Sep 272014
 

I woke up early. Way too early. I somehow managed a shower and managed to cram things into my bag. I found the elevator. I tried to speak French to the check out people. “Aloha, j’voudrais faire le chcekout.” Um, non. Coffee. Stat. Medical need.

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Hawaii Coffee Company was closed. I mean, yeah, it is 4:30am, but does the Geneva Convention on torture not apply here? They are denying treatment to someone with a serious medical condition. I’m calling Obama!

Quick…and chatty…taxi to the airport. Great thing about 4am is it’s 10am in DC, and friends back home were pinging me to make sure I was still alive and functional, and about to appear in Vegas for a bachelor party. Oh that. Yes, because I hadn’t put my body through enough in the last 5-6 days. There’s a bachelor party to do.

Got to HNL, Pre Check was closed, but went through the elite line with a special pass that meant I didn’t have to take shoes off or take laptop out, so colour me a happy camper. Less than 5 minutes from taxi through security – can’t beat the aloha. DO YOU HEAR THAT DULLES?  HUH?!

Went to Starbucks in search of emergency supplies…and there was a line. A very long line. Filled with what appeared to be half of America’s armed forces. I’ve never minded a line so little.. I bought coffee. I supported the troops.  Yeah…moving on…

Got to the gate, and it was time to board!

United Airlines flight 72
Honolulu, Hawaii (HNL) to San Francisco, California (SFO)
Depart 6:28, Arrive 14:32, Flight Time 5:04
Boeing 767-400ER, Registration N76054, Manufactured 2000, Seat 1D

Nothing like a glass of bubbly Jeff…I mean, it’s grape juice…to wake you up!

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So what was for breakfast?  Well, there was fruit, which was decent and semi-fresh. There was grape juice with bubbles, which was also pretty good. The carb roll was good for 2 bites as usual until I felt the need for an emergency dental appointment. Then, the main. The seasoned hockey puck, I mean sausage, was a total no-go as usual. The potatoes…well I’m not sure what’s in them…it could be crack or heroin, but I inhaled them. The eggs? Flavourless as usual, but I kept telling myself they might contain large amounts of protein, so forced them down. The tomato…well, I ate it because it was colour. The mean was far too tan and yellow without it.

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Sep 152014
 

Thanks to an early night, managed to wake up early…around 530, and headed out for a “short” run to fight off jet lag.  Headed down Kalakaua towards Diamond Head, before realizing it was too early and it wouldn’t be open yet.  Slight detour to Starbucks.  Had coffee, read the paper for an hour, and then started the run.  Got to Diamond Head, hiked up to the peak, and ran back.  Around six miles total, and the perfect antidote to jetlag!

Got back to the hotel, and had a huge container of pineapple and some aloe juice from the ABC store before giving up on being productive at all.  Grabbed a towel, headed down to Waikiki, and just sat in the sun for a few hours.

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I may have only had 24 hours in Honolulu, but between a walk, dinner at Duke’s, the run up Diamond Head, and beach time, I’m pretty sure I maxed it out!

Around 1:30 I called for the car, put down the sun roof, and headed back to the airport on a gorgeous day.  No problem dropping the car off, and soon I was at the extremely empty United check-in area:

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Thanks to the United mobile app and TSA pre check, I was already checked in…which was sort of a pity because it would have been entertaining to see the look on the agent’s face when I checked in all the way to Paris!

Less time in security means more time for liquid Aloha!  Went to the Kona Brewing Company in the terminal to grab a lite lunch…and of course a few Big Swell IPAs:

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I told the waittress to bring me the tastiest app on the menu whatever it was…the kalua pork quesadillas didn’t disappoint!

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After a quick lunch, I decided to do some plane spotting.  HNL is great for it, since it’s an open air terminal and you can get up close and personal with the planes.

