AquaDyne
Oct 5, 09, 8:02 pm
At the beginning of the year, I had held the highest hopes of making 1K on UA, and had aligned the stars to make it happen, including getting a new Platinum Visa with the EQM bonus, spending on it, and flying at every opportunity my employer offered me. However, as luck would have it, I ended up with a very long dry spell (from late Jan to early Jun) with no flying, which included most of the UA DEQM period and in the July/Aug period I had begrudgingly accepted the fact that I’d only end up a 1P. Bring on September, though, and a few short-notice transcon trips plus the return of DEQM for most of the rest of the year, and I did a little bit of math: I’d easily get to about 79K and I would only need 21K of mileage running. THIS was possible.
I searched for a while from good fares from my home base in LAS, and didn’t find anything overly promising. Plus there’s less of a motivation to leave one’s comfortable home and fly around than there is to squeeze a MR into a business trip when you’re already packed up, parked, and at airports. Since my business regularly takes me to IAD, I started scouting fares from there and stumbled on a $200-ish round trip to SFO. Better still, it left around my normal evening departure time, returned on the red-eye, and got me on the first morning flight home, with minimal stops and maximum flying. The two nonstops with DEQM would net me just under 10K. Do that twice, perhaps with an extra segment thrown in, and I’d be done.
I did not tell anyone about my MR, other than posting about it here on FT. My wife thought I was just spending the evening where I’d been all day, and returning on the morning flight, and my work assumed I was staying with a friend (and thus didn’t need the 2nd night in the hotel or the extra day of rental car). It’s not that I was hiding anything: my wife has been amused at my discussions of MRs before, so it was less that I was lying than just not giving information that wasn’t needed. I briefly pondered the ethics of this strategy. Imagine if I was meeting some “other woman” for a quick 1 hour rendezvous at the gates in SFO! How sneaky! Unfortunately, it was EQM that I was spending the night away from my wife to court. Me and EQM, we have this relationship going, you see. Anyway, I digress.
Fast-forward to the Thursday night before my trip. I usually like aisle seats, and I’d been checking the seat maps daily and was still forever squeezed into a window seat in front of the exit rows. DEQM from my previous journey had just posted and brought me close enough to 1P that I decided to use some of my credit card “choices” EQM early to get myself to 1P on that flight. Voila! Exit row seating, and I grabbed 12F on an A319. That’s the one right behind the exit with no seat in front of you for two rows. With good seats chosen for all my flights the next week, I happily enjoyed the weekend, looking forward to the trip and constantly staring at my EQM spreadsheet.
I left home on Tuesday, promising to be home Thursday, and my first flight as a 1P was a lovely upgraded 757-200 trip to IAD. When I arrived, I was now inside the 24-hour window for check-in on the first flight of my MR, so I went to the kiosk near customer service to attempt to print my BP. Unfortunately, the machine appeared confused (probably due to the nested itineraries?) so a quick trip to the customer service counter netted me a BP for the next day’s flight, and off I went to do good things for my company.
There’s been some discussion over in the United Forum about the new security setup in IAD. I’m not sure how it is or how bad it is since I’ve been a frequent user of their “Diamond” lane, one of the best-kept secrets for IAD travelers. There’s no elite level required, the lines are always insanely short, and if you don’t need to check bags or print your BP it even saves you the trouble of using any stairs or escalators to get through security. Happily clutching the BP I’d received the night before, I went from curbiside to at-the-gate via the Diamond lane in about 20 minutes. I was back inside security, with nobody but United, TSA, and a few FlyerTalkers knowing I was there! About to embark on my clandestine EQM-earning mission!
As a good FT’er, I know that one of the factors determining upgrade waitlist priority is check-in time. I had dutifully tried to check in at the 24 hour point using multiple methods, but united.com seemed confused and I decided just to try it at the airport, so the first step of my MR adventure was to try to get all my BP’s ready to go. Once again, the check-in kiosk proved to have difficulty figuring out which BP’s I wanted, other than the imminent flight I already had the BP for. I suppose something in the coding won’t let you check in for a “return” flight until you’ve made the outbound flight. In any case, the customer service podium had three attentive agents and nobody in line so I strolled up with my IAD-SFO BP in hand and asked for the BP for the return flight.
