Welcome to next *DO trip report. I will not attempt to emulate KiwiFlyer's ruthless, detailed, and amazing efficiency at reporting the flights. I will however, try and bring some of my own color to this report. You may remember my first report, "Blood, Sex, and Jail a NW trip report."
Pre-trip.
I remember seeing the original version of this DO. There was something about a chartered A319 for the SAS (LH Lite) flyers. This was either not popular or too darn popular and it changed. Then the DO appeared in the community buzz forum and I signed up immediately.
The original DO was supposed to leave from EWR go to TLS via FRA. Talks were in the works for a chartered plane as large as a LH 346. That fell through, there was talk of a charted LH emm excuse me BD A330 or LH A320/A321. The airlines being airlines passed on additional guaranteed revenue and the powers that be charted the current Condor 753.
Now I am broke. I do not lead the glamorous life of being able to afford trips. Up until a month ago I was unemployed. Currently, I am still under employed since the time I was laid off from my former law firm in the summer of 2008. The charter pricing was going to tap out my budget for travel in 2009. But being the savy PWPer I wisely started throwing miles into my BD account. It would be the BD miles that would put me on the TATL flight.
Right after the DO dates were announced last April I logged on to the ANA tool and looked up reward flight. EWR-FRA had J available and FRA-JFK had F/J available. I grabbed J on the outbound and F on the return. Total cost 76,000 miles. YOU HEAR THAT CO~! 76,000 miles!
Of course I don't listen that well and LH informed the mods that EWR-FRA was not possible due to some sort of marathon in NYC. LH said we could have seats on LH405 JFK-FRA. Well I was not booked on LH405. The availability gods smiled on me and there was J availability on 405. I had previously called LH and assigned seats on both EWR-FRA and FRA-JFK. Now according to seatguru row 83 is the row to be in on a LH 744. The first agent said 83C not possible, but after using the hang up and call back method^tm, I was seated in 2H and 83C. I wanted 1B but the agent said in april when I called that, that seat was already taken. I personally prefer aisles as I have problems asking people to get up.
Fast forward to August. The price for the charter is set, and as much as I want to sit in J on the charter, I couldn't justify the price. I book the charter and specify an aisle in the hopes of being one of the first people to book insures it.
Now only two things remained. Getting to EWR and back and the hotels. At the time I agreed to the DO I was living in ATL. However, personal issues necessitated move. I moved to absolute furthest possible place from ATL, SEA. Getting from SEA to EWR while spending no money is a challenge. That being said a quick decision just after I got to Seattle landed me with $600.00 in DL/NW vouchers. I should write a book on the airline ticketing system. With the exception of J.Edward and ALCO there may not be a person who knows more about how airlines sell and fail to sell tickets.
BINGO.
I booked SEA-MSP-EWR//JFK-CVG-SEA. I have to overnight in JFK, but my partner in
Rolov has graciously offered to put me up for the night. But I digress.
Flights secured.
Nov 3rd
SEA-MSP was a 753 now an A320
MSP-EWR Compass E175
JFK-FRA "Party Flight" LH 744
Nov 5th
FRA-OSL-TLS-FRA DE 753
Nov 7th
FRA-JFK LH 744
Nov 8th
JFK-CVG DL CR9
CVG-SEA DL 738
Firsts
E175
DL 73X
DE period
LH period
International F
OSL, TLS, FRA
all routes are new.
For the widebody fans, this will be my 4th and 5th 744 flight, 2nd in J, 1st in F, and 2nd upperdeck.
Hotels
I cut a deal MNMag to split hotel costs. I was offered the floor in various rooms, but the deal was cut before then. So I am staying at the DO hotels.
Model.
In the DO thread the powers that be behind flightmemory.com (shameless commercial plug for which they are not paying me) mentioned that they had 2 models of the 753 in 1:100 scale for sale. I bought one and had it shipped to my place from Germany. You will be seeing a lot of that plane in this report.
So the index for this report is as follows.
1. This post.
2. SEA-MSP-EWR
3. The EWR-JFK party bus trip and lounge
4. The party flight.
5. The day after the party flight.
6. Oh my god its early, the charter flight and Airbus factory
7. The
eehiem party.
8. Pre-FRA-JFK, aka :rollpuck:/ualpuck and
ov get banned for life from the FRA FCT.
9. The good life in F.
10. One night in NYC.
11. The flight home.