Was on a plane and sat beside a big guy in a biker leather vest, both arms all tatted up.

I was reading on my kindle, he was playing chess on his smartphone. I know I'm stereotyping but it struck me as funny.

Had my first Oh shit moment on a plane. On Thursday, after sitting on the runway at Newark for 2 hours, we finally made it to Atlanta. As we were just about to land, gear down, nose up, really close to the ground, we shot up and aborted the landing. The pilot told us that the runway directions had been switched and we now had to go around. By the time we were exiting, after the pilot spoke to the attendants, the story was we were coming in too fast to land.

I wonder if we were about to land as another plane was coming from the other direction.

Damn, that's scary.

I don't know how this can still happen nowadays. The article wasn't very clear but sounds like the cool air wasn't flowing or limited?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...heat-rcna95050
Sounds like the pilots were well aware though.


I can't believe passengers were sitting inside the plane with no/limited air for 3 hours and 111 degrees outside. There has to be more to this story but regardless ... at best there was poor judgement here, at worst, a nice lawsuit to remind Delta this behavior is unacceptable.

My daughter met some dude working out who goes to her college and is enrolled in their aviation program. Guessing they go on a date soon. I feel like I need some advice from Pilotman, or at least a psychological profile.

A little more info. It's not clear to me if they still at the gate or queued up behind planes on the tarmac.

https://simpleflying.com/passengers-...letter_popup=1
So 2 hours in, the pilots know some passengers may be in distress. Some on reddit was saying if there is not AC for the passengers, there's no AC for the pilots.

Wonder how long it was between the "two hours in" and when the pilot finally made the call? 5 min, another 30 min, another 60 min?

Yeah bub, no kidding, the least you could do. Let me see if I can find Morgan & Morgan in my rolodex.

Pilots are assholes.

Is this at EKU?

Yep!

The top 10 airports in the world for food.

Incheon is worthy. I guess Atlanta also (most times I just eat fast food there). Agree with Narita. Agree with Chicago. Been a while since I've been to Singapore but can easily believe it.

The one that surprises me is DFW. Maybe with how its spread out, I never found DFW convenient for food so never saw a variety of restaurants. No European airports either.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/22/best...ge-report.html

Not sure I agree with the below ranking criteria though (but need to know the weighting of each).

We are in the early stages of considering/planning a vacation to Japan next summer. For anyone who's been or is in the area, I'd love advice and thoughts on any part of the process.

Kyoto rocked, stay at a Ryokan for a great experience. Also, pick one area of Tokyo and hang out for 2-3 days, but it is soooooo large you cannot possibly see more than a few parts. We stayed in Shinjuku and hit the Tokyo Tower and lots of fun restaurants. In Kyoto, make sure you see Arashiyama Forest (the bamboo forest) and visit the Nishiki Market.

If anyone has a collection of Delta SkyMiles and would like to travel to Australia, Delta has a deal right now from quite a few cities in the US for Main Cabin tickets priced at 68K miles for a round trip ticket, for dates through March. I priced 2 tickets in mid-January which is during the Australian Open and we could fly from Cincinnati to Sydney for $136K miles and $245. If I hadn't already booked a cruise with my parents for the end of January, I'd jump on this deal.

Singapore doing its thing.


FWIW. Taylor Swift, Backstreet Boys, Sting, OneRepublic etc. are scheduled to tour 2023 & 2024. Somehow, I'm thinking they & crew will get a pass or won't be looked at too hard. But if they did and it went public, it will be fascinating how that'll play out.

My neighbors went on a ten day guided tour of Rome, Venice. and Florence. Here is my annual advisory for those who have grown accustomed to central A/C in their living space 24 hours a day and are planing to go to Europe on vacation during the summer. Make sure that A/C is listed among the amenities of your hotel room, Air BnB or wherever you are staying. Evidently, some of the people they are traveling with did not get the memo and now are a bit cranky during their travels.

I stayed at a couple AirBnB in Australia. No central air. I gave good feedback but for the private feedback I said something like "for some of your US guests, I suggest you have a floor fan to help circulate the air".

PSA. Just my observation and it may help you ...

Planning on traveling overseas Feb 2024. Using Google Travel, I favorited a destination/start/end for Feb 1 and current price of $1,300.

As I check everyday, I can see discounted fares of $1,050 "move" from Dec into Jan. The discount fares of $1,050 that were in Dec, have now moved into week of Jan 21, and the Dec fares have reverted back higher.

