The NYTimes published on op-ed titled “Class Struggle in the Sky“, where the author bemoans the terrible nature of coach travel while demonizing the extravagances of business class. Ignoring the poor writing and lack of understanding and research (which Gary does a good job of deconstructing), I’m finding the comments extraordinarily entertaining. One commenter writes:…
If you’re looking for the most accurate Star Alliance award availability, you should be searching using the ANA website. It’s a little less user-friendly than the United website, but it’s 100% accurate (as far as I can tell), which means that I often do most of my searches on the ANA website, particularly when I’m…
I’m not sure who the people behind ftdashoard.net are, but whoever they are, they should get a gold star for creating and maintaining an awesome site. As mentioned in my trip report about new first class on British Airways, I used this site to track whether the new first class product was being used on…
I’m planning on going to Vietnam next year, and I had originally booked an award routing SFO-LHR-BKK-HAN on United Global First, Thai First, and then Thai Business. I was excited to fly LHR to BKK on Thai First because I thought the route was going to be served by an A380, and I had such…
The New York Times recently published an article entitled, “Why the Airline Industry Needs Another Data Revolution”. In the article, there’s a brief outline of how the airline industry used to be at the forefront of technology, pioneering things like computerized reservation systems and revenue management, but now, airlines seem to be stuck with archaic…
Seoul is one of my favorite cities. The food is great (assuming you like Korean food…), the city is really accommodating of tourists (e.g. lots of museums are free, they’ve had promotions where they’ll give you free postcards and mail them for you), public transit is great, there’s interesting history as well as modern influences,…
British Airways has announced that Toronto and Newark are going to be the first routes that will be served by their new Boeing 787s. Toronto is starting on September 1st on BA 93/92 while Newark is starting on October 1st on BA 187/186. The flights are supposed to be bookable as of today, and they…
One of the most well-regarded lounges in the world is the Thai First Class Lounge and Royal Orchid Spa at Bangkok airport (BKK). The service is supposed to be spectacular, and part of the appeal is that departing First Class passengers get a free hour-long massage at the spa. There seems to be a bit…
UPDATE (1/4/2014): Here is an updated link to Asiana’s routes with Quadra Smartium service. Right now, the following routes have Quadra Smartium seats: New York (OZ 222/221) San Francisco (OZ 212/211) Los Angeles (OZ 204/203) London (OZ 522/521) Osaka (OZ 112/111) Ho Chi Minh (OZ 735/736 4 times per week) Asiana Airlines is well-known for…
Since starting this hobby of collecting and maximizing miles and points, I’ve focused almost exclusively on airline miles. The majority of my credit cards are from airlines, most of the points that I’ve transferred from Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards have been to airline partners, and most of the awards I’ve redeemed have been for…