This is where the agent noticed that I had about a 1 ¼ hour layover and raised her eyebrow at me questioningly. Blushing slightly, I was up front with my intentions. “Yes, I’m only on this flight to earn miles.” The agent rolled her eyes, and the next one over who overheard the exchange commented, “I guess it’s that time of year again.” They were amused, I was only mildly embarrassed, and soon I had my return BP in hand. I then tried to get my BP for my trip home to LAS the next morning (within 24 hours) but the system wouldn’t let me check in because I was waitlisted to upgrade with the same e500 coupons that I was also waitlisted with on the SFO-IAD flight. After a minute or two of trying to figure out what I needed to do, the agent and I mutually gave up.
After enjoying some wine-tasting at Vino Volo, I wandered to my gate about 35 minutes before the departure to see where I stood on the upgrade list. Unsurprisingly for an evening nonstop to SFO, I was #20 of 41 people trying to get into 8 F seats. No chance. I wasn’t complaining as I had a lovely exit row backup. When we boarded, I got to experience the “1P / *G” priority boarding for the first time. Which involved having to squeeze past a few boarding zone 1 people and wondering, without trying to stare at people’s BP’s, when to stop so I didn’t cut in front of other 1P’s. I think there ended up being 3 of us and I had just cut in front of one, whom I apologized to. I settled in to my seat and decided while stashing my laptop under the seat in front of me (2 rows up) that I almost really did have too much legroom. Well, too late to do anything about it now.
The flight was nearly full. I think after everyone was on board, I counted exactly 3 empty seats. Fortunately one of them was next to me. I tried to move my laptop from under 10F to under 11E, but was stopped by an FA who was trying to stash the last few passengers’ carry ons without gate checking them, and insisted on this oversized bag taking that spot and obstructing foot space in what was supposed to be an exit row. I dutifully re-stashed my laptop, and enjoyed listening to ATC as we pulled back from the gate, taxied, and took off. Having sat in aisle seats for so long, I had forgotten how enjoyable it is to have a window view, and resolved to try doing that a bit more often when I can.
When the FA’s came down the aisle with drink orders, I asked for two bottles of wine. Apparently they’re only allowed to serve one at a time, so the FA offered me one bottle, then paused while counting to three, and handed me the second one. ^ I was amused when the passenger in 12D got exactly the same routine for her two bottles, and joked about us wino’s being the best people to operate the emergency exit.
My usual flying frequency is monthly, so I have rarely had more than one flight during the same half of the month when United changes their TV/Movie lineup. As it turned out, this Sep 30 flight was my third westbound flight since the 16th, so I’d seen all the shows twice already – except for the movie. Somehow one earlier flight had substituted some other odd movie, and the second was too short for the feature length film. I finally got to see the scheduled movie, which helped pass most of the time in the air.
I realized that the nearly infinite space in front of my seat wasn’t really all mine when the passenger in 11E ended up using it as his personal office cubicle. He had opened up his carry on and was processing piles of paperwork. By the time the movie was over and I wanted to retrieve my laptop from under “the seat in front of me”, I had to try to fish it out without disturbing his carefully stacked sheets, and a sandwich to boot. Possibly as a result of a third bottle of wine I’d just consumed, I failed in my attempt, spilling his papers around. More apologies, but at least I had my laptop, and spent about an hour doing mindnumbing work tasks before giving up and deciding to re-stash my laptop. 11E’s stuff was still there and I didn’t dare try to reverse the feat of earlier, so I managed to find a way to squeeze it next to the huge carryon next to me.