It's like a "discounted fare wave" that moves through the months. I expect it to move into Feb soon and I'll buy then.

I've never paid attention/noticed this before so don't know if this is typical. It may be one off but thought to share my observations.

My mom and dad's flight just took off for Frankfurt. They won't be back in the US until November 8th.

Nice.

I was in Frankfurt for some business years ago. Found out blood sausage does not agree with me. I felt bad leaving most of it untouched in a local tavern.

They had an uneventful flight and got there just fine. They had an empty seat in their row, so were able to stretch out. Now their struggle is to stay awake until night time, to get their sleep cycles set to European time. They are staying in Frankfurt for 4 days to acclimate, before starting to take the train all over Europe.

I renewed my Global Entry and wife applied for for it. Because I was previously approved, got the renewal approval in a couple days.

My wife got her "conditional approval" pretty quick also. However, the in-person interview at Hartsfield airport (the only place in GA) is booked through next April (she stopped looking after that). So she's started looking at other cities. DC is a possibility because she has a sister there and has been wanting to visit her.

PSA. If you are applying for Global Entry, be prepared to wait a long time for the in-person interview.

Took my son to the airport this morning, and was heading toward the Southwest terminal. He said "wait, you need to go the north terminal because I'm flying Delta." I responded "Oh, sorry. I didn't see the monocle and top hat, Mr. Monopoly."

Dropped my folks off at ORD this morning for their flight back to Maine.

When they came in last week (on American), they deplaned and an hour later no bags from the flight had appeared on any carousel when suddenly the arrival flight # disappeared from the various boards. First time I've seen that happen. Whole plane without bags.

They appeared another 30 minutes later, but it was pretty annoying.

The Alaska cruise we're on is hosting about 230 American Airlines pilots. I feel like we're in pretty safe hands, navigation-wise.

Weather has been great so far but starting Monday it's going to suck. We'll hopefully get through Ketchikan tomorrow but then the rain comes and probably doesn't let up until we head back.

Enjoy! Alaska is amazing

We're flying back today from Seattle. Alaska cruise was terrific. Weather cooperated for the most part - worst was overcast/fog and spitting rain but got to do everything we planned. We saw that seaplane excursions got cancelled in Juneau but we did whale watching and that did not disappoint. Glacier viewing was touch-and-go but fog lifted and rain stopped so that we could get about a mile from Dawes which was amazing. It's hard to believe how big glaciers are because the ships can only get a couple miles from the glacier and it feels like it's way closer.

Celebrity was phenomenal. We had a Retreat suite which obviously made it even better but going forward, cruises are getting so popular that we are likely priced out of that kind of cabin for a while. We booked this a year ago and right now the same cabin (on a newer ship) for the same week and itinerary next September is 75% more expensive. I can't justify that kind of price. I'd rather sacrifice the amenities and preferential treatment to be able to vacation more often rather than putting it all into one trip every 2-3 years. Hopefully it settles back into pre-Covid pricing once everyone gets their pent up Covid travel out of their system.

Seattle was great. Day before the cruise we did all of the touristy stuff (needle, pike place market) and after we debarked Friday morning, we stayed until this morning. Went to Snoqualmie Falls and a Mariners game Friday and then Mt. Rainier for some hiking yesterday. Both days sunny and 80s.

On a separate travel note, Delta laid the hammer down on airline loyalty last week and those who value those kind of perks are mostly screwed going forward unless you fly a ton and buy expensive seats. The new "simplified" medallion tiers and cutbacks on perks you get for the Delta credit cards are ridiculous. They will definitely cut down on Sky Club overcrowding because only the overseas business travellers and those who are willing to spend $75K+ on their Delta cards will have unlimited access. We're likely cancelling my wife's Delta Platinum card and I'll be more open to flying other airlines when the itinerary makes sense because chasing silver or platinum status (which I've had for 5+ years) is a pipe dream with these changes. Airline status isn't worth chasing anymore. I'm sure if this is successful for Delta other airlines will follow suit. Sucks.

solid list.

No longer chasing the SkyMiles (but did get up to 1.5M SkyMiles). I've been thinking about getting the Chase Reserve or AMEX Platinum which will get me into some lounges but don't travel enough right now to warrant the $500+ fees.

I can only remember a couple domestic lounges that were memorable in food or service. I have been to some international lounges that were fantastic (especially the showers!).

