Three days ago I had just finished a plate of delicious Spicy Basil Chicken at Lin’s Asian Bistro in Fairbanks, Alaska. The check was presented and as always it was accompanied by a fortune cookie. Now I’ve eaten a lot of fortune cookies in my time, and most of them offer the usual pleasant platitudes such as “You will soon meet a new friend” or my personal favorite, “You will look as good in one hundred years as you do today thanks to recent advances in the field of taxidermy.”

On this day, the slip inside my cookie read as follows: “An airplane ride is soon in your future sending you to fun!” Of course, I just had to take a photo for posterity’s sake.



Happy Travels Ahead

This sweetly delivered prognostication hardly caught me by surprise since this trip has been in the planning stages for a good ten days now. Its timing however, coming just three days before my departure, gives me cause to revisit my faith in those fortune cookie predictions – at least the ones from Lin’s. Actually, if you’d asked me a month ago what I’d be doing in early March, I’d have told you that I expected to be down at Baylor Medical Center undergoing spinal fusion surgery. However, it was discovered shortly after I returned home from my most recent travels that I’d not be a candidate for any surgical procedure until at least June due to a supplement that I’d been taking (Krill Oil) which has an anticoagulant effect on blood. Thankfully I’m not in dire pain (yet), and putting surgery off until June or even September shouldn’t be that big of an issue. In the meantime, I’ve got a container half full of Vicodin that I rarely use, a bottle of Basil Hayden’s up on the shelf and a refrigerator full of beer. Those and the occasional Ibuprofen should tide me over nicely.

So – suddenly I’ve got this big block of unexpected free time until I return to work in early May. Well now, be it fifteen minutes or two months, free time is always great, isn’t it? This is especially true when you’ve got close to a million miles in your frequent flyer account calling ever so seductively out to you: “Use me!”

My first choice was Mauritius via Air France’s Business Class award. I’ve always wanted to visit Mauritius and/or the Seychelles Islands. Unfortunately, Business Class award space was not available in either direction. Perhaps the fact that March is spring break throughout much of America had something to do with it because I couldn’t find any Business Class seats on LAN down to my second choice, Brazil, either.

Well dang, I’m certainly not gonna use any of my hard earned miles on an Economy Class award to any of these places. After all, I’ve just spent the past month sat in Economy or U.S. style First Class. If ever there were a man ready for an upgrade to international caliber premium class services, it is I. Perhaps I’ll just have to go somewhere in First Class… (sigh…)

I’ve been a member of Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan frequent flyer program since 1984. As I’ve been living in Alaska since 1989, it’s made good sense for me to make Alaska’s Mileage Plan my preferred frequent flyer account. It’s a good program and for the most part I have been very pleased with every aspect of it. As a Super Duper Diamond Encrusted Kryptonite level flyer (MVPG75K), I enjoy oodles of benefits that make my everyday flying more efficient, comfortable and economic. If there is any downside to Alaska’s Mileage Plan however, it’s that international First Class award redemption is available only on British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Qantas and American.

Having flown International First Class on American between Los Angeles and London back in 2004, I won’t willingly do so again. American’s International First Class service is considered good amongst all except those who know better. Now if that sounds a bit pretentious and snobby, tough. I’ve logged almost two million miles in both domestic and international First Class and I’m here to tell you that the US carriers have got a long way to go before they even begin to approach the strata occupied by the likes of Singapore, Cathay Pacific, Swiss and a handful of other fine carriers.

I’d be more than willing to fly Qantas’ excellent First Class anywhere. The problem is that in ten years of casual checking I have never come across even a single First Class seat offered via Alaska’s Mileage Plan. And, as I recently discovered, even Business Class seats can be extremely difficult to come by and are practically impossible to book on short notice.

British Airways offers a superb First Class product most of the time. I’ve cashed in a total of 900,000 miles worth of First Class award travel with them since 2002 and for the most part I’ve been exceptionally pleased. I would love to check out BA’s new First Class cabins as well as spend a proper amount of time in the fabulous new Concorde Room in Terminal 5. The last time I was there was in 2008, only four days after the facility had opened. As many of you may recall, BA had a rough go of it during its first week or so at T-5. My visit to the new Concorde Room came to an ignominious end when sewage backed up into the lounge’s kitchen area and forced us to beat a hasty retreat down to the domestic Business Class lounge. But I digress…

As much as I’d love to fly with British Airways again, the unreasonably high fuel surcharges and other taxes imposed on award travel with BA have simply made doing so untenable to a cost conscious fellow such as I. An agent at Alaska’s Partner Desk recently told me of a couple who’d booked a pair of BA First awards from the U.S. to Cape Town and were assessed over $1000.00 in taxes.

So that leaves Cathay Pacific. Now Cathay is hardly a consolation prize – after all Cathay’s First Class service is generally regarded as being amongst the top five services in the world. The only downside to booking a First Class award on Cathay is that the destinations where First Class is offered are limited. From North America I can fly to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore or Johannesburg. The total mileage redemption is the same for each of these destinations – 140,000 miles. Since I’ve already visited each of these cities in years past, my primary concern now goes toward getting the most bang for my First Class award redemption.

Where once my primary focus was on visiting a new destination, it now has become flying to wherever allows me the most time aloft. What an interesting turn of events and one I might add that is not unfamiliar amongst brethren in our select community here. Keep in mind we’re talking about Cathay Pacific’s First Class, not some rinky-dink Business Class product. Tokyo and Singapore are only about four hours from Hong Kong while South Africa is twelve hours distant. All but the most irredeemably pragmatic old farts would surely have to agree that flying long distances in First Class aboard an airline of Cathay Pacific’s caliber must certainly rank as one of life’s great pleasures, right up there with good sex, good steak, good bourbon and good whatever it is that rocks your world. So what if I’ve been to South Africa each of the past two years? I’d fly to North Dakota in the dead of winter and find a way to enjoy it if it meant I were able to revel in a combined sixteen extra hours of Cathay Pacific’s First Class. Oh yeah… I got it bad…

So it is that I am once again headed off to South Africa in style – aboard Cathay Pacific’s First Class. While I certainly have no complaint with my situation, it’s entirely possible that some of you may not be so enamored of reading yet another trip report on the subject. I suspect this is especially true for those FlyerTalkers who prefer the quick and easy gratification derived from a photo or video report as opposed to a long, boring written report. This might also be true for those under the age of say, 25, of whom I have perhaps four fans. One can hardly blame them as my style of writing and reminiscing on old flights from bygone days is probably better suited to those who are old enough to personally relate to some of my ramblings, most of which are as entertaining to FlyerTalk’s younger readers as a thesis on emerging wheat harvesting technologies in Central Saskatchewan.

Additionally, this is the third straight year I’ve reported on Cathay Pacific’s First Class – each time to South Africa. Boring… And, to be sure, there have also been quite a few other well written or photographed trip reports covering flights aboard Cathay’s First or Business Class over the past three months. Even as I sit here guzzling beer and pecking away, I can just hear the catcalls and cries of anguish out there: “Nooooo! Not another boring trip report on Cathay Pacific’s First Class service from Seat 2A!” I’m even picturing the scene from Young Frankenstein where the townspeople and their torches storm the castle. Good thing my lair is as yet undiscovered…

Through it all I remain irredeemably unrepentant. Any of y’all who can't stomach yet another report on Cathay Pacific's First Class need to suck it up or go hit the back button and find a different report. As for those of you who do want to fly to Africa with me - go fetch yourselves a nice drink and settle in for the ride. Alrighty then – enough palaver! Let’s get this trip on the runway!