I'll be in London for a few days, I read it's possible to pay something like 60GBP for a day pass, if you have a membership already.
But I was wondering how it works, are there any restrictions on the time you can use the facilities (i.e. 3 hours or whatever?), can you come back again later in the day? Or are you limited to using it the one time you visit?
I was recently searching for some Alaska awards between LHR to JFK, but upon looking, basically there are zero award fares being made available for the entire calendar year.
While I understand that awards are contingent upon partner availability, every other US route like BOS/PHL/CLT, etc. still has awards. And what stands out is that you can still route via JFK to these other US destinations.
Second, it seems to be partner agnostic, it would make sense if it was just BA or just AA, but basically no European airline has partner availability in any class whether it's BA/AA/AY/EL/IB etc.
If you search NYC area airports, you'll get routing to EWR only, not even LGA.
Not sure if this is something going on in the back-end, or if Alaska has some kind of block on LHR to JFK.
Crosspost for images
I was recently searching for some Alaska awards between LHR to JFK, but upon looking, basically there are zero award fares being made available for the entire calendar year.
While I understand that awards are contingent upon partner availability, every other US route like BOS/PHL/CLT, etc. still has awards. And what stands out is that you can still route via JFK to these other US destinations.
Second, it seems to be partner agnostic, it would make sense if it was just BA or just AA, but basically no European airline has partner availability in any class whether it's BA/AA/AY/EL/IB etc.
If you search NYC area airports, you'll get routing to EWR only, not even LGA.
Not sure if this is something going on in the back-end, or if Alaska has some kind of block on LHR to JFK.
It recently came out that both American and Delta are planning to increase their premium cabin sizes again and install 24 First Class seats on their 737 MAX 10s, which is a significant bump from their usual 16 to 20 FC configurations
Most Alaska aircraft today only have 12 to 16 First Class seats. Alaska's current 737 MAX 10 configuration plans to only have 16 First Class seats. That means AA and DL would have at least 50% more First Class seats to sell both for revenue and for upgrades on the same aircraft.
Having more premium seats would be good both for Alaska as a business for revenue/costs, but also for the elite members to have more upgrade opportunities. It's relevant since Alaska and AA are interchangeable on a lot of routes and codeshare vs Delta also competes on many of the same routes, so people probably compare across these options a lot of the time.
Given the substantial delays on this aircraft model, is there time for Alaska to changes its mind and have more premium aircraft delivered?
I'm moving to a building that has discounted Equinox membership as the amenity rather than an in-building gym, so pricing would come out to be
For whatever reason, they are giving the bigger discount for the cheaper membership. $100 savings per month seems reasonable if I don't use other locations.
This isn't a complaint post, but I recently saw that Delta is launching new longhaul routes from their new focus city in AUS.
And that's an opportunity that people down in SAN or PDX won't really get because being in an Alaska hub, Alaska is a shorthaul carrier, and there simply just aren't enough widebody planes to go around.
By population size, the Portland metro is about the same as Austin metro. And San Diego is even bigger. So all of these cities should have pretty comparable longhaul demand, even if it's to different destinations.
In fact, PDX used to have quite a longhaul presence with flights to Asia just a few decade ago.
Because SAN is a dual Southwest and Alaska hub, and both are still primarily shorthaul airlines, there just doesn't seem to be much optionality for it to become a longhaul hub.
Certainly there are some partner flights, and Alaska does try and woo it's partners to start flights. Like I bet the Condor PDX to FRA wouldn't exist without the Alaska partnership. JAL has a cool SAN to NRT flight. But the international presence feels quite limited otherwise.
This is just random thoughts anyways, I find it an interesting situation since I think Alaska does a pretty respectable job as a domestic carrier, especially at PDX, where things run very smoothly, but there's also a world where I wonder if there could be a lot more international expansion opportunities, where if there was a full-fledged hub from one of the big 3 airlines, who have the ability to launch longhaul flying much more easily.
Is my husband crazy? He lived in Manhattan for a few months years ago and says he knows transit system well, therefore he wants to cheap out and take train/subway to our midtown hotel. Car service is $90ish. Chat says the following, is this accurate? We will have one large and one medium sized luggage + backpacks and two teens.
If your flight **lands at JFK at 5:00 PM**, I’d plan on being at your Midtown hotel around **7:00–7:45 PM** by public transportation.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about this, one of the big reasons to book business class or higher is for the lieflat for the sleep and rest.
