The Wandering Salesman

This was the worst I’ve seen. Wait until you hear this…

I flew to MEL last weekend on the regular Emirates EK404 shuttle. It wasn’t a full flight so I asked the staff at the lounge to find me a seat which had an empty seat beside me. Call me old fashioned – but I just value my space, especially flying on EK with the 3-4-3 configuration down the back.

About 10-minutes later, the lounge receptionist came running up to me like an excited school kid. She had a new boarding pass and had found me an exit row and had blocked off the other seats.

Excellent. Now I could relax. Well, as much as possible, sitting upright in an economy seat for 7-hours.

Anyway.

The loads to MEL have been up and down lately and this was one of those flights that was around 90% full. No op-up today. Bugger.

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This will no doubt piss off quite a few FlyerTalkers.

So be it…

Probably the single biggest reason I continue to remain loyal to UA is as a result of receiving 6 System-Wide Upgrade certificates each and every year.

Let me explain to the uninitiated.

When you achieve 1K status on UA, these certificates are posted to your account. It’s a simple process. And the most value you can obtain from these certificates is by redeeming (or applying them) to an international itinerary.

Lets assume I book a Singapore to New York (JFK) flight. Providing that a, I book an upgradeable fare, and b, there are seats available, United will move me from the class I originally booked to the next class up. So from Economy to Business. or from Business to First.

It is easily the number one retention tool UA has in its marketing arsenal.

Now here’s the rub.

If, like me, you hang out on frequent flyer forums such as FlyerTalk (and you specifically “lurk” or participate in the UA forum) you will quickly learn that there are a lot of angry people. People who need to clearly get out more. People who clearly have unresolved issues with their parents.

Or something like that.

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I don’t think I will ever get to that point where I’ll do “proper” trip reports, take pictures of the food they serve onboard, photos of the seat, the toilet, the way they set the table and all that other shit.

I would rather have a prostate exam. And I’ve had one before so I know what it’s like.

Anyway, yesterday was one of those travel days. If it wasn’t at the end of a week on the road, I would probably have said to UA, “you know what, today isn’t a good day for you. How about I go home and we start all over again tomorrow”.

Or something like that.

But since I have just attended a UA Mileage Run Seminar, my fellow attendees wouldn’t be pleased if I didn’t post my UDU results.

For those not brainwashed into the Mileage Plus cult, UDU stands for Unlimited Domestic Upgrades. Which means, if you hold status (ie Premier, Premier Executive, 1K or Global Services), UA will essentially give you a little bit better seat (for free) if there’s one available. At least, that’s the theory.

They call it an upgrade into First Class. I call it “you’re arse wont be quite as sore by the end of the trip…”

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I don’t know about you, but I am sometimes amazed at what people wear on long-haul plane rides.

I know you may have just spent 10 glorious days on a beach somewhere, but I’m just not that way inclined to want to get on a 12+ hour flight in a tee-shirt, shorts and flip flops (or thongs if you’re an Aussie like me).

Anyway, call me old fashioned. I reckon you need to be as comfortable as possible. Which means choosing a good pair of shoes is essential.

Most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn are made by Merrell.

And I have an admission of late. I’ve started to wear long compression pants under my jeans or whatever pants I’ve decided to wear.

Now I know 40+ year old males are way too old and mostly too fat to be wearing spandex in public. But if I suck in my stomach I don’t look that ridiculous when I look at myself in a mirror. Or that fat either.

My kids think I look like a piece of cryo-packed meat from the butchers shop.

Anyway, back to compression clothing. If you spend a lot of time doing long haul travel, you will at some point, think about the effects of DVT. And I reckon if high performance sports clothing can help mitigate the causes of DVT, then all the better.

That’s the story I’m sticking to. Try it and see what you think. Yes, your family will laugh and heckle you as you get ready to leave but so what. If it isn’t that, they’ll find something else.

I just tell them that I might forget to buy them the list of crap they gave me, and pretty soon the snide remarks stop (or at least slow to a trickle).

So two things to remember. Good shoes are essential. And try compression clothing. Works a treat.

Failing any of that, drink heavily. It doesn’t cure jet lag, but you’ll have a good time trying.

This is a first for me.

On this trip to the US, I’m attending my first FT event. It’s put on by one of the more experienced members of the UA forum.

There’s over 160 people attending (80 on the Saturday and 80 on the Sunday).

People flying into the Windy City to talk about all things frequent flyer-ish.

God I hope it doesn’t turn out to be an Amway meeting in disguise…

More later…

Next week, I’m heading to the US.

This is the only picture worth anything to me when I travel.

I haven’t paid for a business class fare in a long-time. My outbound upgrade cleared a week prior to departure and the return cleared a day ago, which is nearly 2-weeks prior. I used SWU (System Wide Upgrade) certificates for both the outbound and return.

Because UA are getting tougher on upgrades, I decided to try and different approach. I had a couple of options when I booked the ticket.

