dlombard

thks for starting this topic

I come from India so flying for the common man is more or less out of the question, unless it is on company dime

My first flight for the domestic Indian airlines in March 1995 between Bombay and Bangalore for my second job. Yes in those days they actually flew me up for the final interview.

I was such a novice, I lugged my check in baggage without knowing I should have first had them scanned at the entrace. I did not even know enough to use the free baggage carts(they are still free in India I believe)

After that flew 3 or 4 times on business in JetAirways (737s) and then twice on own money. At that time a domestic flight between Madras and Bombay was nearly 70% of my monthly take home pay. and then on the cheaper AirIndia domestic flights 2-3 times . Those flights were a hop schedule. For example a Bombay-Singapore flight may go - Bombay =>Madras->Singapore. The flight may reach Madras at an ungodly 4 a.m. but it may be 25% cheaper.

After that I moved to the US and began work as a contractor in IBM in the Research Triangle. This current job took me to China , twice to Singapore, Australia and almost exclusively on NorthWest. I managed to reach NW Silver thanks to these trips.

Looking forward to flying more.

I am really small fry compared to the EXP and PLTs in this forum.

But in the last one year since I read about flyertalk in a washingtonpost article , I have checked out this website at least once.

Two specific instances when Flyertalk helped me personally

KeithGuy gave me a very good tip on hotels in London which I used to great benefit back in March this year

Keithguy again - for a great transc RDU-SFO that came in just a tad over $200 back in February. I got upgraded to first on all 4 segments on that trip.

Did not mean this to be a paen to FT....

hsubbu