DrunkAndRetired.com Travel

On Thursday my return flight retired another 929 miles against my goal of 5,000 points to Gold status.

My initial flight was scheduled for 1:40 CST which I missed due to work stuff. I found my way to TGIF Fridays in DFW and embraced a plate of fried Mac and Cheese (a Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry treat in Madsison Wisconson) and a big ass beer… or twomore. My gate was only a few down from Friday’s however when I arrived I found that there was a gate change… I almost missed two in a row. Drunk and Retarded.

I boarded the AA flight which got me back to Tampa a little after 7:00PM just in time for Halloween. An annual event which revolves around lawn chairs, a cooler full of beer and lots of candy for the lil’ peeps.

So often my flights are just uneventful with some small polite conversations and other times you are fortunate enough to meet some very cool travelers. In this case my row mate was a guy, who I will call “J”, simply because I do not want to blog about him without his permission. Very cool guy who is a Mac developer from San Francisco, but better yet is on tour with Jimmy Buffet and manages the Teleprompters for the band.

So “J” is a very interesting guy. We had a great conversation. I had a chance to talk about my other life as a musician in Detroit. It turns out that Jimmy’s bass player, Jim Mayer spent some time with project work for Little Feat. I played clubs and did some project work back in the day with Shawn Murphy, currently with Little Feat. So we talked Mac’s, music and lots of other topics. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and the laughs. Jimmy’s band played last night, and is off tonight with a final show tomorrow night. Jimmy is staying on Clearwater Beach, so I suspect some entertaining times at the local establishments. And no I did not ask for comp tickets or back stage passes…. However if something happens with my day gig… I may use my new contact to coordinate an audition!!! Who knows?? Or my bud “Thinguy” can be Jimmy’s SE.

So based my goal of retiring points to get to Gold… You earn some while others are gifts. This flight was way more enjoyable than the outbound to DFW!

My next flight is Dallas on Monday… will update

Later

–s

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Going for the Gold…

Scott here…

Today I retired 929 points against my Gold challenge on the outbound trip to Dallas. I few more trips and I will have status. I accomplished lots for work, accumulated additional Hilton Honors points and found a great Micro Brewery called The Flying Saucer… Lots o’ Beer. I even got in a workout at Gold’s Gym in spite of the fact that we really clocked some pretty long hours.

It is funny how each flight segment has a personality of its own. The outbound flight started out to be very nice; however I earned every single point. I had an exit row, windows seat, with ample leg room and a great opportunity for a nap between cities. Next to me sat a young mother and a very small baby… My first red flag. About 5 minutes into our takeoff, the crying started…Freakin’ Pavarotti reincarnated…. Holy shit this kid had lungs. Woulda made a great advertisement for iPod or Bose sound isolation headphones… I should write the copy and retire 

Well things progressed… actually a frightening turn of events. An elderly man with Whooping cough sat directly behind me and hacked. He did not cover his mouth… I could feel the cough on the back of my head… not good… And with every bout of coughing, there was bad gas… The air vents cracked and it was still nasty thick. Kinda smelled like the morning after a drunken White Castle binge. For those of you who have been there, this should be a very vivid description.

Then the kid started shitting. LOTS. At least 2 large pant loads in the first hour or so of the flight. I quickly moved to the isle way, where I stood as long as they would let me. Between the old guy hacking and exercising his mud flaps in unison… and the kid dumping choad… it was beyond ‘real bad’. I contemplated several Bloody Marys’ however I really had to work when I got there. A very nice flight attendant walked past, she touched my shoulder and said… I am sorry but there are no empty seats… I could see that… but the thought was very nice and she let me stand in the isle.

The nice young mother apologized, and cleaned up the kid which resolved half of the problems. The old guy… well the people next to him had it much worse than I… so overall a few hours of hell and we landed. I learned lots about the art of visualization… and finding that happy place.

Stay tuned… More to come as I chase Gold…

Scott

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On the way back from a client event in Sonoma, I had to re-route through LAX to get back home to Austin. While I’m sitting through a long, long lay-over now, it’s not much of a problem, being that I’m able to hang out in the Admiral’s Lounge.

Not only that, but a very kind Aussie family gave me three drink coupons on their way out of the club. I am crapping you negatory:

Which quickly have turned into a few of these:

Not only this, but I managed to get a better seat — from middle exit-row to middle exit row, 21E to 20A — by talking with the desk people here in the Admiral’s Club. Now, sure, 20A doesn’t recline, but I’ll take that over a middle seat that does recline.

The Admiral’s Club

I’ve had a membership to the Admiral’s Club for the last 3 flights now, around a month or so. On the face of it, it’s not really that big of a deal for the cost (miles or cash), but if you fly as much as I do, as I’ve found today, it’s actually quite nice.

