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wrmccombie

January 26, 2008 Mileage Run!

First mileage run of the year. See www.flyertalk.com for information on what a mileage run is. In any case, the simple version is a flight or flights primarily to acquire frequent flyer miles. In my case, since I have literally more than a million frequent flyer miles in various account, acquiring more frequent flyer miles means acquiring EQMs or EQPs, which are elite qualifying miles or points towards premier frequnt flyer qualification.

So this is a mileage run. I left JFK this morning at 7:30 AM on AA 33 for LAX. I got to the JFK secujrity line (I had printed my b oarding passes the night before) and was through the business class security line in under 5 minutes. Very professional and friendly job by the TSA folks: credit where credit is due. Went to the Admirals club for a quick coffee and to download some work related emails to work on during the flight to La. Flight left on time. I was in business and it was a nice flight. I was able to do a large amount of work in the flight. We got into LAX about on time. Spent some time on the tarmac though and got to the gate about 10-15 minutes late. AA has a pretty small operation at LAX though so it wasn't a problem to get to the Admirals Club, send a few emails and get back to my flight to San Francisco.
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AA 104 JFK-LHR January 21, 2007

I booked this a while ago in B class since I wasn't sure or my exact schedule. Requested an upgrade at the time but it, and all the other flights tonight were pretty full. I checked a couple days ago and all the flights on AA to LHR tonight were sold out in business and first. The upgrade on my first flight as an EXP wasn't looking good althought there was always the possibility of a cancellation or misconnect.

Arrived at JFK at about 5:30 and checked in at the first class check-in in terminal 8. The CS agent told me that I had two reservations; one in business clas and one in coach. I told her I only knew of one in coach but I had requested an upgrade. She said I would have to check at the gate for an upgrade and gave me a coach boarding pass.

I asked in the Admirals Club what the two reservations story was and they said that maybe they had reserved a seat for me in business in case I wanted to pay for it. She said that an upgrade was really unlikely but coach had a lot of room and offered to put me in a C seat and block the row. I didn't think people would stay out of the row so I asked for and was given a two seat row on the side. I had the aisle and she blocked the window.

I went to the gate before the flight was called and they were already boarding coach as one group. I boarded and waited. While waiting someone with a walkie talkie came on board, got an FA and the two of them approached a young Arab looking man in coach an talked to him briefly. The man and the woman with the walkie talkie then left the plane. A short time later she came back and got his coat and backpack. The pilot announced that we were waiting for the ground crew to remove the luggage of someone who "decided not to join us tonight". I think that would qualify as a euphemism.

Iin the meantime they paged another passenger and asked him t come to the front of the plane. I recognized him as an EXP (luggage tags) that came through security right behind me. He got the last upgrade. I realize in retrospect that being new to the whole EXP thing I screwed up. I should have called the EXP desk to ask about the phantom business class reservation. I would still like to know what that was about. In any case coach with two seats is pretty good.

We were additionally delayed while they checked on a maintainence issue and then quite a while waiting for clearance. Finally left the gate about an hour late. Meal service was good for coach. Pleasant crew. Had a choice of chicken and rice or beef and mashed potatoes. Took the former. The ride was a bit bumpy and the seat belt sign was on for a long time. After a while people just started to ignore it. The light was on for almost half of the flight. It was turned off for a bit then came back on during a stretch of fairly heavy turbulance and stayed on.

We crossed the Irish coast just south of Galway as the colors of sunrise were just beginning to appear. It cleared enough that the outline of the coast was visible in the darkness with the patches of light from the cities spreading below. The yellow lights of the cities and the oranges and red of the sunrise were beautiful. One object was visible in the sky. I thought at first that it was a star but I think now it must be a planet. It is fairly low in the southernsky and may have a reddish tint but it is tough to tell through the window. I'm guessing it is Mars but I will have to check the charts to confirm that.

They served a croissant, juice and another beverage as we were going over Ireland. We crossed the Irish see and it was fairly light by the time we crossed the coast of Great Britian. Not sure if it was over England or northern Wales. South of the bay that Liverpool is near. There was enough light and it cleared enough to see the coast. It looked very grey and cold.

We landed at Heathrow with minimal delay from air traffic. We were about an hour late. The wait at immigration was very short. I wasn't in the Fast Track line and notice that it seemed a lot longer than the regular line.

Nile Crocodile in Zambia

IMG_6112

This is a good sized Nile crocodile on the edge of a river at night in Zambia. We were night-spotting for different animals when we came across this one. The croc is lit with a spotlight from the Land Rover we were in, the bird is lit with separate light (Streamlight TL-3) that was handheld.

AA107

As empty as the flight to LHR was the return on AA 107 was packed. More or less a sold out flight. I had been waiting for my upgrade to clear and it had when I checked in about three hours before the flight... To be continued,