MYOB?

Usually I'm happy to put on my headphones and ignore my seatmate, but today was a classic it was hard to ignore.

As we're circling in a holding pattern over Newark (which would deserve a rant of its own if it wasn't so commonplace) he says to me: "excuse me is your cell phone turned off?"

Huh? "Yes" I say. He gets all agitated and starts mumbling how they told us several times to turn off our cell phones. So I take out my Blackberry and show him it's off, even pushing a few buttons to show him it's completely off. Instead off shutting him up it prompts him saying something about me having it on the entire flight.

Bizzarro city, especially since I was working on the Sunday paper the whole time and hadn't touched the BB except to turn it on once to check the time (which still leaves the transmit function off as required, since it wouldn't get signal in-flight anyway I don't understand why anyone would intentionally turn it on before landing anyway).

Late flights

Some flights always seem to be late.

Why? And how can you tell your flight will be late? Maybe you can't tell in advance, but certainly on the "day of" you should be ready and armed with knowledge.

Two days ago I was flying SFO-YVR on a United 737 at 12:45pm. Earlier that morning I noticed that there was a noon 737 from EUG (Eugene) due into the gate I was leaving from. So that's my plane. It gets into Eugene from SFO. So now if it leaves for Eugene from SFO at 8:23am as scheduled so far so good, but if it leaves late, where will it pick up the lost time?

So, using sites like http://www.flightstats.com/ you can figure these things out and be a little more ready for the bad news before the airline decides to clue you in that you'll be sitting at the gate for a few extra hours...

So now it's two days later and I have a 3:44 flight from Vancouver back to SFO. Guess what? It's the very same plane and it was already an hour late getting to Eugene this morning. So am I surprised when I got a page a few hours after I saw that saying _my_ departure was also an hour late? Nope.

Expiration of miles

If you haven't been paying any attention to this you've probably lost lots of frequent flier miles.

Most FF programs expire the miles in your account after a certain amount of inactivity. I lost about 10K in my Delta account in 2000 by miscalculating time since my last flight. My parents had 25K in their United accounts till a few months ago when they hit the (new and shorter) 18 months since last activity date.

Imagine my surprise when I resurrected access to my Continental OnePass account which I haven't used in over fifteen years (I've been flying CO but crediting the miles to my Delta SkyTeam account) and found that it had over five thousand miles in it?

Turns out, Continental miles never expire. I have heard their FF program referred to as NoPass so maybe they don't do you any good if you can't use them... I haven't had any trouble using UA miles when I've wanted/needed to, and AA has been reasonably good on that front as well...

Now it doesn't take much to keep the miles from expiring. Just spend or earn a couple of miles. Any activity on the account will reset the expiration - link your Safeway card to your account and spend enough to earn 100 miles, or use one of those earn-miles-for-clicking-here websites, or buy some flowers using a link on the airline site, transfer or convert some miles/points, etc.

But you've got to remember to do it. That's why keeping only three or four FF accounts is best - combine all travel on the same alliance into the same FF account (I use AA for OneWorld, UA for StarAlliance, DL for SkyTeam and then I've got JetBlue and VirginAmerica who aren't part of any alliance yet).

Hotel room rates

We all know that airline fare buckets defy most logic. Well, hotels are almost as bad.

I'm in Vancouver for two nights on business. Last week a colleague of mine got the Nokia rate at the Metrotown Hilton we're staying at. $145. The next day, I couldn't get it, because my first night was showing as "sold out". I could still get in under Hilton Diamond Guarantee but at a higher rate of $229.

I tried to figure out why they couldn't give me the second night at the Nokia rate. Well, for the second night the regular Nokia rate is sold out but they could give me the Executive Room Nokia rate $170 but I'd have to move rooms (to a nicer room for the second night, even though I'd be paying almost $60 less!) Luckily by the time I was checking in they came to their senses and realized I was entitled to a free upgrade as Diamond anyway and I got the executive "suite" for both nights.

The annoying thing about the suite is that the wired internet is in the living room and I like to set up my laptop in the bedroom. Luckily my room was almost under the Executive lounge on the floor above and I could leech off of their free wireless. At least the wired internet is free. Nice hotels nickel and diming on internet connections when all the lower end chains offer them for free is annoying as all heck.

More cutbacks in F

I can't imagine that cutbacks by airlines is news to anyone, but it's still annoying as they chip away at *everything*.

Yesterday I had a midday flight from SFO to YVR (San Francisco to Vancouver) and being an international flight, they've always served a lunch in first class (F). Knowing that the cutbacks in service are continuous and merciless, I checked at the RCC (Red Carpet Club) at SFO whether there would be a meal in F. "Lunch" they said. So, even with a 90 minute delay I figured I was okay not to eat.

There were all of two of us in F (8 seat cabin on 737) and the choices we were offered were a "snack box". It turned out to be more analogous to the "fresh" salads they offer on BOB flights in Y (Buy-On-Board in coach), except maybe a little smaller. Mine had a small piece of chicken breast, three carrot sticks, three zucchini sticks, a little tub of salad dressing about five grapes and two milk chocolate squares. All would have been forgiven had it been dark chocolate, but milk chocolate??? Ah, that's a rant for another blog!

My previous rants

If you want to catch up on my rants from '06-'07 time frame they are at:

http://asya999.livejournal.com/

I might move them over here, depending on how things go.

I also post on FT (www.flyertalk.com) as asya999.