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Real quick TL;DR version of this post: Southwest had an IT failure on July 20th causing 2,300+ flights to be canceled over a 4-day period. We were stranded for 3 nights in Chicago with very little answers or help from Southwest and ultimately had to book a 1-way United flight to get home. As a result, we incurred $1,400+ of additional expenses to simply complete our trip home. I’m sharing this story in an effort to reveal how deeply flawed Southwest Airlines can be in the event of hiccups, big or small.
We were involved in the Southwest Meltdown/debacle/giant cluster f*** of July 20th. The technical glitch caused 2,300+ cancellations & thousands of delays [...]
Jakarta is an enormous city and usually isn’t high on a Western traveler’s To-Do list when visiting Southeast Asia. Even though it may not have pristine beaches like other parts of the area, there are still parts of Jakarta that are rich in interesting history and worth a visit.
Just to give you an idea of the behemoth that is Jakarta, it currently ranks as the 2nd largest metro area in the world with 30+ million inhabitants:
That being said, a trip to Jakarta can be as brief as you want to make it — we stayed for 2 nights as part of a stopover from Bali to Singapore and felt that we amply covered the highlights.
1. START: We [...]
We’ve getting pump about our upcoming trip to the UAE and Australia! Here’s a quick overview of where we’re headed and how we’re getting there…
In total, we’ll cover 32,661 miles over about 14 days and will be touching down in 4 countries (2 brand new ones for me and 3 for McCown)!
Part 1 – Charleston to Abu Dhabi
The first leg of our trip has us flying from Charleston to Abu Dhabi using an American Airlines award reservation.
We’ll fly American Airlines from Charleston-CHS to Washington Reagan-DCA and then make a connection to Washington Dulles-IAD for the long haul flight to Abu [...]
Dead and Company 6/10/16 Review – June 10, 2016 – PNC Music Pavilion – Charlotte, NC
See below for videos– the audio quality on the camera was pretty bad so most videos are using audio from chrisdavis’ source available for download here: http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=586987. Thanks for the audio, chrisdavis!
Here’s an excerpt from the JamBase review:
Grateful Dead members Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart brought their Dead & Company project featuring John Mayer, Jeff Chimenti and Oteil Burbridge back on the road on Friday night. The six-piece kicked off a 24-date Summer Tour on Friday at PNC [...]
It’s no secret that the TSA wait lines are historically out of control right now and are forecast only to get worse throughout the summer. A quick Google News search on “tsa wait times” reveals 120+ articles that have been written in the past 30 days on the subject:
“So far in 2016, more than 70,000 passengers have missed flights and over 40,000 checked bags.” “TSA airport incompetence hit an all-time high this year.” “The TSA has achieved breathtaking new levels of inconvenience in 2016, with wait times sometimes as high as 120 minutes.”The best way to beat the long lines this summer is to have access to TSA [...]
As of March 22, 2016, the AAdvantage award redemption rates will change for a vast number of regions and cabins. In general, the cost to redeem miles for seats on American Airlines and their Oneworld partner members will increase. The most significant increases will be imposed on First Class cabin redemptions. We are providing a map that shows the number of miles it will take to travel between the Contiguous 48 U.S. states and other zones in the world:
Here’s the new chart in table format. All prices are roundtrip and based upon travel originating in the Contiguous 48 U.S. states:
ZoneEconomy Off-PeakEconomyBusinessFirst African/a80k150k240k Asia [...]….but they also got less valuable at 168 properties. Starwood just released a list of properties that will be changing categories for award redemption purposes. The changes go into effect on March 1, 2016, meaning that you have about 10 days to either book at the current rate or 10 days to wait until booking at the new rate.
Here’s a map of all of the properties that are changing in value:
For those based in North America, the most interesting ones might be the properties in the US, Mexico and Canada that are decreasing in value:
COUNTRYSTATECITYPROPERTY2015 CATEGORY2016 CATEGORYChange MexicoCoahuilaSaltilloFour Points by Sheraton [...]Air Asia QZ 7529 Dept: Bali (DPS) 3:35 pm Arrv: Jakarta (CGK) 4:15 pm
We knew we needed to fly fro Bali to Jakarta for weeks (if not months), but for whatever reason never booked a flight. We were partly putting it off having heard not-so-great things about Jakarta and I guess we were a little nervous to go. In fact, up until the day before our flight, we were still deciding whether we should extend our stay in Bali/Ubud or fly to Singapore early or bite the bullet and go to Jakarta. We finally ended up booking our Air Asia flight the day before departure for $156.67 USD total (for the two of us).
Of $156 total, $99 [...]
Bangkok Airways Flight # PG 710 Mandalay-MDL to Bangkok-BKK Dept: 2:15 pm Arr: 4:40 pm Duration: 1 hr 55 min Airbus A320
Having just landed from our connecting flight from Heho-HEH into Mandalay-MDL, we made our way to baggage claim which had a ton of carousels but was deserted for us.
After grabbing our bags (from a domestic flight), we had to send everything through another security check… Mandalay airport is a bit bizarre in that you’ll have to send your bags through no less than 4 security checks when connecting domestically: one in Heho to pass through security, one when we landed in Mandalay (this is the most unnecessary seeming), one to get [...]
