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I'm a physician and travel within the U.S. several times a year for conferences and to visit family. A friend revolutionized my ideas of travel when she used miles and points to fund her residency interview season, when I spent 5k. Why create a budget when you can fly on miles? I'm here to learn from the experts.
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Originally Posted by debidovey
(Post 29004405)
Thought Id introduce myself. I am wife to mdovenmuehler here and am usually the quiet one :). What a great community here, I know for a fact we have spent plenty of time roaming the forums for help, tips and info regarding my husbands point habits and adventures. However a lot of the info we have found was super useful in our daily travels, vacations and good life tips in general. Glad to finally be onboard and I will be doing the Secret Santa as well this year :)
Originally Posted by JoelThomas
(Post 29028593)
Hey everyone.
My name is Joel. For the past 5 years, I've worked as an analyst at a community bank in southern Michigan after graduating with a degree in mathematics.
Originally Posted by Veiled
(Post 29048892)
I'm a physician and travel within the U.S. several times a year for conferences and to visit family. A friend revolutionized my ideas of travel when she used miles and points to fund her residency interview season, when I spent 5k. Why create a budget when you can fly on miles? I'm here to learn from the experts.
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Originally Posted by JY1024
(Post 29049261)
You've certainly found a like-minded crowd. Even when I go out to lunch with coworkers, if I hear a plane overhead, I still immediately point upwards and exclaim "Ooooh - plane!" like a 5-year old. :p
It's always dangerous riding in a car that I'm driving past an airport. I get distracted even with a little Cessna taking off/landing/taxiing/even just parked outside. |
Hi All
Firstly i say thanks for a wonderful, informative and very enjoyable site i came on the site looking for some answers and found a whole new world of opportunity. I never really thought about air travel as a hobby, but have always enjoyed travel either by air, train or sea but with uk rail be as expensive as it these days flying is becoming much more attractive proposition. I am not an aviation enthusiast as such, although i do work G.E Aviation, but there is not much call for air travel in my current post and GE is really clamping down on travel as video conferencing is widely available. |
Hello Everyone
Hello Everyone,
I am a newbie here. I am a professional blogger. I love to write blogs on technology, finance and fashion. |
Welcome [MENTION=874011]Veiled[/MENTION] - and hope you'll join our FlyerTalk team on Kiva as well! :) |
Hey everyone!
I have been more of a lurker since I joined FlyerTalk but have made some attempts at getting more active, with the biggest step taking part in the Secret Santa this year. I have been traveling since I was a kid and my family says I have been fascinated by planes since I first saw one! Most of my travel is leisure, but in recent years I have been attending conferences for work, so naturally I choose the furthest conference to maximize miles! When I am not planning a vacation or researching a destination, I am working as an Assistant Operations Coordinator for a mobile health care agency in NJ. We run units with EMTs, paramedics, and nurses as well as a dispatch center. I started out as a volunteer EMT in high school and had a failed attempt at college and became a paramedic at 22 while slowly working on the college degree which I finished two years ago at 30! The only bad part about traveling is leaving my Bloodhound and Treeing Walker Coonhound behind! -Vinnie |
I am a true flying dutchman. 40 years old and father of 2 sons who are already almost taller then I am. As a kid my parents flew me around the globe to show so many wonderful places. And as a natural history filmmaker I continue flying around the same globe. I live in a little town near Amsterdam and love living in the Netherlands. KLM or partners will bring me where I need to be almost always. I love planes and used to, as a kid, always talk myself into cockpits. I have accumulated so many miles I actually can not spend them all so now I treat friends and relatives on shared holidays. I am almost done with my second collection of KLM houses and have decided to give away any 3th one I get.
It is sad the fokkers and soon the 747's will leave KLM as I love these old planes. Boring times are ahead on airports around the globe. KLM is my blue bird back home in places far away. The only plane I have never flown on is an A340-600 and still not regret paying a lot of money to catch one of the last Concorde flights. My favourite flight was with the PH-PBY including a few water landings. |
Hey guys,
Long time lurker and close to 4m flier here. united 1k, alaska mvpg, turkish e+. SO calls the site flyersquawk as i read it too much. Good to finally cross over and start posting. |
Originally Posted by mdbe
(Post 29091526)
Hey guys,
Long time lurker and close to 4m flier here. united 1k, alaska mvpg, turkish e+. SO calls the site flyersquawk as i read it too much. Good to finally cross over and start posting. Interesting to see who everyone is on FT. I think most are either higher income or in professions that allow them company/business-paid travel/miles to rack up that many miles!!! |
Hi & Happy New Year to all from new member in Italy !!
Hello and Happy 2018 to all from Italy!
What a beautiful day to join Flyertalk after almost 10years of reading it daily!:) Well, let's introduce myself: I'm a 28 y.o. man from Milano Italy, actually I am single but crossing the fingers for a good year to meet someone interesting :p I love travelling and I've a particular interest in Hotels and planes (I worked as flight attendant for a while). In the past years I was elite level in several programs, due to a lot of trips for my job, such as IHG Plat Royal Ambassador (amazing suites at IC Hotels (-:), Hhonors Diamond, SPG Platinum and some others... At the moment, since my travels are just for leisure, I am Hilton Gold and Best Western Diamond Select...but I promise to do better this year (-: I am here to share my travel experiences with you, to meet new people all around the world, to improve my English skills (sorry, you know, I'm Italian...please let me know my mistakes...) and maybe to show you around Milan when in stop-over in my area (-: I have been in a lot of European Hiltons and Sheratons, and overseas I have been just to Boston and Chicago. Please be free to write me, I hope to have a lot of fun here! Happy festive season! |
Hi everyone, I'm a 30 year old male living in Frankfurt, Germany and originally from Düsseldorf.
I work in professional sports and at the beginning of last year I moved into an internationally focused role, hence I now have a lot of travel and a personal interest in doing it right. Being based in Frankfurt in a company with a relatively liberal travel policy is a blessing for me, as our general MO for flight bookings is based on the way our senior execs pick their flights: "Find me the best connection and make sure it's Lufthansa!" We have an in-company travel office but we're generally free to book our own travel and have it reimbursed, and since that usually gets me points AND saves money for the company (which I'm not actually sure our travel office considered to be an objective), I've been doing more and more of that recently. I'm a LH Senator and a Hilton Gold member. I did used to be a Hilton Diamond, and that was actually what started my interest in optimizing my travel and points: I took enough trains to get Deutsche Bahn Comfort status, which I found I could match to Best Western Platinum, which I found Hilton would be willing to match to Diamond, which got me good rates on nice hotels to go visit soccer games with my girlfriend, not to mention free breakfasts and suite upgrades. To this day I've never stayed at a Best Western... Other than that: My mother is American and my father is German, so air travel was always a big part of our lives as kids. Growing up in Düsseldorf we lived about 15 minutes from the airport, a great source of pride to everyone from Düsseldorf since it's the only thing we definitely do better than Cologne :D Dad was a management consultant, so Friday nights were spent reading teletext to tell our mom when his flight was coming in. His work meant there was always a yellow booklet with LH flight connections on his desk, almost always a lounge to visit before flights (back in the day when Senators could expect to take their whole family in, and "rejection" in that respect meant being sent to the Business Lounge), and even an automatic FTL card for me all through high school and college. As kids I remember getting a little plush airplane on Swissair, eating McDonalds happy meals for kids on United, using my first personal IFE system on LTU (a bulky walkman-like device with movies on Super-8-type tapes, around 1999), and my parents throwing a fit when our seats at check-in would turn out to be "ideal for families with kids" (meaning: in the last few rows near the smokers!). I also recall my sister and I getting to see at least one Lufthansa cockpit from the inside. I was certainly lucky to experience as much as I did as a kid, though I will always remember one trip I didn't get to go along on: British Airways LHR to JFK on Concorde. I was envious then and I still am now! :) |
I literally just joined tonight and frankly I'm very excited about being apart of a community that is as passionate about this 'art' as I am!! I am a 21-year old German/Dutch male, I'm originally from Bethesda, Maryland and I'm currently residing in the Bay Area. I currently am not in college right now as I am focusing on work, which is as a host at a high-class restaurant, and on building up my YouTube channel which should be set to debut in the next few months. I am a freelance music journalist, began writing music reviews sophomore year of high school around 2015, and then transitioned onwards into now beginning a vlog that will cover the live side of music! Essentially going across the United States for music festivals, concerts, artist tours, and hopefully do this around the world as well! The goal of the vlog is basically document and capture these amazing live experiences for all music fans, for those who already went to relive the memory, or for the music fan who cannot attend but still demands a taste of what it is like there in that specific environment. I've been meeting artists that I've looked up to since I was 16, which have included Camila Cabello, Fifth Harmony, Logic, and Daya to name a few. Traveling is absolutely a critical part in this vlog that I intend to start, and that's a big reason why I've been investing so much time into learning and beginning my journey from being a beginner in being a frequent flier! I am currently an Alaska Mileage Plan member and only have been since 2016, I hold the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Credit Card as well and that is currently the only mileage program that I'm investing myself towards because I feel it's probably best for me in terms of where I am geographically. I'm not any sort of elite status right now, and I'm hoping that will change this year! I am also very thrilled about the numerous airline partners Alaska is with, such as Condor and Emirates! I will be doing a SFO>JFK, EWR>SFO Mileage run with Alaska once a month beginning in April ($220.99 round-trip) to jumpstart the journey, and I'm looking forward to honestly doing that. I'm also trying to maximize the amount of points I earn for award travel by also making my Alaska credit card my primary, alongside using Rocketmiles for hotel purposes as well, and convincing others to join my mini-vacations with me! They get to have fun, but their splitting with expenses plays a major part in helping me acquire the maximum amount of miles I want for award travel as well! Cheaper on me, but I'm earning a bunch of miles in the process that helps for award travel! I'm still learning so much more about the Alaska loyalty program and just the 'art' of frequent travel + mileage runs in general, because the goal for me is to at least get to MVP Gold status by the end of 2018. I have a big spring break trip planned for March 26th-29th in Vegas, but I'm holding off on airfares since the flights back to SFO on Alaska went to $349 one-way, which seem ridiculous because it was only $56 not too long ago. I'd only hope that's just because it's the holiday weekend. Any tips and advice from you guys would help me so much go towards my goal of achieving MVP Gold at the cheapest cost possible, because I want to experience what it is like to be able to redeem miles for a business-class and/or first-class flight! I've yet to taste those classes, and I have a great feeling I will be doing so this year! Feel free to message me, and I'm thrilled to be apart of this community. |
Long-time lurker but finally decided to create an account. I'm an economist that has been living in Rwanda for the last 2 years. I've always been fascinated with air miles and travelling, particularly travelling to strange destinations. My greatest travelling achievement so far has been having visited over 50 countries, including North Korea and Somaliland. Flying around Africa has been quite complicated as there are not many routes (you always end up with layovers in ADD or NBO) and have found it hard to acquire miles effectively. But I will be moving to the US for graduate school later this year and I hope I can learn from all the knowledge in this forum to make the best use of my miles.
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I'm a 24 year old male consultant based in Dallas. I travel most weeks for work, and flying, miles, points, etc. has quickly become a passion for me. I absolutely love this site. I don't post much, but appreciate all the cool stuff on this site.
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Travel Lover Here
I believe every person must travel. Whether is a nearby town, another region of your own country, or another destination, in a country far far away! Travelling adds memories to life so I am here to explore such travel experiences and share mine.
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Then you have found the right place, with the added wrinkle that most (although certainly not all) of us here like to use miles and points to do at least some of the travel. :)
Welcome to FT! :cool: |
INTRO
I just became Global for Life on UA. Live in Chicago area. Have been lurker but not really involved. 72 recent widower can afford to, but fear retirement. Just want to introduce myself.
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Long time lurker, medium time member, and just started posting :)
Live in London and travel pretty much every other week. Sometimes local, sometimes global... Previously lived in New York, Bangkok and Singapore. Have held BA Gold, Delta Platinum and Aegean Gold, though not all at the same time :P Been through the hotel memberships too.. |
Hi everyone,
I am also a longtime lurker and decided to join in ;).. My origin is Turkish and I live in Germany, like to travel and do that a lot :).. My purpose is to find help and give help, esp. with TK and travelling within Germany/Turkey.. |
Hello fellow FTers,
after some years lurking and just reading I registered today :) I am in my thirties, female and living in Berlin, Germany. As my job does not recquire me to travel, I am playing the miles-and-points game on a private level, which means paying for every flight, hotel stay or crazy mileage run. It is fun, it's my hobby and I love it. I like spending time at airports, visiting lounges and just experiencing every part of my journey. My most loved part of this world is Kaua'i and I try to get back to the Islands at least every year or two with so much of the world left to see and discover. On my bucketlist are still so many countries and places...and sooo little time! :D I've been loyal to Air Berlin for the last years and one of the many who has lost much miles and flights when they filed for insolvency. Now I am still a little bit heartbroken and just about to become BA Silver. Compared to most of you, this feels like a rookie-status but there's more travel planned ahead and slowly and steady I am getting there. :) Speaking of loyalty schemes, I haven't yet quite managed to acquire some kind of hotel status as I am often staying in different chains and haven't looked into hotel loyalty programs that much. This is one thing I'd like to change in the future. Looking forward to being a part of this great community! |
Hi Raijin - Welcome to the "posting" experience. Having spent "some years" "lurking and just reading" - you should have a good idea how this stuff works. Sorry to hear of your bad Air Berlin experience. I have bad-mouthed them on different online site for a few years. Was not surprised to see them go BK.
What with the way the airlines change their standards and rules for frequent flyers - we no longer use any airline credit cards. We put all purchases(of any kind) on our Capital One Credit card, where we get 2 miles for every dollar charged. This adds up quickly and can then be used to erase from our credit card statement any airfare, car rentals, hotels, etc. Before a trip, we find and book the best deals and charge them to this card. We recently flew to Germany on SAS. After returning home (USA) and getting our credit card statement - we erased about 900 (one ticket cost) from our statement. If you charge $50000 - you get 100000 miles. With this, you can erase $1000 from your credit card bill. No more being at the mercy of the airlines' changing requirements for us! Happy Travels! :-) |
Originally Posted by Raijin
(Post 30108865)
Hello fellow FTers,
after some years lurking and just reading I registered today :) I am in my thirties, female and living in Berlin, Germany. As my job does not recquire me to travel, I am playing the miles-and-points game on a private level, which means paying for every flight, hotel stay or crazy mileage run. It is fun, it's my hobby and I love it. I like spending time at airports, visiting lounges and just experiencing every part of my journey. My most loved part of this world is Kaua'i and I try to get back to the Islands at least every year or two with so much of the world left to see and discover. On my bucketlist are still so many countries and places...and sooo little time! :D I've been loyal to Air Berlin for the last years and one of the many who has lost much miles and flights when they filed for insolvency. Now I am still a little bit heartbroken and just about to become BA Silver. Compared to most of you, this feels like a rookie-status but there's more travel planned ahead and slowly and steady I am getting there. :) Speaking of loyalty schemes, I haven't yet quite managed to acquire some kind of hotel status as I am often staying in different chains and haven't looked into hotel loyalty programs that much. This is one thing I'd like to change in the future. Looking forward to being a part of this great community! Don’f worry too much about the status. It is a fun game to play, until it isn’t. :) |
Thank you both for the warm welcome! :)
[MENTION=687103]wilful[/MENTION]: Well I wasn't fast enough to burn my miles, which was unlucky. Coming from the German capital, I think what made AB special to me (and many fellow Berliners), was that their attitude and work resembled a lot what we experience everyday living here (Airport BER anyone?). It was maybe not the most fanciest product, it lacked succesful planning and strategy and the flights were often late or chaotic in the end, but the FAs and ground staff had that kind of "Berliner Schnauze", charming and still cheeky, that we like. TL;DR It was like a part of my chaotic hometown, that's what makes me miss AB. [MENTION=648695]Calchas[/MENTION]: Thank you :) For the time being I am happy to being able to afford this kind of hobby. As long as it's like this and as long as I have fun doing it, it's great. Going on a small MR tonight and hopefully I can contribute to the CE Dining Thread. :) |
Welcome to FT. I, too, am not a business traveller, and never was, so I know what it's like to 'pay' for your status. Over the years, since retirement from a paying job, I have been lucky enough to travel the skies with an incredible number of people who work an amazing number of occupations. Now and then, it's a person who is going to a meeting, but overall, power travelers; that's the same feeling I get from hearing FT tales. Enjoy the ride!
