Waiting for the race too. Forgot about Tree House of Horrors XX. Tweed is fine as long as you don't have the elbow patches and teach.

My last AVRO flight was somewhere around that 2006-2007 time period. The ARJ was quite a nice little ride especially up in the FC Cabin which as a NW PE, I got to see once or twice ....;)

The hotel itself is nicely kitted-out (like most Ws), just don't expect a big room. The building it is in is tiny, which restricts overall room size. Nice shower, though. I'm kinda surprised they chose a building with such a small footprint to put the hotel into. Small rooms in New York I get, as space is at a premium. In Minneapolis? Not so much...

ETA - Westin Edina Galleria is also very nice, but is a decent haul from the airport (and nowhere near the light rail line).

It is a shame that NW parked them. The were, and still are IMHO, quite a comfortable ride. I rode a couple last year to/from LCY on LH.

I hate the fall season of the Race. It is almost impossible to DVR thanks to football.

I just set it up to record for 2 hours extra :D

Thats my usual trick. still annoying!

One of the blessings of the west coast, football does not conflict with the simpsons.

Just booked a wee trip in November on AA to FRA and took advantage of the following promos they had:

What was the final cost?

I was wondering how many miles one got for purchasing the airfare ;)

Yeah, it is pretty good over at AA these days, I have to admit! I did the FRA run in the winter earlier in 2009 for about $425.00 via DFW and upgraded with SWUs. I guess you are going to choose the 25,000 RDMs and not take 4 SWUs for the elite reward program? I am still debating what to choose myself.

I do miss the Avros. They were a Mesaba standby for years and IIRC, the longest routes that they flew in the eastern US were MEM-LGA and MEM-EWR.

The FC seat pitch was probably about 40' or more and I understand that coach was very comfortable. I flew them dozens of times and never missed the upgrades because it seemed that there were 16 FC seats and only about 56 in coach, a ratio that we all could happily learn to live with.

The only beef that I ever heard about them was that they were a bit noisy, but that must have been behind the wing-mounted engines and I don't recall that there was much extra noise up front.

My laptop refuses to connect to the web despite having all good lights on my cable modem and my wifi router. I'm becoming much more familiar with Bolt than I really want to.

I opted for the mileage as AA points are one the high end of airline points, at least for me. One-way awards, the ability to access QF (big deal for me) as well as the ability to push them to HH at a 1:2 ratio make them very attractive. Plus I suspect that AA will run another double EQM promo next year, and if so, 6 VIPs + whatever domestic flying I do with them should get me back to EXP.

That said $425 is great -- how'd you get it? ^