Because of direction of travel, eastbound longhaul flights are empirically shorter duration than going westbound (often an hour or so of difference). In addition, the timezones often make it so that the schedule is optimized for sleep going eastbound. So for me, I sleep about 80%+ of the flight (or at least try to)
On the flip side, while the F hard product is better and more spacious, the business class seats have evolved to the point where they are already adequate for sleep most of the time. As such, I find the product differentiation to be the soft product in terms of service.
So then, this poses another issue, on eastbound flights where you spend most of the time sleeping, how much of the service experience can you actually utilize?
Especially on short TATL redeyes, where flights are often only 6 to 8 hours, that's barely any time to have service, often you're choosing across, both services, one, or none. Otherwise the hour that service takes up really cuts into your sleep time (which is the point of the J/F hard product).
There are some longer TATL flights from the West Coast that are closer to 9 to 11 hours, where I could see more reasonable 2 to 3 hours of service without cutting into sleep. And Asia flights are noticeably longer by a few hours as well. What's notable is that J and F pricing can also be quite disparate.
For example, JAL J is 55k miles on JMB, but 140k miles in F, at 2.5x the cost you really need to make sure that the experience is well worth the premium, and it's hard to do when you sleep 8 hours out of a 12 hour flight, with an hour for take-off/landing blocked as well. And if you don't sleep, you're defeating the purpose of even having a lieflat to begin with. As a result, F feels like diminishing returns on a massively increased markup over J.
So the question becomes, at what trip length and price point do you consider F to be worthwhile?
Have two itineraries to compare, with final destination as NYC
So while I understand you can't double dip with Amex FHR by booking separate back to back stays, I'm wondering, how does it work when a hotel offers its own credit.
For example, a hotel is offering a $300 credit on two night stays, when booking directly with them, and if I book another separate booking via Amex FHR, which gives another $100 credit, would they combine together for $400? Or would it simply be the higher amount $300 that takes precedence? Does anyone have experience with this kind of booking?
So while I understand you can't double dip with Amex FHR by booking separate back to back stays, I'm wondering, how does it work when a hotel offers its own credit.
For example, a hotel is offering a $300 credit on two night stays, when booking directly with them, and if I book another separate booking via Amex FHR, which gives another $100 credit, would they combine together for $400? Or would it simply be the higher amount $300 that takes precedence? Does anyone have experience with this kind of booking?
Weighing two options.
40k AA miles for Qantas J on CTS to SYD, would need to buy a separate ticket for HND to CTS repo same day.
Other option is to just do a HND to SYD cash ticket. JAL has the cheapest biz option at $2300 or QF economy at about $600.
It would be a lot of cost savings, but more logistical hassle to do a domestic to international transfer at CTS.
In this, they actually cited my encounter from last year.
It seems interesting that the reactions have changed a lot over time. When I observed this kind of poor behavior, the top comments were defending this, saying "people are on a tight budget". It was actually wild, you had people citing "generational trauma" and the Great Depression as to why people would flagrantly break the rules to pilfer and hoard food.
But in the most recent situation, it seems people have started coming around to recognizing that this is not acceptable.
At the end of the day, the rules are there for a reason, when people start breaking them, that gives hotels ample reason to axe benefits and quality.
While Hokkaido is traditionally known for their winter and ski season, I had the opportunity to visit Hokkaido in the summer for the "green season", and I was very happy with the overall experience.
I won't go super in-depth as this is a very well-known property, but instead focus on a few quirks and thoughts about the experience as it relates to summertime.
Transportation: the hotel offers free private transfers for Globalists to/from the near by JR Kutchan station, which is a 10 minute drive. This is worth planning in advance, as Hokkaido is aging and more rural, the train frequencies are not like Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka, there can be long wait times of up to 40ish minutes if you misconnect or miss the train. You also cannot just use your IC cards like Suica, you must purchase a paper ticket between Otaru and Kutchan. Door to door to/from the Park Hyatt to/from CTS, I'd say it takes about 3 to 3.5 hours by train, driving will take about 2 hours. Make sure to given yourself plenty of time.
Dining: because Hanazono is a resort town, you will most likely be eating on-site for most meals. As such, it's important to flag there are a lot of irregular hours and cadence for the restaurants, many of the restaurants on-site are only open for dinner and/or open certain days of the week. In addition, because many of the restaurants are closed, the few that are open can get quite busy at night, so you do need to make reservations, even though the property may not appear to be very full.