I listened to the ATC channel from most of the way near Denver all the way in to SFO. It was fun listening to the pilots all talking back and forth about the light turbulence and the best altitudes. I got briefly jealous of some other flight as I heard it going inbound to LAS but it’s not like I could do anything about it now. I enjoyed the view as we finally landed at SFO, marveling how it looks like you’re going to land in the water until the runway appears at the last moment. The flight arrived 30 minutes early, at the same gate my EasyUpdate text message told me my next flight would be departing from. I still decided to check the terminal screens as a backup, and got distracted by finding another flight back to IAD that hadn’t departed yet. I entertained the notion of flying back standby, weighing the options of sacrificing my carefully selected seat for an earlier trip long enough to walk all the way down the terminal to the new gate and hear them asking for volunteers to be bumped. Nevermind that! So I strolled all the way back to the gate at which I’d arrived, watching a flight load and depart for Seattle and listening to the one across the terminal leaving for LAS (again briefly entertaining the notion of trying to go there and go *home* instead of the 12+ hours of flying I still had ahead of me). Finally, as 30 minutes before my flight approached and there was nobody at my gate, I went to the monitor and found out I’d be leaving way back near where I’d already walked! Oops. Well, it’s not like I had anything else to do.
I figured my UG chances were better on the return flight since it was the red-eye and the A320 had more F seats. Alas, I still ended up #3 on the list but wasn’t too disappointed because I knew I’d be sleeping (or at least trying to) in a lovely bulkead seat with lots of legroom. In fact, the 6C seat on the A320 did have great legroom, and will be my favorite seat for trips in which I want to stay awake. Unfortunately it also has very hard armrests (containing trays, of course) which are a pain on which to rest one’s arms while trying to sleep. Lesson learned, and a different seat (or better selection of aircraft with more UG chances) are in the works next time I do this. Aided by some Sominex (I haven’t managed to figure out how to get Ambien yet) I slept through much of the flight and was surprisingly not overly groggy when we arrived back in IAD, with an hour to go before my final trip home.
I checked in finally, and had no problems now that I’d received the upgrade and had the instruments to pay for it. The comfortable F seat was perfect for light snoozing on the trip home. I was very happy to finally be headed a direction I wouldn’t end up reversing within a few hours, and I kept dozing off adding up how many EQM I’d just earned and how many more I would need. Alas, having paid for a good number of glasses of wine in the previous 12 hours, I ended up foregoing the free F booze and simply enjoyed some really great service keeping my coffee cup constantly full. And, it was now a new month so I got to enjoy a different in flight movie to boot! I eventually made it home and managed to last until 8pm before crashing and sleeping for 12 hours.
Was it worth it? Oh yes, I say as I fondle my EQM spreadsheet and plan to repeat the secret meeting again in two weeks. But alas… fares have gone up, and now I’m obsessed with chasing my cheap EQM lover all across the country. Oh where, oh where can she be?
I searched for a while from good fares from my home base in LAS, and didn’t find anything overly promising. Plus there’s less of a motivation to leave one’s comfortable home and fly around than there is to squeeze a MR into a business trip when you’re already packed up, parked, and at airports. Since my business regularly takes me to IAD, I started scouting fares from there and stumbled on a $200-ish round trip to SFO. Better still, it left around my normal evening departure time, returned on the red-eye, and got me on the first morning flight home, with minimal stops and maximum flying. The two nonstops with DEQM would net me just under 10K. Do that twice, perhaps with an extra segment thrown in, and I’d be done.
I did not tell anyone about my MR, other than posting about it here on FT. My wife thought I was just spending the evening where I’d been all day, and returning on the morning flight, and my work assumed I was staying with a friend (and thus didn’t need the 2nd night in the hotel or the extra day of rental car). It’s not that I was hiding anything: my wife has been amused at my discussions of MRs before, so it was less that I was lying than just not giving information that wasn’t needed. I briefly pondered the ethics of this strategy. Imagine if I was meeting some “other woman” for a quick 1 hour rendezvous at the gates in SFO! How sneaky! Unfortunately, it was EQM that I was spending the night away from my wife to court. Me and EQM, we have this relationship going, you see. Anyway, I digress.
Fast-forward to the Thursday night before my trip. I usually like aisle seats, and I’d been checking the seat maps daily and was still forever squeezed into a window seat in front of the exit rows. DEQM from my previous journey had just posted and brought me close enough to 1P that I decided to use some of my credit card “choices” EQM early to get myself to 1P on that flight. Voila! Exit row seating, and I grabbed 12F on an A319. That’s the one right behind the exit with no seat in front of you for two rows. With good seats chosen for all my flights the next week, I happily enjoyed the weekend, looking forward to the trip and constantly staring at my EQM spreadsheet.