Delta and a Korean Air A330:

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Sep 102014
 

Ok, this took far, far longer than I planned to get around to.  I figured “I’ll be spending 30,000 miles on planes over the course of 12 days, lots of time for writing.”  What I didn’t take into account is that my sleep schedule would get so out of whack that I’d find myself wandering streets at 3am enjoying cities in a whole new way, and sleeping when I could.  Plus, the trip ended in Vegas.  I don’t really need to explain much more.  I got home after this mother of all mileage runs absolutely wrecked in more ways than one.  Then there was life, and work, to catch up on…but finally…here we go!

In case you missed the post about how this trip came up, I’ve linked it here for reference.

Soon, the big day was here, and it was time to head out!  Decided to be a bit frugal and take the Metro to the airport, which in rare form was running with no delays and everything went smoothly.  So smoothly in fact, that I was from home and through TSA in under 30 minutes.  Ended up with almost an hour before my flight, so popped into the Delta SkyClub for a quick breakfast.  I wanted to check out their new offerings…and was seriously happy to find greek yogurt and hard boiled eggs.  No salt anywhere though.  Grrr.  At least I had a chance to stock up on protein knowing Señor Jeff would soon try and put me in a carb-induced coma.

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Boarding was right on time, and we were on one of United’s oldest 737-800s today…but at least there was WiFi!

United Airlines flight 1662
Washington DC, National (DCA) to San Francisco, California (SFO)
Depart 8:15, Arrive 11:19, Flight Time 6:04
Boeing 737-800, Registration N18220, Manufactured 1998, Seat 2E

Today’s route of flight was rather strange, I assume due to the storms covering the flyover states.  Although we were blocked 6:04 gate to gate, flight time was announced at just 5 hours and 5 minutes…rather quick for this route.  I was rather excited to be on this route, instead of having to trek out to Dulles and it was my third ever transcon out of DCA, and the first on United.  So happy to have this route as an option now!

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Not only were full pre-departure drinks offered, but they came with refills if you were a quick enough drinker.  This was going to be an excellent crew!  There was almost no wait for takeoff, and we were airborne less than five minutes after leaving the gate.

Today’s breakfast choice was either scrambled eggs and sausage (powdered scrambled eggs on planes scare me…Jeff’s sausage pucks scare me even more), or the big tray of carbs.  I decided to go with the carbs and a bloody mary, figuring at least it might put me to sleep.

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Aug 092014
 

Earlier this year, United published, either by mistake or not – it’s not entirely clear – a $1500 all-inclusive business class fare for the summer from a handful of U.S. cities to a handful of European cities.  There were somewhere around 100 possible combinations.  Unfortunately, Washington was not one of them.

This was probably a good thing, because my leave time for 2014 is already all committed, due to my upcoming four weeks in the South Pacific in November, and two plus weeks in East Africa over new years.

But wait…Baltimore is on the list…now that’s tempting…even for a three day weekend.  But it was $1500 for any combination…Baltimore felt lame when perhaps I could do it from the west coast.  Yup, I found San Diego…but that meant getting to San Diego…and if I’m going to go all the way to San Diego, I wonder if….YES once again United seems to want to FORCE me to go to Hawaii.  Honolulu to Paris, business class in August, $1500.  In contrast, the lowest coach fare at the time was about $1650.  This is an absolute bargain.

Alas, I didn’t have the leave.  Didn’t stop me from looking how I could conserve days, and when I could do it.  Wait, I need to be in Las Vegas for a bachelor party late-August.  Las Vegas is on the way back to DC from Hawaii.  That was already planned Wednesday through Friday, so I just needed a way to get Monday-Tuesday off.  I trimmed a couple days off my South Pacific trip…and it was set.

Now…to justify the cost of flying to Hawaii.  Ok, Hawaii-Paris would earn 25,000 more miles than DC-Paris, so that justifies $400 of the fare to Hawaii.  My ticket to Vegas was going to be $1200 for a P fare, so suddenly $1600 is justified.  Buying DC-Honolulu and upgrading with a regional upgrade, done.  One way Honoulu-Vegas on a P fare…done.  Vegas to DC on a P fare…done.  It was all too perfect.