Essentially, it’s a blocked off set of rooms and halls in the airport that only Admiral’s Club members can enter. They give you free water, coffee, and snacks (cookies, mini-muffins, chips, and pretzels). Those things are, you know, not really a big deals: I might save about $50 a year in coffee, but the “free” coffee isn’t too good.

What is nice, and sort of intangible, is having a comfortable, quite place to sit with plenty of power sockets and Internet. Granted, there isn’t free wifi or even ethernet’ed ‘net, but you can sit down at the Lenovo terminals they have in each lounge and get truly “free” ‘net access.

I’ve been to 4 clubs so far — Austin, DFW, LAX, and SFO — and they’ve all been nice except SFO. SFO’s Admiral’s Club is, to be frank, tiny and packed. It’s sort of ass-to-elbow in there, as they say. I’ll check out the Chicago one next week.

The LAX and DFW Clubs are giant and expansive. Meanwhile, while the Austin one is small, it’s very clean and well furnished. As there’s not a whole lot of people in the Austin airport, I haven’t found it to be crowded yet.

Misc. Niceties

Other “small benefits” are that you can leave you bag unattended. Indeed, there’s typically a whole room with shelves to stow your luggage. Sure, there’s signs along the lines of “we’re not responsible for theft” all over the place. But, if you often find yourself having to pack up and drag all your shit with you when you want to stretch your legs, get a drink, or use the restroom in at the airport, being able to leave you bags at your seat is fantastic.

There’s good to purchase, and a bar as well. All that is for pay. The food isn’t really made on the spot, so it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just more convenient to have food and drink in the club so you don’t have to leave.

Also, as I understand the policy, you can bring in two (unrelated guests) with you and anyone who lives in your household. So, if you find yourself in an airport with me, I’ll be happy to take you along: esp. if you buy me a drink ;>

You also get membership to Regus, which I haven’t tested yet. This lets you get in their business office lounges, which could actually be nice. I’ll have to see how much conference rooms cost to rent: that might be handy for times when I want to meet clients and not have them come to my home. I still haven’t gotten my Regus card. Having already gotten my Admiral’s Club card, that’s a little weird.

Well Dressed Agents

Each Admiral’s club is packed with a surprising number of American desk employees. They check your membership upon entrance, but they’re also full service “gate agents.” Supposedly, these Club agents are “better” than gate agents. I’m not really sure how true that is, but they sure are chipper and nice. As I understand it, frequent travelers call them “AAngels” as they’ve saved them horrendous travel several times.

I’ve read all sorts of tales of loving those AAngels when the shit hits the fan at the airport. Also, people tell me they often call you ahead of time if your departing flight is going to be late, meaning you can stay how longer (sort of ironic, as if you showed up too early, you’d end up spending more time in the lounge).

As mentioned above, in getting re-routed from SFO->DFW->AUS to SFO->LAX->AUS, I ended up with a middle, exit-row seat on the LA to Austin leg. I asked when I checked into the Admiral’s Club if there was a better exit-row seat, and the answer was no. Once I got online, I started checking the empty seats, and several window and aisle exit-row seats came up. But, I couldn’t select them. After being sort of stupid several times and trying to select them, I finally went up to the desk and asked them if I could get a better seat. Sure enough, they quickly assigned the nicer, exit-row, window seat to me.

Now, I’m sort of 90% sure any American agent could have done that. But, there wasn’t a line at the Admiral’s Club desk, and it took just a minute or so to get all set.

Mix that with the three free Manhattans I’ve been having in this over-stuffed chair, and this whole Admiral’s Club thing looks pretty good ;>

The Platinum Amex

Very, very recently (just under a month ago or so), American Express’ Platinum Card added the Admiral’s Club to their airport club access program. I’m sort of kicking myself in the head cause I got my Admiral’s Club access just before the announced it.

The prices are roughly the same, and I’d like to try out Amex and the Platinum benefits (esp. those hotel upgrades ["when available"], road-side assistance, and their travel concierge). There are, of course, some nuanced differences — you can only get Admiral’s Club access when you’re ticketed on American…which I always am, at the moment…and there’s 3 other airlines covered as well. The major problem is that Amex dollars don’t transfer to American miles as the Citi AAdvantage card does. Since I do all my work expenses through my credit card, this is actually a big deal for me: I get a lot of miles off that card. Once they nail that down, I’m all over the Platinum card: it’d totally make sense for me.

Until then, I’m stuck on the fence about it.

Nonetheless, after finding out about the addition of the Admiral’s Lounge to the Platinum card, I sent an email to the Admiral’s Club people asking them about canceling my membership. Their reply was interesting:

Dear Mr Coté

Greetings from the Admirals Clubs. Thank you for the opportunity to address your issue.

