Kinglobjaw's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘us airways’

Today was the grand opening of Best Buy’s newest Chicagoland location- John Hancock Center. I didn’t go for the same reason I didn’t blog for the last few days and wouldn’t fly even if I had a confirmed First Class ticket for today or yesterday! What? I was worried it could have been the swine flu. Luckily, it wasn’t. Seriously, I haven’t been this sick in a long time- but it’s better now, hence the blog entry.

So while I didn’t go today due to my illness, I don’t think I’d go even if I was fit to fly. The reason? The pre-grand opening event that took place last Thursday. As a Silver Premier shopper at Best Buy I was invited to a private event. First fifty Silver Premier members received a $50 Best Buy gift card- I was # 53. For those who don’t know Silver premier is like an elite level of the Reward Zone program, kind of like US Airways Silver Preferred.

The doors opened at 6:02PM and I swear, I haven’t seen this many Best Buy employees at all stores combined as I saw that night. All of them introduced themselves to the customers and shook our hands. Within seconds, I had three or four “personal shoppers” following me around offering tasteful suggestions and doing zero product hawking. I can’t believe I spent almost two hours at Best Buy just chatting with the employees and shopping around. It was that much fun! I ended up with three large bags of purchases and additional products on the way in the mail. While the prices were not reduced, the offers and incentives were plentiful. Turns, out they had a similar event the previous night for building residents and offered cheese, crackers and wine. I never thought Best Buy would pull it off in such a classy manner.

That same evening I was approved for the Best Buy store charge card offering 0% interest for 18 months on purchases over $499. Expected, but still a nice surprise.

In addition, I had a chance to chat with the store manager about the Reward Zone program. It was probably the only thing that was unpleasant that evening. Not the chat itself, she was wonderful, but it turns out they’ve actually put Premier Black member level on hold. Premier Black was supposed to be a higher level, like Chairman’s at US Airways (by that I mean a prestigious level) where members who spend $7,500 or more in a year at Best Buy get additional benefits.

A funny tidbit. As I was chatting with the manager, another employee started taking shots of me and my overloaded Best Buy bags. Maybe I’ll be featured in an ad booklet come next Sunday?

I was very impressed with the event and Best Buy handled this very well. Maybe I’m being a bit too optimistic, but any troubles I’ve had with Best Buy in the past few months are water under the bridge at this point.

That said, I wish I brought my camera to take some pictures. Oh yeah, and what happened with the Best Buy yellow logo? Nowhere to be found at this location!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

This was posted on FlyerTalk a few hours ago. A grad school student is conducting a survey for passengers who fly US Airways and/or Southwest been Southern California and Phoenix or Las Vegas. You can learn more about the survey here. Mr. Victor Farn’s contact information is also there.

There is a $100 gift certificate incentive, but I recommend helping the guy out anyway! Aside from your name and email address, no personal information is requested.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

As of right now, US Airways flight US726 has just under two hours left until it arrives in Birmingham. Water salute on arrival? Maybe!

Anyway, the flight which is a seasonal service operated by an ETOPS 757 seems to have to gone out with two empty Envoy seats and a rather light load in coach.

The flight is operated five times per week (doesn’t operate outbound on Mondays and Wednesday, thus no returns on Tuesdays & Thursdays). We all know what the means, right? It means tonight’s crew gets an extra night in Birmingham!

Personally, Birmingham, UK sounds interesting as it might be getting some heavy “action” in the upcoming months with an A380 service planned to/from the Middle East and a Greek airline possibly starting 747 service into the airport. When it comes to North American nonstop services, the only other airline- Continental, flies year round from Newark.

Hope US does well on the route.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

This is an update to the post on getting 10K Northwest miles the cheapest way.

Merchant #6 is FootLocker. You can search for keyword “sport bands” or look at item directly here.

The cost is $0.99+ tax and shipping is free. While checking out, they will inform you that shipping is $4.99, but select “Standard” and on the final page (before confirmation/purchase) you will see that the shipping becomes $0.00.

So that’s 6 merchants, 4 to go and I’ve confirmed with NWA that all 6 are pending and will post since I’m not returning anything.

How to make this US Airways related? Following the completion of the NWA promotion and Delta promotion I will dedicate an entire post to comparing online shopping malls for major US carriers and Marriott.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

US Airways will soon receive it’s first batch of the brandnew Airbus A330-200 (A332) which is a slightly meaner, leaner version of the A330-300 (A333). This will allow US Airways to fly nonstop long haul nonstops such as Philadelphia to Tel Aviv or to Beijing (should they choose to use this aircraft for that route). Regardless of what they decide for the future, US Airways is running this plane to San Juan even before they start using it to Tel Aviv. Obviously it makes sense as they need the crews to get acquianted with the new “bird” and it’s a smart business decision to run iton San Juan flights- US1071/1024. I swair, I have these two flights memorized! Those two flights, the outbound and return were previously flown by the A333, so US isn’t really wasting capcity by using a “heavy”.

And while coach class will only take in a whiff of brand new leather on the seats and that new plane smell, starting in June passengers up front in Envoy (seat is Envoy, service is domestic First) will get to enjoy a different kind of business class seat on US Airways. Tempe HQ is staying silent, but an airplane seat manufacturing company said the seats wil be fully flat and supposedly in a suite style setting. Looking at USAirways.com’s current Envoy seat map for the A332, it’s showing a 2-2-2 configuration so I doubt it will be suite like, but I’ll never really know till I try it, will I?