Unfortunately, to guarantee the upgrade, I had to fly DCA-Cleveland-LA-Honolulu.  Ugh.  Leaving at 6am.  Double ugh.  Oh well.  But then, there was a schedule change.  I whined to United I wasn’t comfortable with a 30 minute connection in Cleveland now.  I found upgrade space on DCA-San Francisco-Honolulu leaving at 8:30 – 2.5 hours later – and connecting to the same Honolulu flight.  I begged.  They relented.  It was getting too awesome.  Simply too awesome.

The routing was set:

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You may have noticed Barcelona in there.  See, I decided that 48 hours in Paris in August might get boring since the city clears out a bit.  Plus, I’ve been to Paris literally dozens of times.  So, I did what any good country collector would…set out to find the last country in Europe I haven’t been to:  Andorra.  Only way really to get there is to drive from Barcelona and Toulouse.  Barcelona had better flight connections…plus, the only automatic transmission rental car I could get was a Smart Car.  The chance to drive, my 6’3 self in a smart car, through the Pyrenees was way too much to pass up.  I booked it.

Then, looking at a map of Andorra, I noticed something super fun.

See this?

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Thats Llívia, Spain, a little tiny Spanish enclave not connected to Spain, but completely surrounded by France.  To a geography nerd like me this is perhaps the coolest thing ever.  Then, I thought…wait, I’m going to enter Andorra from Spain…I could exit out the other side of Andorra into France, and then drive to Llívia, back into Spain!

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But of course, this isn’t nerdy enough.  So, I’ll get to Andorra, and spend the night.  Next morning, drive into France, then back into Spain at Llívia, and have coffee…or whatever one does late morning in Spain.  Then, I’ll drive for a very short way BACK into France at Bourg-Madame and have a nice lunch.  Maybe a Croque Madame in Bourg-Madame…then back to Spain and Barcelona Airport, where I will fly to Paris for the night.  Before flying back to Hawaii.

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So, are you lost yet?  So far we’ve done:

Day 1:  DCA-San Francisco-Hawaii – Overnight Honolulu

Day 2:  Day in Honolulu, and Honolulu-DC redeye

Day 3:  All day in DC where I hope to have brunch with friends, play some hockey, before the redeye DC-Paris

Day 4:  Paris-Barcelona, drive in my little Smart Car to Andorra

Day 5:  Drive Andorra to France to Llívia, Spain for coffee, to Bourg-Madame, France for lunch, to Barcelona, Spain for a flight to Paris, France where I’ll spend the night, get a great meal hopefully and maybe some drinks with friends.

Whew.  Because next up is:

Day 6:  Paris-San Francisco-Honolulu, and dinner in Honolulu

Day 7:  Honolulu-San Francisco-Vegas

Day 8-9-10:  Vegas.  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Day 11:  Vegas-Houston-DC

I’m already tired, and the trip hasn’t started.  If I pack strategically, I can take a suitcase to Honolulu on Day 1, with everything I’ll need in Vegas, and leave it there to be picked up on Day 6.  Of course, if I forget anything, I have 10 hours (random) in DC on Day 3 to pick up anything I forgot…plus pack a weekend bag for Paris and Andorra, lol

This is crazy.  I’m insane.  But you’re going to read it…admit it…  😉

Apr 052014
 

It was spread a bit too widely to be a mistake fare, and Air Canada, Lufthansa, and Brussels Airlines matched the fares too, so it seems this one was intentional.  However, it was odd.  Fares from a majority of US cities, excluding United hub cities of course, to a variety of cities in Europe for $500 roundtrip plus taxes and fuel surcharges.  Depending on the cities it came to roughtly $1400 to $1600 total.

Of course, when I saw Honolulu was in the mix, I had to jump on it!

Problem was, since United massively devalued miles earlier this year, I cashed in around 500,000 so my travel year is packed.  And this deal would only be valid in July and August, when I already had some other commitments.  Early July was out, since I was already going to St. Kitts for a long weekend.  Late July/Early August also wouldn’t be good time-wise…and I was to go to Vegas the last weekend of August for a bachelor party.  Wait.  Vegas is on the way from Honolulu to DC…kind of.  This got me thinking….

Getting to Honolulu is easy…and can be done in one day.   I found a routing that would instantly confirm with a United regional upgrade as well.  So far this is working well.

