My friend and I recently “backpacked” (is it really backpacking if you’re staying at luxury hotels?) through California. Our last night was in Los Angeles, where we were to fly back to Toronto the next day. Note that L.A. is one of my least favourite places. It’s this vile mix glitzy with incredible poverty, is unwalkable, smelly, and dirty. It reminds me of Johannesburg (my other least favourite city).
I’m on my phone right now travelling, so I can’t make a substantive post. I was informed (their original source was on a Flyertalk post) that Lufthansa First Class availability is WIDE open in 2016, using the United search tool. This is special because Lufthansa First Class is usually only released 14 days or so before departure. I don’t know if this is bookable, or if it is bookable using Aeroplan. Once I get access to computer, if it’s still live, I’ll write more.
The Intercontinental Monterey the Clement is located right on the historic Cannery Row of Monterey, directly overlooking the water. It is a relatively new property, and arguably one of the finest hotels in Monterey. I stayed there for two nights during late April, and I had what can be best described as a weird, but all-around good stay.
A reader sent me an email about a glitch he’s been having searching for flights on Aeroplan (and I got his permission to post about it). It seems that if there’s a Premium Economy segment on one end, and a Business segment on the other, the entire itinerary prices as a Premium Economy redemption. Now, there’s not a whole lot of benefit out of this, although if there’s an affected routing that you were considering booking anyways, this can save you points.
A couple days ago, I was flying from Kingston YGK to Las Vegas LAS, via Toronto YYZ. Unfortunately, there was very heavy fog in YGK, and a flight from YYZ was diverted to Ottawa YOW, and there were rolling delays at YGK. As a result of the delays, there wasn’t going to be enough time to catch my connection to LAS. I approached Air Canada, and they suggested I wait for a couple hours (thank goodness I didn’t, the flight I was originally scheduled to fly, around 5PM, didn’t fly out until close to midnight!). I remembered reading about the Air Canada/VIA Rail Reprotection Agreement, which allows Air Canada passengers to use VIA Rail on a segment if it is significantly disrupted.
I recently made an award booking with Aeroplan, flying on Air Canada. The system automatically assigned me a middle seat (yuck!), so I went to Air Canada’s website to change my seat. For some weird reason, the system attempted to charge me to select a normal, non-privilege seat. Being the cheap guy that I am, I Tweeted Air Canada and got this response:
