Hmmm...The folks over on UA didn't seem to mind or notice that I was taking pictures on final into LAX the other day :cool:

You seatmates didn't think your plane was going to crash? And no one called 911 (after the plane landed, that is) to have you arrested? :p

Am I the only one who was unnerved by this statement? Good God. I had to go on a two day bender just to get over it.

Phew, it was an interesting flight...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/C...124Z/KIAH/KDFW

Before take off, the captain told us we will detour over San Antonio to avoid the nasty storm, but didn't tell us until about an hour after take off that we actually detoured over Corpus Christi and were flying above San Antonio at that point...

Well damn, you about had yourself a tour of South Texas.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) BlackBerry8100/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/100)

I've done IAH-DAL by detouring around storms by flying over Corpus Christi, then way to the west of Austin, then up to Abilene' then approaching DAL from the Wichita Falls area.

Flight time - just under 2 hours.

The Emirates lounge at LGW is nice! Full breakfast (sausage, eggs, waffles, omelets, fresh fruit, etc.), wonderful staff (they offered to give me a tour of the lounge as it was my first time here) and even ottomans so you can put your feet up (the little things!). CO should take some notes! :)

The clientele are a bit of a contrast to some PClub visitors as well. Let's just say I feel a bit under dressed because I am wearing a nice pair of jeans.

Kinda wish I had made the trip now...

Thank goodness I got my four beverage certificates over the weekend. That ought to get me most of the way through my upcoming IAH-LAX run in whY. 4/8 So far in 2008 for EUAs. :rolleyes:

Geez, that bites!

I've booked what very well may be my first missed upgrades of 2008 — ATL-EWR-DTW, all on the 735, on a L fare.

I'm at the ATL PC now. I don't know what was going on in Atlanta this weekend, but OMG, the security line was the worst I've ever seen. Anywhere. It was so long they had quit enforcing the first class/elite line, which was shorter than the main line, but still a 45 minute wait. The main line on the Terminal North side wrapped completely around the baggage claim area, and was probably a 60-90 minute wait. I've never seen it this bad here at this time on Monday morning.

And I found out this weekend that I'm most definitely moving to Atlanta later this year, so I guess I better get used to seeing this airport a lot more often.

When I was in MSY yesterday, all DL flights into ATL were delayed by 5+ hours, due to a complete ground stop there (terrible weather). I think loads of people who were scheduled to connect through ATL yesterday missed their flights.

Ah, that might explain it. The weather here yesterday afternoon did get pretty awful for a while. We were out looking for condos in the middle of it. Not fun.

Pointless Penalty Box Survey Time
 

It's that time again. How are your Loyalty Program balances faring in 2008? Are you hoarding or spending like mad? If you're hoarding, why so; if spending, on what?

Personally, I'm hoarding for a Summer 2009 Honeymoon (else I would have blown through all of these points rather quickly, like any sane FTer). Hopefully this strategy leaves me with enough points to spend one night at a Category 27 Airport Four Points Property after the 2009 category changes go into effect ;)

Cumulative Points Balances:

CO: 387,000 (just a few more to go until I have enough for 2x RTW in Biz).
BD: 33,000 (Essentially, my FF "Checking Account")
SPG: 160,000
HHonors: 20,000
Amex: 40,000

Right now I'm hoarding for a Honeymoon as well (popping the question on Saturday ^).

My balances aren't so great though as I didn't travel much at the end of 2007 and still haven't flown this year.

Now that I'm pretty focused on the Cook Islands, the CO miles don't really matter.

Little bit of both. I cashed in 100K OnePass miles earlier this year for a pair of Y seats to Europe over the summer. We got standard seats for flights on the dates we needed/wanted them for NYC-IST//IST-LON//LON-NYC for 50K using the stop-over option on the reward. Considering the tickets are ~$1500 retail that's pretty good value, even with the ~$200 in taxes I'm paying on each one (~2cpm, even with the lost earning potential). I'm also probably going to cash in a fair number of my HH points on the trip, even though the hotel is a Cat 5 (150K points for 6 nights) versus the ~$200/night that it is going for right now. But since I'm jobless right now spending points is definitely more my play than spending cash.

That being said, I've managed to rack up ~75K BD points in the past 3 months without trying too hard (and I think they owe me more, but I can't figure out how they're actually calculated).

Hopefully I get the job situation figured out soon and the paid travel returns with it. Otherwise I'm in serious danger of a very, very, very long drop from Platinum to nothing this year. Of course, I'm going to be in trouble when UA and CO merge since I'll have two *A accounts to deal with, but that's a whole different problem.