We’re very excited about our relationship with American Express Platinum and Centurion cardholders. But there are several issues you should consider.

With the American Express card, you must also have a valid boarding pass for an American Airlines flight on the day you want to visit the Club. If your travels require you to use an alternate airline your Amex card alone is not enough to gain admittance. (A further fact worth noting: As a member, you don’t have to be flying at all to visit and make use of the Admirals Club. If you have a client or friend passing through Austin, merely call the Club 24 to 48 hours in advance and they’ll arrange security clearance with the TSA for you.)

Remember the old slogan - “Don’t leave home without it?” That’s especially true with the American Express situation. Without the plastic in hand, we can’t verify you are a cardholder. However as an Admirals Club member, if you don’t have your membership card your status can be confirmed with just a few keystrokes at the front desk.

Our members get discounted rates on the conference rooms in the Clubs. Members also receive complimentary membership to the Regus Executive Club (a $300 value), with unlimited access to their 950 business lounges around the world, as well as attractive rates to the Regus fully equipped offices and meeting rooms worldwide.

In addition, during peak times the Clubs will establish a “Members only” express check-in line so you can get in faster.

There are a few other specials in the works for our members which we will be announcing shortly. (((Let’s hear ’bout them!)))

I hope we’ve given you a few things to consider while making your decision, Mr Cote.. We value your membership, but will cancel it and process a refund (less a $50.00 fee) if you request it.

Whichever path you decide to take, we’re glad it will lead you to the Admirals Club!

We look forward to your next visit.

Best Regards,

Bob Filler

American Airlines

Premium Services | Admirals Club

www.aa.com/admiralsclub

As a side note, looks like you can now get 2,500 bonus miles for joining the Admiral’s Club. Tragically, I missed out on that.

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If you’ve got a Citi AAdvantage card, you often are able to spend fewer miles for a free ticket. Instead of spending 25,000 for a domestic, US, round-trip ticket, you can spend 17,500. When Kim and I went to El Paso last weekend, we benefited from this, spending 35,000 miles instead of 50,000 miles.

Now, this discount doesn’t apply to all destinations (no New York, SFO, or Chicago, but there’s Atlanta, Houston, and D.C) but it’s worth a look if you’re traveling. Citi publishes the discounted rates each quarter, and the new rates are out for Oct-Dec 2007.

As I’ll write-up sometime, this is one the differences between the different classes of Citi AAdvantage cards. The upper-rung cards (MasterCard Platinum and American Express Select) have lower reduced mile awards than the lower-rung cards (Gold and plain ol’ Amex). Looks like the Bronze card gets nuthin’.

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I fly American Airlines for most of my travel. To be perfectly honest, the choice wasn’t logical at all. Just about two years ago I started working at RedMonk as an industry analyst. I’d been a programmer for about 10 years before that and never really traveled much at all, even for vacation. Being an analyst/consultant meant a sharp uptick in travel.

As first, I’d just choose any old airline, and then I realized I should pick one to start getting rewards and benefits. Why did I choose American? It was the adjustable head-rests that really made the final difference. Seriously, all of the airlines pretty much seemed the same, so I just picked American because they had fun head rests that you could bend up into a “T” shape to lean up against. I’d flown United, US Airways, Delta, and several other carriers.

After flying on American for awhile, I’m glad I accidently chose it. My only regret is that American, until very recently, didn’t partner with American Express on anything, so you I couldn’t sell myself on going through the trouble and expense to get an Amex card. (As you’ll find out, I have no money-rational reason for all these “loyalty programs”: I just have fun with them.)

AAdvantage

American’s frequent flier program is called AAdvantage. If all the history I’ve read is true, AAdvantage was the first frequent flier program and has been around for 25 years. I haven’t been in other programs, so I can’t really compare them first-hand.

In order to “be somebody” to American Airlines and start getting the benefits of frequent travel, you must be enrolled in AAdvantage. Another minor detail is that your AAdvantage account is only for one person, you. For example, you can’t enroll both yourself and your spouse under the same account, only one person can be linked to an account.

Enrolling

As with many loyalty programs, enrolling is easy. You just sign up.

You get an AAdvantage number right away, and they’ll send you a little card some week after. At first, you don’t really get anything for being enrolled. But, what this allows you to do is start accruing “miles” towards free flights and “status.”

Free Flights

Free flights are obvious and, with most programs, have some exceptions as well as requiring fees when you buy.

Unlike more recently airlines that simply give you “a flight” (like jetBlue and SouthWest[?]), the AAdvantage program gives you miles towards flights. Domestic (in the US) flights are 25,000 on average for a coach ticket, while international flights are 50,000. There’re many ways to pay less points, which we’ll go into in future posts.

