…and not the Chase Ink Plus. There are rumors that the Ink Bold is going away, and I’ve never had a Chase Ink card, so I figured I might as well try for the Ink Bold. Yes, everyone is screaming about the Ink Plus right now. 70k UR points is a lot. But they’re not…
I love Thai Airways. I don’t understand which blogger started the meme that Thai doesn’t have great service in the air, since I’ve only had superlative service experiences on Thai in first class. Or maybe it’s like a reverse racism thing where Asian people get better service on Thai than white people, similar to how white people get…
Upon arrival at Frankfurt, I received an escort from Thai since I was connecting to a Thai first class flight. Normally, if you depart in Star Alliance first class out of Frankfurt, you only get Lufthansa Senator Lounge access (the same lounge that Star Alliance Gold gets), but since I was getting off a Lufthansa…
I’ve flown Lufthansa first class a couple of times before (see A380 trip report; previous 747 trip report; and (gasp!) a coach trip report) and had good experiences. I’m not a huge Lufthansa fan boy, but the separate seat and bed combo on the upper deck of the 747 is my favorite first class hard product. You…
There was an article in the NYTimes Home section yesterday entitled, “When Blogging Becomes a Slog“, and I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the themes in the article about DIY bloggers and the current state of the miles/points blogosphere. While people like Gary and Ben aren’t losing steam any time soon and haven’t expressed…
I’m about to fly AA 137 from Dallas to Hong Kong on one of AA’s newish 77Ws in business class. I paid coach and applied a SWU, and my upgrade cleared way back when I purchased my ticket. But here are the seat maps for the flight about 1 hour prior to departure: While I’m super…
After an ordinary United domestic business class flight from SFO, I landed in YVR and headed to the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge. This was the first Air Canada lounge I’ve been to. Since I generally assume that Canada is identical to the US except that it’s colder, has more maple syrup, and politer people, I…
Earlier this year, I took a two-week trip to Southeast Asia, spending time in Hanoi, Siem Reap, and Singapore. To get to Hanoi, I booked a pre-devaluation United first class award to Southeast Asia for 70k miles. The original routing was SFO-LHR on United first class, LHR-BKK on Thai first class, and then BKK-HAN on…
I never thought I’d say that I like a phone company. I’ve had T-Mobile for a long time, and I honestly hated it for a while, but the changes they’ve been making to try to steal market share from the other three phone carriers are awesome for frequent travelers like myself. The biggest game changer…
I recently flew Spirit and avoided most of the fees–I printed my boarding pass before getting to the airport, packed only a backpack that could fit under the seat in front of me, didn’t get an assigned seat until check in–but I didn’t avoid the online ticketing fee (aka “passenger usage fee) of about $17. If…