On-site activities: the property is next to Hanazono 308, which helps facilitate a lot of the summer activities like bike rentals, hiking tours, ziplining, etc. There's a website you can check out here. Prices are surprisingly reasonable if you split it across a small group or family. For example, the Shinsen-numa hike with private transfer and tour guide comes out to $40ish per person for a family of 4.
Prices: I paid about $250/night and used a Suite Upgrade award, which is incredible value. Although, I feel like base rooms themselves already seem quite large, so SUAs may simply be unncessary. In addition, given the lower vacancy, you can probably snag a complimentary upgrade as well. Worth flagging that the food prices on-site are not cheap with 10% service charges and taxes, you're easily looking at $30/meal/person, if not significantly more.
Service/vibes: the property primarily only had Asian or local visitors during the summer, whereas in winter, this place will be full of Westerners like Americans and Australians. Many guests seemed to be from Taiwan and Korea. This is also a kid-friendly resort, expect there to be a ton of kids on the property, running around or doing summer activities. The breakfast buffet even has a kids section.
Overall, I expect this place to eventually become increasingly popular due to the Japanification effect with tourism, and prices will inevitably rise to the ridiculous rates we see in other parts of Japan, but otherwise, this is a 10/10 hotel, even if it's not for their peak ski season.
| Flight | Thoughts | Cost | Alternative Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA to TPE (China Airlines business class on A359) | Nominally the "worst" of the 3 Taiwanese airlines, but the standard is so high that I still put it in the top 10% of global airlines | 62.5k Flying Blue miles + $129 USD | A SEA to TPE roundtrip is about $5k, so one-way is $2500 |
| TPE to CTS (EVA Air business class on 78X) | Widebody comfort on a 4 hour flight with top tier service, hard to beat | 20.25k Lifemiles + $50 (this no longer exists since Lifemiles likes to be all over the place with pricing) | A TPE to CTS round trip is about $1400, so one-way is $700 |
| CTS to HND (JAL domestic F on A359) | Pretty great for a 1.5 hour flight | $229 | Worth it to me since an economy ticket is only $100 less. Or it can be booked for 20k AA miles, which I don't find worth it. Until the Shinkansen extension happens, flying will trump train. |
| HND to JFK (JAL First Class on A350) | This is the premiere award redemption people hunt for these days for a reason | 135k Asia Miles + $200 (high cost, but worth it to guarantee) | About $24k for a JFK to HND roundtrip, so a one-way is $12k |
| Hotel | Thoughts | What I paid |
|---|---|---|
| Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono | Hokkaido is actually quite lovely in the summer, and it transforms into a summer resort with tons of outdoor activities like hiking, biking, boating, etc. Very nature, PNW-vibes, 100% worth it in the summer | $250/night |
| Andaz Tokyo | Personally, I'm falling out of love with this hotel more and more as I stay there constantly, it's fine for what it is, I think people fawn over the nice city views, but that's about it. I will not be returning here anymore. Honestly, might be it for me for Hyatt in Tokyo. | $400/night |
This is in response to a post I just saw, but realistically, I see this stance parroted all the time. Almost every adjacent sub talking about transit, urbanism, or cities keeps glazing Seattle as if it's really good, when in reality it's remarkably average at best, and extremely flawed in certain areas. What really helps support Seattle is solid urban form, but the actual public transit experience is average to even mediocre in certain areas. I'm convinced that most people have never even set foot in Seattle, or at best visited one or two tourist areas, the real ability to reliably use public transit in Seattle as daily driver to get to work, run errands, etc. isn't there yet outside of very select areas.
This post will highlight the clearly weak aspects because most of the things that work well are already known.
First, to be clear, the Seattle "transit" is primarily a bunch of bus ridership, yes, the light rail ridership is growing, but it does not serve as a real urban mobility mechanism, most trips by transit are going to require the bus. The neighborhoods with the highest density of foot traffic during during the weekdays and residential population like Belltown/Denny/SLU are very poorly served by rail. Many of the big tech offices like Google's are over a mile away from any of the rail stations. (I'm aware of the Ballard link extension, but that's going to take a decade and it's still going to slash one of the two stations serving this area even though this area would absolutely support the necessity).
