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Inflight dining, from design to seatback tray
Admittedly, inflight dining has not gotten a lot of love over much of the course of commercial aviation's history. Actually, early in that history, in the 1930s, multi-course meals were cooked onboard. However, as the postwar demand for flights took off in the 1950’s and 60’s and aircraft sizes (and therefore passenger numbers on each flight) grew, this soon proved impractical, and the complexity of cooking for hundreds of passengers in a tight space within a limited time frame prompted…
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In trying to use miles to book a flight from Miami to New York City just a little while ago, I was short miles in my American Airlines account, so we wanted to transfer some from his to cover the shortfall. Imagine our displeasure to learn that for a simple electronic transfer the fee was $116 - and to add insult to injury, on top of that they add a $15 transfer fee. I tweeted my displeasure to them and their only reply was:
We're glad to hear that you were able to get it booked. Thanks for your feedback.
And so I left them with:
What a dumb and disingenous answer. You suck.
This is another reason airlines and capitalism in general have been richly earning themselves such a bad name in recent years.
There are LOTS of ways to get free stop overs.
United allows up to 23 hours and 59 minutes on intl' itineraries and Delta allow 1 free stop over in route.
I have wrote about the Delta stop over rule and given an example here. Or the United free 24 hour stop over here. United also allows 1 stop over for more than 24 hours on a round trip. You can read about that option here.
Many more explanations can be found on upgrd.com
My pleasure! And of course if you find yourself in any trouble putting together an award with all of these added goodies, you know where to turn :) In case you forgot though, FirstClassAndBeyond.com will likely provide the answers you're looking for.
The reason I say people run into trouble is simple: While these routings are allowed, they are often not bookable online and the phone reps are often not very amenable. At the end of the day however, persistence is key!
I have opportunities to do that. This is very helpful, Ari.
Most airlines do, but it's how to maximize those stopovers/open jaws that is the trick! For example, you could be on a USAirways award from North America to "North Asia" (Japan, for example) but have a stopover in Rome. Not only that, but the North America-Japan trip (in business class) is 10,000 miles less expensive than North America to Rome. But because that's just a stopover, you not only saved yourself 10k miles, but you saw another great city! And the fact that the routing would then be around-the-world just adds to the "wow" factor.
Of course, there's the added ability to have "layovers" in multiple cities as well. The rule there (generally)? So long as it's under 24hrs, you're good :)
Agreed. If I am not mistaken, AF allows a stopover in CDG on its award travel without penalty of miles.
True, but I was talking specifically about award redemptions. :)