Now, Hawaii to Europe on the business class deal… settled on HNL-IAD-CDG since it has a 10 hour layover in DC, enough time for me to repack bag, run any errands I might need to…or just be silly since it’s a Sunday.

I’d have just over 48 hours in Paris.  From what I remember Paris is rather dead in August, so I won’t likely stay there…but I might.  I’m also looking at buying roundtrip flights down to Toulouse, renting a car, and driving to Andorra for the night…the last country I need to visit in Europe.  Any thoughts on this?   I arrive into CDG around 6am and depart two days later around 10am.

On the way back, I’m doing the ultra-long CDG-SFO-HNL…going to be a very long day…and a very short night in HNL, because at 6am the next day I fly HNL-LAX which confirmed instantly with a regional upgrade, and LAX-LAS which wouldn’t confirm, so ended up paying like $40 more for a P fare.  Bargain of an upcharge!

Then, the only decision was how to get back from Vegas.  Since I’m looking to be a bit shorter on qualifying dollars than qualifying miles, I decided to go with the United P fare routing LAS-IAH-ORD-DCA.  Probably should have skipped the ORD, but it was the same price…and what’s one more flight at this point?

In the end, here’s what it looks like:

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Total stats are:

27,128 butt-in-seat miles flown
11 days, 16 hours traveled
65,125 redeemable miles earned
37,542 elite qualifying miles earned
3,275 premier qualifying dollars earned

It should be an absolute crazy adventure…and I can’t wait!

Mar 102014
 

Drive to the airport was completely uneventful, and it was sad to say goodbye to the convertible and the Hawaiian sun…and head back to the frozen wastelands of Washington. But, at least we had business class to look forward to, and a direct flight to DC thanks to the cancelation. One of a few times I can remember really leveraging a cancelation to my advantage. (Remember my delayed Dubai-Frankfurt in Lufthansa first that I managed to change to Dubai-London in Emirates A380 First?!)

Anyways, went straight to TSA pre-check after dropping the car off, and we were through security with plenty of time to spare, and even enough time to grab the lunch we never had.  That of course meant it was time to stop by Kona Brewing Company for one last round of liquid aloha!

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Quick lunch, and it was time to walk to the gate, with an impressive view of several United birds parked in a line:

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But, oops, too much liquid aloha…time for a stop by the Kane room…idk why but the Honolulu washroom signs always amuse me!

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Mar 032014
 

After our stop at the Post Office, we got back to the airport around 4:30 for our 6:45pm flight on Island Air to Honolulu. As the taxi was taking us back she asked us who we would be flying to Honolulu. “Oh, Island Air? I would never fly them. They are always late.” Grrrreat. Given the light rain and heavy clouds, this wasn’t boding well.

Then, my phone pinged. It was the FlightTrack app alerting me we were now delayed until 8pm. UGH. I went straight to the Island Air counter to try and figure out what was going on. Seemed the plan was in Honolulu still. It was like pulling teeth, but eventually the agents admitted it was weather in Molokai preventing them from arriving. When we’d been through Honolulu the week before waiting on our flight to Kona, we heard the Island Air flight to Molokai getting delayed over and over…seemed this was a semi-regular occurrence.

I wasn’t overly convinced the flight would ever leave, so asked if they would sign us over to Mokulele Airlines instead. No, they wouldn’t, and regardless, all the flights on Mokulele were full. By chance, I asked the folks at Makani Kai if they had a flight. Yes, they did at 5:45. It was one-stop via Kalaupapa, and there were plenty of seats. Ugh, I wish there had been better info about this when I was exploring prior to the trip, because instead of coming back up to Moloka’i topside we could have flown straight from Kalaupapa to Honolulu! The agent was also enough to hold two seats for us, while we tried to get our baggage back from Island Air.