Next, the rail system itself isn't particularly fast. A car trip from city center to the airport takes about 20 to 25 minutes, the light rail will take pretty much an hour because of the slower speeds and wait times. A Seattle to Eastside trip will also take close to an hour by rail vs 25 minutes by driving. And this is ignoring the frequent delays and slowdowns for other cars on the rail.
Moving on, bus system is remarkably poor during peak hours. The buses barely operate on time during off-hours like a random 2pm afternoon on a weekend. During real peak usage periods that would matter the most like getting home from the office at 5pm on a Tuesday, buses can be 10 to 15 minutes late, which completely defeats the purpose for short bus rides of 1 to 2 miles. Your choice is wait 10 minutes, pay $3 to take a 20 minute bus ride, or you could walk 30 minutes for your trip that takes just over a 1 mile, it's not great.
A big reason for this is that the bus stops themselves are poorly spaced, there are areas in Seattle where a bus will stop on back to back blocks, which leads to the buses being incredibly slow. A 10 minute trip by driving from city center to North Seattle can take half an hour on a bus because it has unnecessarily has 20 stops for an extremely short trip. And this is ignoring the additional walking and wait time to get to and from the stops.
In addition, the actual fare enforcement is terrible. Many people simply do not pay when they get on the bus or light rail, and I'm not talking about underprivileged people scraping by, these are clearly normal to well-off people that clearly can afford to pay and simply choose not to. The buses especially are conducive to this since many are extremely long and have boarding doors behind the driver, so there's no scrutiny.
And so, this all culminates to extremely poor safety on the buses, when no one is paying fares or following rules, you get tons of dangerous or unstable individuals on board.
In general, Seattle's urban form is what helps it a lot, the actual city of Seattle isn't large, block sizes make sense. The city has done a decent job at building mixed used residential with commercial. For example, the waterfront reclamation project was fantastic, so it doesn't feel like you're in an urban hellscape. But the actual ability to get around between neighborhoods by public transit is incredibly poor. Much of Seattle's transit quality has to do with the ability to walk around with your two legs.
In conclusion, Seattle's transit is completely average at best. Yes, the new 2 line across the lake is a great addition and important infrastructure. But the people talking about how "great" it is really have no idea what they're talking about.
I'm not sure if it's a skill issue or not, but I'm finding it increasingly harder and harder to redeem AA miles on partners, especially to Asia. JAL awards are transient and often phantom, BA awards are terrible given the surcharges, Qantas awards are increasingly rare now, CX J/F availability is blocked out, there's still sweet spots to be had, but a lot of the time, it's accessible with other partners too.
Ironically, my best AA flights have all come from Alaska redemptions like 45k Alaska miles from East Coast to LHR.
I know AA's Flagship offering isn't strictly the best, but I find reasonable availability on them for business as low as 35k, F around 50k. Sometimes 10kish or so higher, but still reasonable, given Flagship flights are priced around $1.5k to 2k each way, they seem like decent usages of them.
Given I fly transcon a lot, my burndown plan on AA is just to use most of my AA miles on JFK to LAX/SFO transcons whenever there's availability at a cheaper price, rather than hunting for JAL sweet spots and other stuff.
I know they've done SFO to BOS in the past, but it wasn't very consistent, and wasn't always on all frequencies either. I'm not sure I've ever seen LAX to BOS on anything other than domestic F as well.
From what I can see now, it's on every single frequency, not just a few. And schedule-wise, it starts from October 25th and goes all the way to calendar open in May 2027. I wonder if United saw that a lot of people are booking away to JetBlue Mint on SFO to BOS because of the partnership, so they need to keep up with the hard product.
LAX to BOS also makes a lot of sense since it competes w/ Delta One, AA Flagship, and JetBlue Mint, so this will be much more competitive. Regardless, a really great sign since those transcon flights to BOS can be over 6 hours long.
I suspect these will be the next set of routes targeted for the Coastliners after EWR to SFO/LAX get them.
I'm comparing three options right now:
I'm gravitating towards the SWU because that expires, but they all seem like very reasonable prices to be honest.
Comparing two itineraries, while I know F is clearly better than J, there are some reasons why I'm not immediately set yet
Overall, Cathay seems like slightly less friction of an itinerary, but ANA F is markedly better. Fwiw though, I've flown ANA F a lot, so the novelty factor is lower.