New Member
 

Hello Everyone,

I've been lurking for the past few months trying to absorb everything this community of traveler's offers to someone who enjoys flying as much as I do. So far, I'm really impressed with FlyerTalk.com. Lots of information from a great group of people. I love it...

A little about me: I retired at the end of December 2009 the day after my 50th birthday. I was an IT Analyst. Great job, great career.

For the future - I am researching taking a Round the World trip in the next year or two.

I thoroughly enjoy watching Anthony Bourdain's: No Reservations. I like the way he approaches each country he visits, but his best trips seem to be when great meals and great friends get together in far away places on the planet. After reading many trip reports on FT, I see there are many people that love airports and planes. I think I could live in an airport, that's how much I love them!

So that's who I am and why I joined FlyerTalk.

New
 

Whilst I have been reading a number of forum posts with interest for some time I have just formally joined this site. I have been impressed with the 'intelligent' and helpful nature of the posts that I have read so far. This is certainly a contrast when compared with some other forums that I have been known to 'frequent' from time to time.

By way of introduction, I am an Australian living in Melbourne. I have spent 50 years in the rail industry and have been fortunate to spend quite some time in the last few years holidaying with my wife in Europe. This has encouraged an interest in flying so far as getting to/from Europe at a reasonable cost but also in reasonable comfort.

To the above end we have set ourselves three golden rules:

1 Never to enter the doors at Heathrow again.
2 Never to fly British again.
3 If we cannot go business at an acceptable price we don't go. Sorry QANTAS.

These rules stem from an earlier zoo class trip to Britain.

The last three trips we have been fortunate to get sufficiently discounted business class fares, firstly with QANTAS which was more or less 2 for the price of 1 to Frankfurt in 2009 and never to be repeated (?). QANTAS was good but the old 747 was getting tired and shabby.

Last year we went Thai/Austrian to Vienna for around the same price which was < half of the QANTAS fare at the time. We liked Thai and Austrian was 'Teutonically' professional as one may expect although the in flight entertainment was hardly state of the art in either case.

In all cases the seats were not 180 lie flat but at least you had room to move.

The only downside with Thai and Austrian was the cabin temperature was too high for our liking made worse by the lack of individual air vents on the 777 - an optional extra from Boeing, perhaps.

This is my first post even though I've been a member for some time. This is a great site- I've probably picked up $10k in monetary value from tips I read here. I just redeemed my millionth mile for free flights and I'm curious- is that exceptional, or just average for this group? My best score for a paid flight was $480 rt SFO-SYD 2 years ago when United was real hungry. Was going to use 80000 miles for a freebie but at 2 cents a mile for the 15000 miles rt the ticket almost paid for itself with mileage credit.

Hiya!
 

Hey y'all! I'm a brand new member and looking forward to really digging into all this forum has to offer.

I'm a freelance web developer so I take my work with me as I travel. For the past year and change I've been traveling around the United States and I'll be heading to Chicago this summer.

Starting in the fall I'll be embarking on a 15 month around the world adventure, this is the general plan I'm thinking:

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=NYC-IDO...+AKL-NYC&MS=bm

Many stops, many miles, and so I'm hoping this forum is going to be a wildly useful resource!

- Kevin

Howdy
 

Just a quick shout out. New here, just started flying every week 3 weeks ago. Do communications contract work and looks like I'll be flying out to Texas till at least September. Use Delta as it's the only carrier out of my local airport. Next closest airport has Delta, Continental, etc. Will use that one as well for some flights. So far I've flown from PIB to MEM to LBB and to Houston...I gotta learn the airport codes still so don't bash..hard. MEM is a connect flight hub. Already signed up for Delta Skymiles and with Continental. Stay at La Quinta's primarily and a couple of others. Still learning the benefits of ffm's and points, and such, etc. I just wish Delta would swap out their magazine weekly, lol, I know, I know, bring a book.

Welcome to FT, Barry1973! Glad to see you here. :)

We're going to move this over to the legendary Who We All Are thread where it will join those of thousands of your fellow FT'ers who have introduced themselves.

See you around the forums.

Hello everyone,

I already visited this site a fair amount of times thanks to Google, and today I decided to sign up.

At 19, I'm probably one of the younger members here. As my age may give away, I'm a student, I'm currently in my first year of economics at UGent.

Travel-wise, there's not much exiting going on over here, I'm probably one of the few members over here who is not a member of any FF program (yet). I do plan to join Aegean's Miles&Bonus at a later stage (to grab an easy *Gold). I have also never flown any long haul flights (although this too will change in the not too distant future).

Xander

The Terror of LAX
 

Hello Everyone :D

My husband and I are retired, and living in lovely Newcastle Australia.