Island Air was completely unhelpful, telling us we just had to wait, and if the flight canceled maybe they could put us on a flight the next day. “You have non-refundable tickets, so you don’t have a choice. It might be tomorrow, if not, hopefully the next day.” At this point, I wasn’t trusting I was even getting honest information from them, and at $65 per ticket I resigned myself to just eating the cost. Tickets on Makani Kai were $50 plus $10 tax per person, which seemed to be a small price to pay to ensure I got to Honolulu that day.

Makani Kai confirmed us, and told us that we could “just pay when you get to Honolulu.” Wait, what?! Just then, the Makani Kai plane showed up, and turns out our friend Britney would be taking us to Honolulu! On top of it, they had realized down in Kalaupapa there was just one passenger on the Kalaupapa to Honolulu flight, so they brought him up to topside. It would be the same two pilots, the two of us, one guy from Kalaupapa, and one lady who already had a reservation. This was starting to feel like the twilight zone!

Makani Kai Airlines
Moloka’i (Topside) Hawaii (MKK) to Honolulu, Hawaii (HNL)
Depart 17:45, Arrive 18:15, Flight Time 30 minutes
Piper PA-31 Chieftan, Registration N135PB, Manufactured ???, Seat: Row 1 Portside

Britney told us to go ahead and take row one, so I took the same familiar seat one more time. The clouds were looking seriously ominous by now, and I wasn’t feeling super confident flying this little plane through some serious clouds. Had it not been for two previous flights in this plane with this crew, I might have been a little nervous.

When I asked how they could fly (and Mokulele in their Cessna) when Island Air was delaying, it was because the ATR they fly into Moloka’i doesn’t have GPS, and thus has to land with a visual approach.  With low clouds, they were prohibited from operating.  Seems that nearly half the time they end up canceling due to weather.  Um, perhaps they should revisit the aircraft they fly?

Takeoff was smooth, but at about 2,200 feet (seeing the altimeter also comforted me) we started running into some serious cloud cover.  Even as we kept going up to 6,000 feet, the clouds were throwing us around  pretty good.  That combined with the fact that I couldn’t see anything out the windows was a little unnerving.  Several times it felt like we were dropping quite a bit, but the altimeter was telling the truth.

Eventually, we poked out of the clouds a slight bit:

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After about 30 minutes in the air we were on approach to Honolulu:

We landed, and taxied not to the main terminal, not to the commuter terminal even, but to Makani Kai’s own private hanger:

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Feb 222014
 

I keep asking myself:  why do you book morning flights?  I don’t function well before 10am, and getting up – not to mention trekking the 30 miles out to Dulles Airport – in time for an 8am flight…well, I think the Geneva Convention prevents that.  Throw in packing and doing laundry until 1am the night before, and I’m not likely to be a happy camper.

This leads to me not being able to tolerate a taxi, and Uber it is.  Abdullah showed up in just a few minutes, and fortunately had bottled water in the car and was a quick and pleasant drive to Dulles.  I’d checked in online and had the mobile boarding pass, TSA pre-check went without a hitch, and I was curbside to gate in maybe 15 minutes at Dulles.  Not bad at all considering how much the airport sprawls.

United flight 1632
Washington, Dulles (IAD) to San Francisco, California (SFO)
Depart 8:17, Arrive 11:05, Flight Time 5:48
Boeing 757-300, Registration N57864, Manufactured 2001, Seat 2F

Honestly, there’s not too much to say about this flight.  The crew was super friendly and pleasant, and we had a good long chat in the galley after the meal service.  I find I can relate to post-merger crews pretty well – my mother original started in reservations with North Central Airlines, which eventually became Republic Airlines, which was eventually merged into Northwest Orient and then NWA Airlines.  She couldn’t deal with yet another merger, and retired the day before Delta acquired Northwest…so, I understand what crews are going through and have a great deal of sympathy about how management has treated them.

Breakfast was a bit unusual….a disc of eggs, and a hockey puck…I mean round mystery meat passed off as sausage.  I think I nibbled on about half of it, limited myself to one bloody mary, and then watched episode after episode of Homeland trying to get caught up.

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Arrived in San Francisco right on time, and enjoyed my favourite little guilty pleasure in the food court, the Fung Lum Chinese restaurant, and their quite tasty Dim Sum.  It wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered, but tasty enough to hold me over for a two hour connection.  The gate area for our next flight was absolutely packed, so we played gate lice and queued up well in advance.