1. Book the cheapest Z class fare (which is business) – SGD$5500 to the West Coast (SFO)

2. Book the cheapest upgradeable fare available at the time (which was around SGD$1700) and probably have to wait until day of departure to find out if the upgrade was going to clear

3. Buy a B class fare (nearly full fare economy) and give myself close to the best possible chance. Cost SGD$2700. Which was $1000 more, but now I have a Business Class return ticket for half the cheapest possible Business Class I could have bought.

Which is what I did.

And if you want a comparison, most business class fares from Singapore to the West Coast are going to run SGD$8000 to SGD$10,000, depending on routing and carrier.

I’m working on a detailed post on how the upgrade process works on UA. Standby.

Ok, so it’s not my favourite city in Asia. But it’s by no means the worst.

Actually, truth be told, the reason I’m not a huge fan is that on most occasions, my chosen mode of air travel is via LCC (Low Cost Carrier).

I hate to admit it, but I’ve taken Jetstar Asia twice now in the past month. I suppose sub $400 Singapore Dollars is a whole lot better than $700+ on SQ etc. And it’s only a short 3-hr hop, so what could possibly go wrong. Right?

Well, for one, the Singapore to Manila run is constantly filled with FDW’s (Foreign Domestic Workers). Or Maids. Or as the wife of a British mate of mine likes to call theirs “our helper”.

The Poms crack me up. Those pricks helped invent the word slavery and now they’ve all gone soft and insist on being politically correct and calling their live in, paid employee a “housekeeper”. Trust me, they’re maids. At least our is anyway.

Thankfully, the o’dark hundred departure out of Singapore hasn’t been packed to the gills lately. No priority check-in, no priority bag tag, no lounge, nothing. Nada. Zip.

My wife reckons me travelling on Jetstar is good for the soul. Silly cow.

You have to begrudingly admire Jetstar though. If you want to check luggage – you pay. Then if you want a front row seat, pay more. An exit, pay more. What about sitting in row 2, 3 or 4. We can do that for a fee.

Yes, give me your money. It’s me, me, me, me, me.

Look at this photo.

They actually think the average Filipino is going to fork out another $30 bucks to sit in the exit row or the first row.

If you told that same average Filipino that it would be $10 cheaper to sit in the cargo hold, or strapped to the wing, there would be be plenty of volunteers.

I sat in the first row behind the middle exit and the only pricks in the actual exit rows were Jetstar employees who were obviously dead-heading back to Manila

The blood sucking continues.

Want something to eat? Pay up you clueless self-loading freight. Duty free, no  drama’s – gimme your credit  card. I’m amazed they don’t have pay on demand IFE. I  knew I was flying on Shitstar today, so I loaded up the Mac with the latest Top  Gear episode and I was  all set. (more…)

This never ceases to amaze me.

First off, if you’re any sort of road warrior, your plans will have come to grief at some point in your flying career. It’s only normal. And to be expected.

How you handle the “inconvenience” and the level of compensation you get is quite another thing.

If you want to get a glimpse into the insanity of human behaviour, head on over to FlyerTalk and start trawling around any of the airline forums and do a search for “never flying X airline again”, or “I was treated like a criminal” or “X airline ruined my life and as a result of our lost bags episode, my wife/best friend/gay lover ran off with a hamster”

Or something like that.

Here’s an example of what not to do. Reading this nearly made me lose the will to live. (more…)

I had the misfortune of travelling with my folks the other day.

As we were getting ready to head out the door, my mother turned to me and said.

“Are you wearing that on the plane…?”

“Yes” I said defiantly.

Then I remembered I was 43 and my heart sank, realising that my mother was still breaking my balls about what I was wearing.

She is of the opinion that if you dress well, then you will be upgraded to First from economy, be met at the airport by 3 virgins who will walk ahead of you sprinkling the ground with rose petals, have your bags carried for you by English butlers and be whisked off to a private room in the airport for VIP’s.

Or something like that.

Which is complete bullshit. I asked my mother if she had been drinking again that morning. She said something along the lines of no, but it wasn’t her fault that the cork fell out of the Chardonnay bottle when she was tidying up the fridge.

I kid. She doesn’t drink Chardonnay. (more…)

I don’t know why I never worked this out before.

Next time you need to book a hotel ie Hyatt, Google “hotel promo code hyatt”. Trawl through the results and look for any valid code.

Go straight to the hotel website (not an aggregator like Wotif, Agoda etc). Enter the promo code where it says and see what happens. You might have to try a few but I’ve found more often than not, that I can find a valid code that can save you a bundle.

Last year, I stayed at the Raffles Hotel, Phnom Penh in Cambodia for US$99 a night (pictured above). Not too bad. And then received 50% off everything while we were there. Promo code to use was “NFAF”

Sometimes, search for “Family and Friends discount” and see what happens…can work for car rentals as well.

And it even works for web hosting and domain registration. We set this blog up using GoDaddy. Before checking out of the shopping cart, I googled “discount code GoDaddy” and found a valid 25% off code. Worked like a charm.