Author Archives: Chris

Civil Liberties Have Had Better Days

“The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower The USA Today reports “at least five…flights were disrupted Sunday because of security concerns.”  … Continue reading

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Honolulu to Kahului

For my hop from Honolulu to Kahului, I was an a United-marketed codeshare operated by Hawaiian Airlines.  HNL is an open airport:   Hawaiian uses Boeing 717’s for its inter-island flights.  They feature a first class as well, but for … Continue reading

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Honolulu

To reach Honolulu, I flew on United 421 from Newark to Honolulu with a stop in San Francisco to change planes from an A320 to a Boeing 777.  Since United’s domestic non-p.s. first class is rather uniform, I’ll omit the … Continue reading

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Trip Report: SFO-EWR-HNL-OGG-SFO-LAS-ORD-YUL-DEN-LAX-JFK

I attended StarMegaDo3 last week.  To position myself for the start of its North American portion in Chicago, I trekked from from New York via Honolulu and Kahului.  Plotted with gcmap, my routing looks like:  

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StarMegaDo

In lieu getting my photos online of my trip out of New York to Chicago (via Hawaii) or of the events themselves, I offer the Wall Street Journal’s coverage (for the time being).

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Free Wifi on UA p.s. in September

The Gogo company representative on FlyerTalk announced that passengers on United’s p.s. service (JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO) will have 30 minutes of complimentary internet access during the month of September. Depending on how well publicized this is to passengers actually on … Continue reading

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Another Marriott Promo

Loyalty Traveler reports another Marriott promotion for the fall, running not quite concurrently with their MegaBonus promotion.  Earning is limited to United, Delta, British Airways, Lufthansa, GOL/Varig, and LAN. The first stay earns a base of 2 miles per dollar. … Continue reading

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Boarding Processes

There’s plenty of anecotal views on how to best board an airplane.  A new paper showed up in the arXiv last week with experimental results (albeit with limited sample size) for different strategies.  Randomized boarding beat back-to-front and the block-based … Continue reading

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Fall Hotel Promotions

Starwood announced its Triple Up promotion.  For stays involving a Thursday or Sunday night, there is a triple SPG point bonus; for all other stays, there is a double SPG point bonus.  There’s a few nonparticipating hotels as well. Registration … Continue reading

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This Quarter’s Hyatt Promotion

Hyatt announced their newest promotion on FlyerTalk: Every 3k eligible nights earns a 5k point bonus up to a total of 30k bonus points.  Registration opens on September 15. For reference, the Hyatt award chart starts at 5k points per … Continue reading

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