For the Love of Flying
 

Not sure if this has ever been touched upon, but I'm wondering how far you, fellow aviation enthusiast, have gone out of your way to fly a specific aircraft while already on an itinerary?

Here's an example: Last year I flew from KTM-BUD on QR. Instead of flying directly from Doha to Budapest, I flew around 2,000 extra miles from Doha to London so I could fly the Boeing 777-200LR + enjoy the lie flat seating. Would have loved to fly the 777-300ER, as I have yet to fly that beautiful plane, but the flight schedule was over the 24-hour layover conditions in Doha. We flew over Budapest on the way to London. The layover in London Heathrow was six hours and my luggage wasn't received in Budapest until late the next day.

Nothing that extreme...

I routinely will fly SAN-LAX/SFO-JFK instead of SAN-EWR for the business class product LAX/SFO-JFK. This probably adds another 5 hours of travel time between the connection, layover and extra driving time.

Last year, I flew SAN-DEN-NRT to catch the 787 DEN-NRT. This only added a few extra hours instead of the more traditional SAN-LAX/SFO-NRT.

Just did actually. I had a BA F award from BUD-RDU and instead of flying the offered BUD-LHR-IAD, DCA-RDU, I flew BUD-LHR-IAD-CLT-DFW-RDU so I could try AA's new A-319. Totally worth it too, just wish I'd earned miles on it :D