One of my conditions for making the long haul to the US or Europe, was that we NEVER go through LAX again. But guess what. . . .we're flying United to SOF via LAX. Oh the horror!

I have two questions that I'd really, really appreciate some help with.

Neil (DH) has booked with United, it arrives at LAX, Terminal 7 at 10.18, we then fly out for SOF from Terminal 7 at 11.30. This seems awful tight to me - your thoughts please????

The second question is really dependent on you saying that the above is ok. Can someone tell us the step by step procedure for getting between these two flights? I mean do we go upstairs, down, take this door or that. . . . .

Thanks ever so much.

Von and Neil

Hi!

I'm the Randy of Randy and Carey. We live in San Antonio, Texas, where I'm semi-retired psychologist with 42 years with the Federal government. Carey still works for the Federal government as a director with the US Army Medical Command and Office of the Surgeon General.

We travel as much as we can but with Mrs. K working major vacations are pretty much limited to one a year. Our next adventure is three weeks in Europe next year wrapped around a 14-day cruise from Barcelona to Istanbul. Our other personal travel are short three to four day escapes to Las Vegas. Carey travels enough for her work to maintain advanced frequent flier status, mostly with American Airlines.

Thanks to a father who was a career Air Force officer and my own travels I've lived in England, Morocco, and Germany spending around 12 years outside of the US. I think I've visited all but about two or three states and have lived in eight states. Carey has done some travel outside of the US but we married after my globe trotting days so she's catching up with me as we try to visit some of my old favorite places and explore ones new to both of us.

Looking forward to learning from you all and sharing whatever limited knowledge or experience I can.

Randy

salutations
 

Just going to introduce myself here! I'm 26, UK-based, just finished my PhD and moving to the US (in T-3 months!) for my first postdoctoral job. I found my way over to FT after joining Travelhacking.org out of curiosity, having never collected an airmile in my life. A combination of skepticism, investigative googling and a few hours of obsessive reading led me to discover within about 1.2 days that there's nothing on travelhacking.org which isn't here in triplicate and for free. So naturally, I'm giving up my Travel Hacking membership and hanging out on the BA, AA and OW forums (the first of which categorically demonstrated the total pwn-ness of their collective wisdom in my inaugural newbie thread http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...ce-newbie.html). Happy to be here!

Greetings
 

Hello FT,

Like many others I've lurked for a little bit and learned a lot. I never knew how complex the network of miles/points/status really was until I discovered the site.

For now I fly for leisure, mainly occasional short hops, although I try to do one or two transcons a year. I don't rack up anywhere close to as many BIS miles as many on here and, as such, alternative ways of earning miles besides flying are something I'm keenly interested in.

This site has been extremely informative, and I'd like to thank the community for being so informative and helpful ^. I'm looking forward to use all your tips and tricks and start building up my program balances!

-mark3ymark

hello lovers of the sky!
 

I am a flight attendant for a regional airline, commonly known as delta connection and there is NOTHING that beats the beauty of a sunrise over the ocean, unless iit is over the mountains, or maybe over the plains. Oh Well, you see, there is nothing as beautiful as an uneventful flight, and we flight attendants are there to help insure that is EXACTLY what you get! ;)

Greetings, nice to be here.
Looking forward...
Hope to contribute and learn.
Thanks!!;)

Greetings
 

Last week I did a google search which came up with a posting by bealine in 2003 titled:
>> Tall Tales from the BA Concorde Fleet! <<
which incited me to join this DG.
As I used to fly AF Concorde in the early '80s as cabin crew, I was wondering if any of you were crew on BA Concorde or Braniff (1979 - 1980).
Those were the golden yrs when AF Concorde flew to 5 destinations (Rio, NY, Washington, Caracas & Mexico City). As from Nov 1st 1980, JFK became the only scheduled destination, marking the beginning of the end for AF Concorde operations unfortunately.
Although I'm British, I was born & raised in Brazil before being sent to boarding school in UK & have lived in Paris since 1972 (when my car broke down on holiday!). Then I joined AF in 1975 when they opened up their doors to candidates from the Common Market.
Here we have an association called APCOS for any Concorde-related staff (retired or not) & we meet up every yr in Jan for dinner, usually held at the Senate's restaurant.
A great opportunity to see some of my ex-colleagues who represent most of the group, & inevitably, share our wild stories. ;)
France does have a selection of Concorde books, 2 of which by an AF Concorde captain, Edouard Chemel, & there are a few tales in 1 of his books.
Best regards, Douglas Hallawell

>> Tall Tales from the BA Concorde Fleet!

Sorry, meant to say Nov 1st 1982 , not 1980.
JFK became the only scheduled destination for AF as from Nov 1st 1982.
BR, Douglas