United flight 1001
San Francisco, California (SFO) to Honolulu, Hawaii (HNL)
Depart 13:08, Arrive 16:56, Flight Time 5:48
Boeing 737-800, Registration N12221, Manufactured 1998, Seat 2E

I still think it’s a bit of a crime to fly 737s to Hawaii, but after taking many many in the last two years, I’ve gotten a bit used to it I guess.  We had another really good crew on this flight, so that also made it go by quite quickly and comfortably.  Lunch was…well, adequate and actually MILDLY healthy.  Chicken and beans, with a mediocre salad and a heap of carbs.  And wine, good wine, malbec….and much more drinkable that the usual Chateau le Jeff:

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The sundae, as always, was delicious:

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…and that’s about all there is to say about a rather generic flight with United.  We arrived on time, I changed into shorts, and we attempted to go find our next flight.  We had two hours, so plenty of time, but I’d never been to the “commuter terminal” before, so this would be a new adventure.  Took the escalator upstairs to the Wiki Wiki Shuttle, which took us over to the domestic terminal.  The driver was helpful, and she told us to just walk the length of the domestic terminal, go down the stairs at the end, walk through the passageway, and you’d be in the commuter terminal.

Her instructions were flawless, and soon we found ourselves in what looked like a small gate area with 5 or 6 people sitting around.  Plus one very bored looking security guard.  So, I asked her, what next?  “You wait.”  Um, we don’t have boarding passes, we’re not checked in…and there’s nobody here!  “They will come get you.  If you leave this area, you will have to go through more security and it is hard.  The flyGo! people will come get you right before your flight.  No problem.”

Ok, so we waited.  The area increasingly filled up, and the Island Air rep did come through and grab people for their flight, so this at least had me thinking the agent was right.  Soon it was 20 minutes before our flight, and no sign of anyone from flyGo…but there was a boarding announcement….and people started walking toward the plane from what was obviously the other part of the commuter terminal.  Finally, after they’d all boarded, a rep did come to our area, and start boarding us.  She called our names over the walky talky to her coworker, who verified we should be on the flight.  All’s well that ends well!

No trouble checking my rolling bag planeside, but as the last to board, and it was open seating, we were all the way at the back of my least favourite plane of all time – the dreaded CRJ-200.

flyGo! flight 1007
Honolulu, Hawaii (HNL) to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii (KOA)
Depart 19:30, Arrive 20:15, Flight Time 45 minutes
Canadair CRJ-200, Registration N27318, Manufactured 1999, Seat 11A

The upside to being in the back, of the 3 empty seats on the plane they were 11B and 11C so we both got a whole row to ourselves…score for that?

Total flight time was actually 28 minutes from takeoff to touchdown, and water was offered.  All things considered, for a CRJ flight, it was pretty good.  Until the announcement ten minutes from landing:  “some of you may have noticed snow and ice falling from the roof.  This is perfectly normal, as a result of condensation in the plane.”  Ummmm, ok?  I guess we landed ok, so there’s something to be said for that.

Overall impression of flyGo?  Well, their instructions for connecting passengers in Honolulu need some major improvement, but other than that they were a perfectly acceptable and comfortable option…as well as the only one that fit our schedule.  I’d have no hesitation taking them again.  Then it was off to get the car, and begin the adventure!

Feb 212014
 

So when I found the $0 fare on United last fall, valid not just to California as I’d assumed but to anywhere in the United States, I booked as many as I could as quickly as I could, knowing I’d always have 24 hours to cancel and that it would likely go away very quickly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any banked leave time, so I made most of the trips two and three day weekends. My second DCA-HNL trip was to go out on a Friday, and then return Sunday night.

Regional upgrades cleared the whole way on the outbound, routing DCA-ORD-HNL. We boarded on time in DCA and then….there was a mechanical. Or, as the pilot informed us, “something technical needs to be looked at.” This creeped to 15 minutes, and then 30, and soon an hour. Before we knew it, it was two hours and we still hadn’t pushed back from the gate at DCA. With a connection of under two hours in Chicago, we were pretty much screwed….along with several people connecting on to China, etc.

