Cathay Pacific is holding a giveaway and sweepstakes with the opening of their Chicago to Hong Kong route. Each week, the first 25 users to click through will have the chance to purchase a round trip for $100. There’s also a sweepstakes for a free roundtrip as well mentioned in the full rules.
Hat Tip: The Points Guy.
To get back to New York, I booked the United p.s. LAX-JFK redeye flight in economy.
For my previous four bookings on this particular flight in its various incarnations as UA82, UA691, and now UA599, United was looking for volunteers to be bumped. Of those three oversold flights, I’ve taken the offers twice and been upgraded to business class once. This time around, they were actually clearing the standby list.
When I noticed a bulkhead aisle seat open up, I grabbed it.
United bills its p.s. economy section as “Economy Plus.” A quick glance at Seatguru shows that the pitch on these seats is only 34″ for United p.s. 757-200’s compared to the 36″ for mainline United 757-200’s. The bulkhead row has a bit more legroom, perhaps even a bit more than the bulkhead in United’s A320 first class.
A week prior, clicking through on United’s “upgrade to premium seating” offer actually showed a price ($375) to upgrade to business class. Amongst United’s premium domestic cabins, p.s. is the only one which has ever tempted me to upgrade, even with miles. Nonetheless, I declined and chose to gamble on being bumped and rerouted onto an itinerary eligible for a complimentary upgrade to first class. Apparently similar reasoning went through the rest of the cabin, as we departed with empty seats in business class. Similarly, my flight out on American also had empty seats in business class.
Like the balance struck by charging for standby, upgrades are similar. As a midtier elite on American, I’m not eligible for automatic upgrades; United excludes p.s. flights from automatic domestic upgrades for its elite members. Denying free upgrades to passengers, even with space available nominally preserves the value of upgrading in advance. Why pay to upgrade when one can wait it out and gamble on getting an upgrade right before departure? If the price were a bit lower, I’d likely jump on it.
Otherwise expensive summer airfares ended up being on sale for the Fourth of July weekend. Yesterday, I took another American Airlines flight from JFK to LAX.
I was originally booked on AA33, the 7:45AM departure to LAX, but I managed to get to the airport early enough to see that there were open seats for AA201, the 6:30AM departure. I handed the gate agent my original boarding pass and she added me to the standby list, where, due to a combination of status and my original check-in time for my actual flight, I bubbled up in front of 17 other standby passengers. While milling about the gate area, I snapped off a few photos of Terminal 8.
I milled around the gate area and cleared at the start of Group 3’s boarding into the exit row.
Standby policies have always intrigued me. When I was in college, I routinely flew between MDW and LAX on Southwest. Same-day standby with Southwest requires buying up to an Anytime fare. Since standing around a crowded gate area for an hour was generally better than paying $100-200 to leave earlier, I never took Southwest up on a standby offer. For non-elites, American charges $50 and United $75 for unconfirmed standby. When I was flying in college, my view was that I was a liability to the airline until they got me to my destination. If they could get me out of the airport sooner, I would be one fewer passenger to rebook if a flight got canceled.
Hertz is rebranding their rewards program from “Hertz #1 Club” to “Hertz Gold Plus” for reasons which are beyond me. Either way, they’re offering 500 points with the new program, good for a free weekend day, as well as waiving the $60 annual fee for #1 Club Gold through September 30th if you register.
I rent from Hertz fairly consistently because they’ve been waiving the age surcharge in promotions over the past year. In May, Hertz kicked #1 Club Gold status my way for 3 year-to-date rentals, although it looks like I could have gotten it from having Continental OnePass Gold status or from Hertz’s current “Gold Family” promotion. I signed up for it not expecting that much value (such that I’d pay to renew it next year if need be), but it allowed me to make it to Penn & Teller on-time after my flight from Houston departed and arrived late last month.
Hilton released the details of their third quarter promotion: Double points or miles. I’m not quite as wooed by this as the remaining month or so of life that the Starwood second quarter promotion has left in it, but it’s better than nothing while completing a few stays to retain the gold tier through March 2013.
It’s already mid-June so a hotel program promotion summary is in order.
Boingo is giving away a bit of their wifi service in celebration of their 10th anniversary.
Hat tip: Stuck at the Airport.
As mentioned earlier, I trekked out to Los Angeles in coach on American Airlines. This time, I managed to snap off a predeparture photo of the plane:
Once again, I was seated in 20A, providing a view of the sun setting over the wing:
The Angeles Crest Highway reopened last week. It’s not an airplane, nor a swanky hotel, but it made for a fun drive…
…and a nice sunset from Mt. Wilson.
I’m visiting Los Angeles this week, traveling by way of American Airlines nonstop to and from JFK.
As only a midtier elite, upgrades require using 500-mile stickers. I’ve been slow to accumulate them this year as most of my flying has been with United/Continental, so I’m riding in the back of the bus, albeit in the over wing emergency exit row where I have at least as much–if not more–legroom as I did in Continental’s domestic first class last week.