Delta is actually following pretty closely to what American did last year. It's expected the everyone else will largely follow suit (thought "everyone else" really doesn't include all that many players when you figure those two alone are 1/3rd of the market share)

I have Chase Reserve and love it for the flexibility of how many partners I can transfer points to. Also, I think the fee is $595 but you get an automatic $300 credit for any travel you book to the card every year so if you travel at all, the fee is down to $295 in a blink. Plus if you book travel with the card you get 3X points and 5X or 10X for booking travel through their portal (which I've used most frequently with success for car and hotel rentals).

We're going to London and Paris next May and used Chase points to book lie-flat business class seats on Air Canada out of Toronto and Delta miles to get us to Toronto. If I lived closer to a bigger city I probably wouldn't have even needed the Delta flights but for a total of about $750 and 250K points/miles, we're traveling comfortably overseas. Can't beat that.

Delta has surpassed what AA has done, according to most industry commentators, primarily because Delta is so far ahead of all US competitors with its offerings that it can roll out this kind of changes and essentially dare people to go to it's competitors and receive inferior service.

I flew to Chicago and back from DC(A) on United and I was surprised how inferior their service and amenities are compared to other airlines - Southwest for example. No in flight entertainment, drink service w/ no ice, food was $10 for a box of shit that expired in 2018.

I'll have to decide next time if I hate flying United or hate driving to BWI less.

This is 100% us as well. I like not being tied to a particular airline, and honestly, as you can see from the Delta conversation, unless you're traveling a lot for work, you're not going to see a lot of benefit from a particular airline's program anymore.

United & American are equal flavors of terrible, IMO, especially for domestic service, even including non-economy class travel. And honestly, international isn't much better unless you're First, sometimes.

These days I just view it as a bus that happens to go through the air.

This is a great analogy. I always say we're cattle but admittedly that is an exaggeration. Riding in a bus is pretty darn accurate (including the uncomfortable seats).

Looks like Delta realizes they stepped in it with the drastic changes they made to the SkyMiles program and the CEO has said modifications are coming in the next few weeks.

Hard to understand how you can implement something like this and not expect severe backlash. Most of the value from the program comes from upgrades, free baggage, etc. But if you have to buy multiple 1st class tickets to get elite status, and those tickets come with most of the benefits of elite status, why does anyone need to qualify for elite status? The spending requirements are ridiculous anyway, but why would I spend $150K+ on a Delta AmEx plus fly 1st class a ton just to get the incremental benefits of platinum or elite status? Sky Club access is definitely a problem, but I'd argue that once you cycle out pandemic qualifiers (due to Delta allowing MQMs to rollover multiple years), some of that is going to go away. It's kinda like college sports with the extra COVID year - that situation created a glut of players because of the extra year that will eventually be weeded out of the system entirely.

Throw on top of all that, that Delta SkyPesos (as they are derisively called) have been significantly devalued over the years, and it's also a matter of losing value by putting that much spending on a Delta CC when you can get way more value out of transferrable points on other cards. It's a double whammy and it's hard to believe Delta thought this would be acceptable.

Saying all that, I'm sure the modifications are not going to be substantial. And perhaps this was the strategy - hit them with the worst case scenario, take a PR hit, backtrack a little to regain a bit of PR and at the end of the day, still get 95% of what you intended with the changes.

It seems to me like maybe you are misjudging what the value of these programs is to the airlines though? I had gold (or whatever sky miles equivalent is) back when I was flying LA to Atlanta 3 times a month in 2018… but I was only flying economy, those flights were always rammed, was in the 70s for upgrades, waited in line with 3/4 of the plane in the line for group 2, used the free lounge access to work. I very much doubt Delta gave a flying shit if I decided I was going to take my $1500 a month to American or United.

If they have actively lost one whale who is purchasing multiple first class flights a month who feels the program is devalued, the lounges are too crowded and is sick of waiting with 20 other people in group A because of easy to hit bonus programs and COVID rollovers, that spend absolutely dwarfs losing 100 “normal” people. And realistically, they aren’t losing 100 of those people anyway because most will choose based on price and convenience anyway, same as they always did.

Not saying it’s right, but I think you hit the nail on the head with your last comment - they will try to lower the PR hit while ending up doing what they wanted to do anyway, because they know the economics are in their favor either way.