Also, of course, there’s some black magic to when you can actually use the miles. That is, there are black-out dates, at least as far as I can tell (hopefully I’m wrong). That said, having used points a couple times for personal travel with my wife and I, I haven’t ever had problems getting the flight I wanted.

The annoying thing about redeeming these “free” flights is that you’ll end up paying “fees and taxes.” This is, really, pretty bogus, but what’re you gonna do? I recall paying between $90-100 each time my wife and I have gotten “free” tickets.

For a frequent traveler like myself, though, the free flights are really not the most important point of AAdvantage.

Status

More important to me than free flights is getting “elite status” with American. “Status” is an elevated “level of service” and benefits the airlines give you for flying a lot. At American, you get several things for status:

• Earlier checking-in - not really that big of a deal.
• Get on the plane earlier - I like this so I don’t have to scramble to find a place in the overhead compartment, while others (like my wife, Kim) think getting on the airplane sooner is insane: why spend more time on the plane?
• Better selection of seats - like exit-row and bulk-head seats.
• More “bonus miles” for travel, e.g., you can get 125% miles (and more) for each mile flown, meaning you get 25% additional, bonus miles.
• Upgrades to first class - you get “upgrade points” to spend on getting a first class seat when you’ve paid coach.
• Priority for stand-by - the higher your status, the more likely you are to get a stand-by seat (for when you’ve missed a flight and need to get on another one.
• Others - there are several other perks, like free drink coupons, discounted prices for the American airport lounge, the Admiral’s Club and getting a general higher level of niceness from American when the shit hits the fan.

There are 4 levels of status, the first of which is, really, nothing:

1. AAdvantage - this is just you being enrolled in the program.
2. Gold - after flying 25,000 miles, you achieve Gold status.
3. Platinum - after flying 50,000 miles, you get Platinum status.
4. Executive Platinum - after flying 100,000 miles, you get Executive Platinum status.

There are actually more ways than pure miles to get status. For the most part getting status is directly linked to actual miles flown, or “butts in seats” miles. That is, any “bonus” miles you get don’t count towards your status miles. This is kind of annoying, but once you figure out how quickly you can accrue bonus miles, it makes sense for American.

There are also “life-time” statuses you can get if you accure 1 million (Gold) and 2 million (Platinum) miles. These millions of miles can be any type of mile, but getting that many points will take a long time and/or a lot of spending.

More on all that in future posts, of course ;>

The Actual Travel

One of my RedMonk colleagues, Steve O’Grady is known for his travel horror stories. He particularly hates United. Every frequent traveler has shit happens while traveling. I’ve had to stay overnight in Cincinnati, paying for it myself due to weather (though meeting a fellow, rabid HST fan was an awesome benefit). I’ve missed flights on the way to client visits. I’ve lost luggage and been locked out of my house. I’ve even had my plane diverted from New York to Alabama when, in the words of the pilot, “the computer that tells us how far from the ground we are just went out.” And I’ve heard loud booms during take off that required us to go back to the airport and switch planes (but I got 10,000 bonus miles!)

The point is, shit will happen, and frequently. Being in AAdvantage program won’t really prevent shit from happening, but it might make it a little less stinky. Any service based company knows to value customers who spend more money more than customers who don’t, and that’s really the main thing you have to keep in mind about AAdvantage: they’re rewarding you for giving them more cash.

All that aside, I’ve found the actual travel aspect on American just fine. I’m actually not a nut for direct flights, so the fact that I have to go through DFW most of the time is just fine (besides, it’s more miles!). Since I have the minimum level of status, Gold, I can (so far) always get an exit row seat. And, as noted above, I’ve actually gotten several free flights for my wife and I.

More to Come

As this is the second post to this blog, there’s not a whole lot of detail in it. I wanted to give you a quick overview of being an American Airlines frequent flier.

In the future, I’ll write about the different ways of optimizing your AAdvantage account (read: getting more points, faster), tips for traveling on American, and traveling in general. My selfish hope is to get input from you, dear readers. Frequent flier and reward programs are large and complex enough that you can use all the eyes you can get to “optimize” them, so hopefully we’ll get more than just my eyes on it ;&gt’

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I travel quite a bit in my job and I’ve gotten obsessed with the American Airlines frequent flyer program and other “reward” programs. As my friends and others will tell you, I enjoy rambling on and on about it. I think I just like having a system to play around with. The benefits are, as well, quite nice.

So, naturally, I’ve been meaning to start a blog for sometime on the topic. My hope is to also get input from other people to help me further “optimize” my travel. Of course, it’s not all just AA frequent travel junk: I’m sure I’ll throw in some travel in general.

While you might be like most of the people I encounter and not interested in the topic, if you’re one of the minority who enjoy the frequent flier obsession, I hope you’ll enjoy the blog ;)

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