Thank you all for your kind reviews.

Some responses :

do all 340's use the same engines?

The A340-200 and A340-300 both use the CFM56 engine that makes the airframe horribly underpowered. The A340-500 and A340-600 use the RR Trent engine while is much better though.

For those of us that don't know of your troubles with the INS, could you post a brief summary?

Please email me privately and I will be glad to share the information with you, but I am not comfortable posting the details on a public forum.

You seem to have more than your share of in-flight service problems... or do you only write a trip report when you have one?

More of the latter than the former I suspect. I probably write trip reports about 30% of my travels. No one cares to read about routine travel to boring places for meetings, etc..

Are you still declining all upgrades as a policy?

No. I quit that policy back on September 15, 2001. Life is too short to fly only in coach. That said, I do enjoy the coach experience immensely so upgrades are not a big deal to me. Sometimes I will decline them for no particular reason, just for old times sake!