They will care (and do care) if it results in people cancelling their AmEx credit cards because they make about $6-7B a year on selling benefits to AmEx and expect that to rise to $10B. All of a sudden, they devalued the program that drives AmEx CC use to the point where it doesn't make sense for most people to chase airline status. That's got to hurt their projections and I think that's the main driver for acknowledging they went too far.

Looks like I'll be rejoining the industry! My old boss from my old job with a regional airline recently got a job at a mainline airline. A few weeks in to his new job he reached out to me to discuss working for him again. I just signed the offer letter a few minutes ago. I LOVED working for him, I just didn't appreciate the way the company treated me (and the rest of their employees). This airline has a reputation for a great company culture, so hopefully it's a better fit!

Ok, who forgot their Patriotic undies and decided to Porky Pig it on Spirit?

Spirit Airlines passenger stands in line for flight NAKED from waist down in bizarre clip - Mirror Online

Flying back to Dallas to see my parents again and I've noticed a definite uptick in people asking others to switch seats. It hasn't happened to me all that often, but it just did.

I always pick an aisle seat if possible. I'm in my seat and a woman is in the window seat. Middle seat is open. Dude comes up and asks if I'm with her and I'm like, no. So despite that he still asks if I mind moving over so he can sit in my seat and I'm like, no thanks, I prefer the aisle seat. He didn't say anything and took his seat but WTF? Who wants a middle seat? You got your wife or kid sitting across the aisle, I might consider it. Fat dude who didn't get the seat he wanted? Sorry.

I suppose if you don't ask the answer is always no, but I guess I'm just not that pushy a person to think that's OK.

I don't think I could handle it politely if someone asked me to switch to a middle.

Hell I'm not booking a flight if only a middle seat is available.

I've met a lot of people who go through life always asking these types of questions that benefit themselves at the expense of others. It's annoying, especially when you see someone who's too polite or has too low self-esteem and gives in.

Hmmm, this is a little concerning re: GPS spoofing close to Iran. The concern is aircraft may be fooled into entering Iranian airspace and the possible repercussions. Article doesn't speculate who could be behind this.

Increasing Fake GPS Signals Near Iran Prompt FAA Alert | Aviation International News

Flying 1st class back home from a conference in San Antonio. Family of 5 sitting around me - mom, dad and 3 kids I'd say 2, 6, and 8 maybe? Dad sitting next to me and mom and youngest across the aisle. Kid starts howling, dad offers to take him. He's sitting on Dad's lap and starts squirming and dumps a vodka and cranberry in my lap. About a 3 hour flight. We haven't even taken off yet.

By the way, first time in San Antonio airport and it sucks. Seems way old and too small for the size of city. Not enough seats or room in waiting areas and people are standing against the walls all the way down the terminal. Security lines were way more confusing than they needed to be. Not impressed.

FYI Delta is having a nice SkyMiles sale on flights to Auckland NZ from November through May. Seems to be pretty decent availability. Since there's no penalty for cancelling, I just booked a 10 day trip in February for 108K miles and $189 for the wife and me. If we can go, great. If not, I'll just cancel.

Nice. I'm thinking of Europe next year if it works out.

I still have about 90k SkyMiles left. I noticed I don't get points anymore for the cheap flight so probably won't be accruing any more anytime soon.

BTW - can you share the site where you are finding deals?

I got back from my trip to Europe yesterday. Flew Turkish Airlines there and back. Their business class (no first class) offering was excellent. They had an in-flight chef, and the food was really, really good. The seats were great as well, with a 24 inch touchscreen for entertainment.

It was my first time using Global Entry, and it is incredible. It took 15 minutes to get off the plane, go through passport control, get my bags, and through customs.

I have a subscription to Thrifty Traveler. I don't recall the cost or what you get for just a regular subscription compared to the premium but I find that it's worth it.

Bonus for me on those flights - I got automatically upgraded to Comfort+ on 5 of the 6 flights. Sweet!

Holy crap, that's a good deal! What's the routing?

We loved our trip to NZ years ago. You're going to have a great time.

We are planning this too, but bear in mind a few important things about next summer in Europe:

1. Taylor Swift is playing throughout Europe in the summer. Hotel chains already report being fully booked in cities where she's playing.

2. The Summer Olympics will be in Paris.

3. Euro 2024 will be held in Germany.

Our itinerary will be England/Scotland/Italy so we'll miss points 2 & 3, and we'll work around Swift's dates for 1.