Based on schedules, the brand new US Airways A332 starts flying daily to San Juan as US1071 and back as US1024 on Sunday, June 7, 2009. It’s daily throught June and beginning of July with the exception of a few dates. Here are the details:

6/7/2009 – 6/15/2009 Daily A332

6/16/2009- 6/17/2009 B757 on both days, no A332 service

6/18/2009-7/1/2009 Daily A332

7/2/2009 B757 on this day, no A332 service

7/3/2009-7/5/2009 Daily A332 on all three days

After 7/5/2009 the flight goes back to B757 as the A332 starts flying to Tel Aviv daily on the evening of the 5th of July. We could see the A332 flying to San Juan again in Fall of 2009 as US Airways takes delivery of additional A332′s.

I’m tempted to hop down to San Juan just to check out the product in Envoy. If I can’t do that, I’ll try to arrange a tour with the US Airways Philadelphia Satellite Headquarters while the A332 is on the ground in Philly. I’ll schedule enough time connecting time on my way to Los Angeles or maybe on return portion. Whatever works for them and reasonable enough for me.

Here’s a picture of the aircraft itself, courtesy PictAero,

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

While certain members on Airliners.net reported seeing United flights scheduled between Pittsbugh-Los Angeles and Pittsburgh- San Fransisco, I’ve been silently, yet decidedly calling it BS! Maybe I was scared? I thought, surely this will mean one thing- US Airways will drop both routes it so desperately promised to retain.

Turns out it might be true. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran the article today. Looking at USAirways.com (both the old and Beta sites) I don’t see any flights on August 18, 2009, but I do see some in Sepetember and December of 2009. Maybe they haven’t zero’ed them out yet!

Anyway, if US Airways goes through with the pull out, it will only mean one thing- now more non hub/focus city routes out of Pittsburgh on mainline. The only non hub/focus city flying from Pittsburgh will be done by US Airways Express partner Trans States Airlines to Hartford/Springfield, Raleigh/Durham and St. Louis. I’m willing to bet those three cities will be soon cut as well. The nonstop to Las Vegas is also questionable, as Las Vegas’s status as a hub as US Airways is heading in Pittsburgh’s direction- more flight cuts. Then again one of the FA’s on my KOA flight last week did say FA’s were told some LAS flying would be added back.

I’m flying to Los Angeles in July, so I’m thinking of creating a routing to somehow make it on the Pittsburgh to Los Angeles flight. This would be to honor the last direct Pittsburgh service.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

I’ve also found the new Hawaiian themed meals to be a much needed upgrade from the previous flights. Kudos to US Airways for this change!

Finally, KOA has no gates, which is what I love! I just love air stairs!

Kinglobjaw says Aloha from Kona, Hawaii!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

A recent discussion on Airliners.net about US Airways’ presence at Chicago- O’Hare got me thinking; how will the airlines and airport authority handle Delta’s move to Terminal 2 to join merger partner Northwest.

I know that Continental will be moving to Terminal 1 to join United, so the the lounge operated together by Northwest and Continental will become a Delta SkyClub. I assume, Delta will prefer to pick up additional ‘E’ gates instead of moving to the F councourse . This makes sense due to the proximity of the lounge.

Since US Airways uses two (at times three) ‘E’ gates, this will surely cause trouble and limitations for Delta. The combined US Airways and America West need more gate space than what pre-merger US Airways had. I’m also sure US Airways would welcome an opportunity to consolidate gates into one specific concourse as walking from ‘E’ to ‘F’ or vice versa is a bit of a schleep!

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks and I think it would be best for Air Canada to move to the E concourse, so United Express can operate out of Air Canada’s gates. That would free up F6 and F12 so US could use it permanently instead of sharing it with United Express.

Also, what would happen with Delta’s ‘L’ gates? From what I’ve heard, American Airlines would try to pick up most of them, but couldn’t JetBlue relocate from ‘E’ to the ‘L’ area to make room for Delta?

With the O’Hare’s largest carriers cutting back on flights, it does make sense to consolidate gate space and allow for those who are still operating at maximum capacity to ‘move about freely’. No pun intended.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Two hours ago, I mentioned that I renewed my US Airways Club membership and took advantage of a lucrative offer of 1,500 preferred qualifying miles. Just wanted to let you know I got my receipt and shortly after that my 1,500 preferred miles posted to my Dividend Miles account.

Very fast! It seems to me that every day something is improved in US Airways’ systems. Shopping Mall purchases post quicker than last year, car rentals post in days rather than weeks. A big thumbs up to US Airways!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

I was just going through today’s when I got a call from a Sarah M. from the US Airways Marketing Dept at US Airways Tempe Headquarters. US Airways normally doesn’t call me and my caller ID displayed ‘PRIVATE’ so I have to admit I was afraid of scam at first. I wasn’t asked any private information, but Sarah actually confirmed the emails on the account so I knew I was in friendly “skies”.

The call was actually for my Mom, but since I handle all of our frequent flyer/stayer/reward accounts, Sarah was nice enough to discuss the matter with me. Apparently my Mom is a heavy spender with US Airways and Barclays MasterCard and was gifted two Fall Out Boy concert tickets. Since the concert takes place in Chicago, I guess our location had something to do with this selection.

Personally, I’m not a fan of their music and my Mom doesn’t even know who they are (when I mentioned we got 2 tickets to Fall Out Boy she asked me what city is nicknamed this way?). I’m going to email Sarah and ask if we can “trade” the tickets for some Dividend Miles, or maybe I can remove our names from the tickets and give them away to some of the my blog readers. (In exchange for lifetime loyalty to US Airways, of course!) If I do get to give them out to blog readers, I’ll post more details aside from the May 11, 2009 date.

Very nice surprise from US Airways.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark