Originally Posted by
ralfkrippner
Probably no miles for this charter.
Interesting thing. But for me 12 hrs in eco would be no fun and the prices for window seats are quite high IMO. So this is not for me - I would rather book a regular north-america flight that has a northerly routing like to YVR and enjoy the landscape there and at the destination. I admit that I will probably never see the north pole this way.
The flight is from Air Events, operated by AB. In 2006, when they started I gave them the idea to combine a Nort Pole flight with the observing of a total solar eclipse on August 1st 2008. Later they claimed this idea for themselves.
Here a link from this flight from Glen Schneider :
http://nicmosis.as.arizona.edu:8000/...8_EFLIGHT.html
I observed the eclipse on the ground so I made a flight on May 1st 2009. I bought two last minute tickets (window and seat next to window ) on ebay 4 days before the flight for altogether 930 Euros. I was in row 48 concerning the air events page you have to pay 2.888 Euros now !
In the mail that I got after the purchase they wrote that I should not talk about this price on the plane because the other passengers payed much more and will become angry. In the plane I confronted them with my mails from 2006 with the idea of a total solar eclipse flight....nice facial expression...:-)
Already in 2009 the windows were full of scratches and they still use the same planes. I like to fly with AB but the A330 are very old now and I think it's not worth the money because of the bad windows.
Concerning the miles : I got indeed some miles but only for an inner german flight because origin and destination were both in germany.
P.S. In 2003 I was on a total solar eclipse flight over Antarctica which started and ended in Melbourne. It was the longest domestic flight ever with 14 hours and 3 minutes gate to gate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rak5tka8N8