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Hello,
I came across this forum only a month ago and decided to join. I live in Southern California, OC, I do travel within my state and internationally mostly to Estonia and Russia. I prefer alternative accommodations found through sites like AirBnb, VRBO, etc. I like hiking, skiing, winsurfing, cycling. I have a background of working as a software engineer and I am a strong Blockchain and Crypto Currency enthusiast. Hope to to find other crypto aware people in this community :) |
Hi Everyone,
I'm just a guy who enjoys travel. Well, I like destinations, not travel. Having to jump into a pressurized tube and scream across the skies at 1000 km/h is just a necessary evil. :p This site has helped me a lot in the past, but I did not decide to join the discussion until today. I look forward to joining in the discussion with all of you! |
Hi All,
I'm Javier and I'm from Uruguay, in South America, a bad place if you want to get benefits from credit cards...as you just have LATAM and AA cards and not many businesses offer miles... I consider myself as a well-traveled person, having been to 30 countries so far, adding one more at the end of this month :) Always travel in Economy, just made upgrades in three occasions, one with Scoot Airlines and one with LATAM (I really hate this company for reasons that will explain in another post seeking for help, but long story short, there was a metallic safety pin INSIDE my muffin :confused: ) Hope to contribute as much as I can with the fellow posters. Cheers, Javier |
Hello people,
It's been a while since I was here as a noob, and I'm still a noob here haha! I'm John, 28 years old, deaf living in Austin. I have ConnectMiles (from CopaAirlines which I used mainly for Star Alliance, including United which is my go-to for ConnectMiles), Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan (for American flights and other Airlines), IHG Reward Club (I didn't use it much because I used Hotwire for hotel searches), Amtrak (same since rail isn't excellent in Texas unlike Northeast/DC where I was living before), and Greyhound (I just started the rewards program this month, but like Amtrak and IHG, perhaps not much of a use for it unless it's intra-state travel inside Texas). I'm just looking forward to start traveling just for sporting events regularly starting next year after a successful trial run I did last December when I went to Ottawa for a weekend (NHL 100 Classic between Montreal and Ottawa at TD Place), and I fly basic/economy, but hopefully by reading some of the topics here, I can pick up some there and there especially when I'm planning some trips for 2019 like a weekend in Denver for MLR (Major League Rugby) and a trip to Japan for Rugby World Cup 2019 (I have the Hopper app which I'm watching closely for any good deals from ABIA anywhere). Warm Regards, John |
Hello everyone,
I've been reading for a little while and finally decided to post. I'm a Vegas local, have worked in hospitality for quite sometime and am currently working for an OTA after working third party for a large credit card company as a TA. I love to travel. Looking to steer most of my free agent travel over to WN in order to get CP this next year (yeah, Hawaii!). Love reading all the stories and tips from everyone. - Holly Edit: Chose the username because I am not loyal to any one specific airline.. Have little bits of miles here and there. |
Hi all! Longtime lurker, first time member.
I'm a native New Yorker who now splits her time between NYC and Toronto. Obviously, that means I travel the EWR-YTZ Porter route a lot, but I also fly JFK-SJC/SFO several times per year for work, along with the occasional domestic Canadian route and an annual pilgrimage to somewhere warm. And with my parents having just retired to Georgia, I expect to be spending a lot more time in ATL! Outside of traveling, I'm a writer by trade who loves eating carbs, doing ballet, and cleaning my apartments. My pet peeves are slow walkers and people who call Toronto the "6ix." |
Not new, not old or seasoned. Had status, lost status, now I have no status. I come here for tips and tricks since I still gotta travel.
I'm based out of IAD/DCA/BWI, outside of traveling I am a Corporate FP&A by trade. |
Based on PHX...I keep reading/listening to see if there is anything new in the frequent flyer world. I’ve got a companion pass on SWA and they keep this seat open for me on most every flight so I give them 100% of my 80 flights a year. BOS, Oregon, Vegas, SFO this month. Except Maui...American gets that in September. Enjoying my first year of Marriott Ambassador service too. https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...939775efc.jpeg This is my seat on Southwest on most every flight |
Hello everyone I come from China, I just wanna say hi
hi everyone, I come from China and I am a loyalty program fan. I got Marriott pp and Hilton gold just as my profile. Also got some status of local brand in China .
I travel to America a lot and there’s pretty different than China in either benefit and conditions of the properties. Anyway, I hope I can know someone here and learning new things with each other. |
Originally Posted by zc1018
(Post 30711175)
hi everyone, I come from China and I am a loyalty program fan. I got Marriott pp and Hilton gold just as my profile. Also got some status of local brand in China .
I travel to America a lot and there’s pretty different than China in either benefit and conditions of the properties. Anyway, I hope I can know someone here and learning new things with each other. |
Originally Posted by yyznomad
(Post 30711188)
With this being your first post, Welcome to FT (I guess you've been lurking for a bit up to this point). :)
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Originally Posted by zc1018
(Post 30711204)
Yes! almost a year I guess. It's good to be here, happy to see the same kind of people on the other side of the earth.
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Originally Posted by yyznomad
(Post 30711220)
Lol - we're not really on the other side of the earth... some of us travel to your side of the earth often... and many of us also live on your side. :D
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Welcome to FT!! Glad you decided to join us.
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Originally Posted by penlin
(Post 30711457)
Welcome to FT!! Glad you decided to join us.
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