Rather than adopt a photography is a crime attitude, Albuquerque Sunport has a few areas setup for plane spotting.

The North area has a covered picnic bench in the shape of a plane.

The cover for the garbage can is in the shape of a helicopter.

The North viewing area is close to the end of the A concourse, making it well-suited to seeing Southwest’s planes come and go.

To kick off completing my three stays under the Visa Signature promotion, I stayed at a Hilton for my trip to New Mexico.

American Airlines announced their order for 460 new planes, 260 from Airbus and 200 from Boeing, this morning to modernize its domestic fleet.  This weekend, I had the “joy” of riding in two MD-82’s slated to be replaced by these new planes.

Once you’ve seen the legroom of one American Airlines exit row, you’ve likely seen them all.

I cleared as a standby on both of my segments to get out to Albuquerque.  Both flights were nearly full in economy but had plenty of seats available in first.  While I declined to take an earlier flight as a standby to try to get denied boarding compensation instead with Continental, I’m reasonably confident my chances of scoring a bump on my originally ticketed flights wasn’t that great.  If worse came to worse, the gate agents could have started operationally upgrading passengers to first.

The entrance lobby features a 1914 Ingram/Foster Biplane in its atrium.