I left home on Tuesday, promising to be home Thursday, and my first flight as a 1P was a lovely upgraded 757-200 trip to IAD. When I arrived, I was now inside the 24-hour window for check-in on the first flight of my MR, so I went to the kiosk near customer service to attempt to print my BP. Unfortunately, the machine appeared confused (probably due to the nested itineraries?) so a quick trip to the customer service counter netted me a BP for the next day’s flight, and off I went to do good things for my company.
There’s been some discussion over in the United Forum about the new security setup in IAD. I’m not sure how it is or how bad it is since I’ve been a frequent user of their “Diamond” lane, one of the best-kept secrets for IAD travelers. There’s no elite level required, the lines are always insanely short, and if you don’t need to check bags or print your BP it even saves you the trouble of using any stairs or escalators to get through security. Happily clutching the BP I’d received the night before, I went from curbiside to at-the-gate via the Diamond lane in about 20 minutes. I was back inside security, with nobody but United, TSA, and a few FlyerTalkers knowing I was there! About to embark on my clandestine EQM-earning mission!
As a good FT’er, I know that one of the factors determining upgrade waitlist priority is check-in time. I had dutifully tried to check in at the 24 hour point using multiple methods, but united.com seemed confused and I decided just to try it at the airport, so the first step of my MR adventure was to try to get all my BP’s ready to go. Once again, the check-in kiosk proved to have difficulty figuring out which BP’s I wanted, other than the imminent flight I already had the BP for. I suppose something in the coding won’t let you check in for a “return” flight until you’ve made the outbound flight. In any case, the customer service podium had three attentive agents and nobody in line so I strolled up with my IAD-SFO BP in hand and asked for the BP for the return flight.
This is where the agent noticed that I had about a 1 ¼ hour layover and raised her eyebrow at me questioningly. Blushing slightly, I was up front with my intentions. “Yes, I’m only on this flight to earn miles.” The agent rolled her eyes, and the next one over who overheard the exchange commented, “I guess it’s that time of year again.” They were amused, I was only mildly embarrassed, and soon I had my return BP in hand. I then tried to get my BP for my trip home to LAS the next morning (within 24 hours) but the system wouldn’t let me check in because I was waitlisted to upgrade with the same e500 coupons that I was also waitlisted with on the SFO-IAD flight. After a minute or two of trying to figure out what I needed to do, the agent and I mutually gave up.
After enjoying some wine-tasting at Vino Volo, I wandered to my gate about 35 minutes before the departure to see where I stood on the upgrade list. Unsurprisingly for an evening nonstop to SFO, I was #20 of 41 people trying to get into 8 F seats. No chance. I wasn’t complaining as I had a lovely exit row backup. When we boarded, I got to experience the “1P / *G” priority boarding for the first time. Which involved having to squeeze past a few boarding zone 1 people and wondering, without trying to stare at people’s BP’s, when to stop so I didn’t cut in front of other 1P’s. I think there ended up being 3 of us and I had just cut in front of one, whom I apologized to. I settled in to my seat and decided while stashing my laptop under the seat in front of me (2 rows up) that I almost really did have too much legroom. Well, too late to do anything about it now.
The flight was nearly full. I think after everyone was on board, I counted exactly 3 empty seats. Fortunately one of them was next to me. I tried to move my laptop from under 10F to under 11E, but was stopped by an FA who was trying to stash the last few passengers’ carry ons without gate checking them, and insisted on this oversized bag taking that spot and obstructing foot space in what was supposed to be an exit row. I dutifully re-stashed my laptop, and enjoyed listening to ATC as we pulled back from the gate, taxied, and took off. Having sat in aisle seats for so long, I had forgotten how enjoyable it is to have a window view, and resolved to try doing that a bit more often when I can.
When the FA’s came down the aisle with drink orders, I asked for two bottles of wine. Apparently they’re only allowed to serve one at a time, so the FA offered me one bottle, then paused while counting to three, and handed me the second one. ^ I was amused when the passenger in 12D got exactly the same routine for her two bottles, and joked about us wino’s being the best people to operate the emergency exit.