So, knowing our connections were hosed, we asked to get off the plane to rebook. No can do. Because the door was closed, they weren’t able to reopen it and wouldn’t let anyone off. Eventually, about 2:30 after scheduled departure the problem was fixed and we pushed back. We already knew we’d missed our connection, and there were no others that day. We wanted to just cancel and go another time, but United insisted we go to Chicago…so go we did.

When we landed, our outbound had already left for HNL 15 minutes prior, so I tried calling the 1K line…long wait, and eventually they told us to “just go to customer service at the airport, they’re the only ones who can do anything other than rebook you on the next flight.” The 1K line did offer the only other connection, a late afternoon via SFO arriving around midnight…in middle economy seats. Ugh, no thanks. Hawaii is a long way to go for a few days, but to go for 24 hours in middle seats in economy when you’re 6’5 and 6’3 isn’t really an option.

Walked to the Terminal C customer service line…and was informed “there is no special priority line – you wait with everyone else.” “Everyone else” was at least 50 people, and it would be hours. UGH.

Trekked to Terminal B to try our luck, and the priority line was staffed there, with only one person in front of us. Unfortunately, that one person took nearly 30 minutes to help…but soon, we had a very helpful and friendly agent. Started out explaining to her what had happened, and why going that night via SFO wasn’t an option. She totally got it.

“So, you want me to send you back to DC as a trip in vain, and allow you to rebook later?” “Yes.” “ok, but the next flight to DC isn’t until 8pm.” We’d found a flight leaving in 2 hours, that had two F seats available…but would she give them to us? She spent 30 minutes on hold with various help desks…and eventually came back with. “Welllllll….there’s not really a policy. They tell me it’s my discretion.”

“And because we’ve been SO nice to you and you like us SO much you’re going to authorize it…right?”

That’s how we ended up on ORD-IAD on an international 767-400 in 1A and 1B…seats next to each other on top of it! BONUS!

Now…I decided to push a bit. “I’m sure you could also give us a couple of lunch vouchers as well since we’re stuck here?” She had no trouble printing them out…but told us not to laugh at the amount. Yes, as two 1Ks, we got something like $8 each for lunch, lol. At least it paid for margaritas at Chilis.

Flight back to IAD was pretty much a nonevent, and nothing special, so won’t go into details on that here. The details came a few hours later when I’d relaxed enough to try and call in to rebook.

“These are free tickets. They’re worthless. You’re out of luck.”

They maintained that line for over an hour of arguing. Finally, I told them I’d send them tweets and posts from United stating they’d decided to honour this fare. Back and forth, back and forth, and finally, they relented. “Fine. Find other flights with K space and you can rebook.”

I pushed my luck….went for a Saturday to Sunday 9 day period in February that I found K space and R space for an upgrade on….and it worked! Upgrades confirmed and all! Total time elapsed was about two hours on the phone, and about 8 hours wasted on the nonsense roundtrip to ORD, but my free 2 day trip had morphed into 8 days on the ground in a couple months!

Side note: didn’t receive any mileage credit for DCA-ORD-IAD, which was kind of a bummer, but at the end of the day I wasn’t going to complain. We were going to Hawaii, for more than a week, first class, for absolutely free! Winner winner!!!

Oct 132011
 

For as long as I can remember, ever since I started traveling I had wanted to take this flight.  I started planning the Round the World Trip nearly a year in advance, and everything revolved around this flight.  The Island Hopper is a flight from Honolulu to Guam which makes four to five stops (depending on the day of the week) along the way.  As much as I would have liked to stop, I just wanted to take the flight and see what it was like!

We dropped our rental car off bright and early, checked in with no problem.  The agent was, however, completely confused why we were on the four stop flight to Guam instead of the nonstop.  She decided it was “for miles or something” and let us go.  Nothing else exciting, and soon we were in a gate holding area full of quite unusual people for the flight to Majuro, Marshall Islands.

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