our last flight of the night….er…day…er…trip?

That flight was uneventful, more NBC sitcoms, although I recognized one — Chicago Fire (that’s not to say that I’ve actually seen an episode on the ground).

Is it worth it?

That’s the question I was asking myself a lot on the second half of the trip. In a word: Yes. But why you may ask? Because the marginal cost is minimal. I’m at just over 74,000 Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs) for the year (before this Mileage Run). I’ve got a trip to Hong Kong which should be roughly 18-18.5k EQMs. Yes, I’ll likely have to do one more run this year, but the difference between Platinum and Executive Platinum is rather significant. Of course, given how I’m feeling at the moment, I’m definitely going to be figuring out a better way to maintain status next year.

I’ll leave you with a photo looking out on the way home… Perhaps the real reason of why I do it.

Looking out over Virginia

Grabbing the Brass Ring

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Brass Ring

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have learned many lessons in life. I’ve learned many lessons from my father. But the most important lesson that I’ve learned from my father, is to always grab the brass ring – the idea that if there’s an opportunity, you need to grab it, because you don’t know when you’ll have that opportunity again. Many of my posts on this blog are my way of sharing those “brass rings” if you will.

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