My usual flying frequency is monthly, so I have rarely had more than one flight during the same half of the month when United changes their TV/Movie lineup. As it turned out, this Sep 30 flight was my third westbound flight since the 16th, so I’d seen all the shows twice already – except for the movie. Somehow one earlier flight had substituted some other odd movie, and the second was too short for the feature length film. I finally got to see the scheduled movie, which helped pass most of the time in the air.
I realized that the nearly infinite space in front of my seat wasn’t really all mine when the passenger in 11E ended up using it as his personal office cubicle. He had opened up his carry on and was processing piles of paperwork. By the time the movie was over and I wanted to retrieve my laptop from under “the seat in front of me”, I had to try to fish it out without disturbing his carefully stacked sheets, and a sandwich to boot. Possibly as a result of a third bottle of wine I’d just consumed, I failed in my attempt, spilling his papers around. More apologies, but at least I had my laptop, and spent about an hour doing mindnumbing work tasks before giving up and deciding to re-stash my laptop. 11E’s stuff was still there and I didn’t dare try to reverse the feat of earlier, so I managed to find a way to squeeze it next to the huge carryon next to me.
I listened to the ATC channel from most of the way near Denver all the way in to SFO. It was fun listening to the pilots all talking back and forth about the light turbulence and the best altitudes. I got briefly jealous of some other flight as I heard it going inbound to LAS but it’s not like I could do anything about it now. I enjoyed the view as we finally landed at SFO, marveling how it looks like you’re going to land in the water until the runway appears at the last moment. The flight arrived 30 minutes early, at the same gate my EasyUpdate text message told me my next flight would be departing from. I still decided to check the terminal screens as a backup, and got distracted by finding another flight back to IAD that hadn’t departed yet. I entertained the notion of flying back standby, weighing the options of sacrificing my carefully selected seat for an earlier trip long enough to walk all the way down the terminal to the new gate and hear them asking for volunteers to be bumped. Nevermind that! So I strolled all the way back to the gate at which I’d arrived, watching a flight load and depart for Seattle and listening to the one across the terminal leaving for LAS (again briefly entertaining the notion of trying to go there and go *home* instead of the 12+ hours of flying I still had ahead of me). Finally, as 30 minutes before my flight approached and there was nobody at my gate, I went to the monitor and found out I’d be leaving way back near where I’d already walked! Oops. Well, it’s not like I had anything else to do.
I figured my UG chances were better on the return flight since it was the red-eye and the A320 had more F seats. Alas, I still ended up #3 on the list but wasn’t too disappointed because I knew I’d be sleeping (or at least trying to) in a lovely bulkead seat with lots of legroom. In fact, the 6C seat on the A320 did have great legroom, and will be my favorite seat for trips in which I want to stay awake. Unfortunately it also has very hard armrests (containing trays, of course) which are a pain on which to rest one’s arms while trying to sleep. Lesson learned, and a different seat (or better selection of aircraft with more UG chances) are in the works next time I do this. Aided by some Sominex (I haven’t managed to figure out how to get Ambien yet) I slept through much of the flight and was surprisingly not overly groggy when we arrived back in IAD, with an hour to go before my final trip home.
I checked in finally, and had no problems now that I’d received the upgrade and had the instruments to pay for it. The comfortable F seat was perfect for light snoozing on the trip home. I was very happy to finally be headed a direction I wouldn’t end up reversing within a few hours, and I kept dozing off adding up how many EQM I’d just earned and how many more I would need. Alas, having paid for a good number of glasses of wine in the previous 12 hours, I ended up foregoing the free F booze and simply enjoyed some really great service keeping my coffee cup constantly full. And, it was now a new month so I got to enjoy a different in flight movie to boot! I eventually made it home and managed to last until 8pm before crashing and sleeping for 12 hours.
Was it worth it? Oh yes, I say as I fondle my EQM spreadsheet and plan to repeat the secret meeting again in two weeks. But alas… fares have gone up, and now I’m obsessed with chasing my cheap EQM lover all across the country. Oh where, oh where can she be?