March 3rd was the big day when United and Continental merged their IT systems. It came and went without a hitch for most.

At first, I thought all was good for me. My EQMs PQMs got transferred over. My lifetime mileage balance was the same, and all of my itineraries were merged. Then as my travel resumed and I began my normal day to day activity, I realized that things were not so unified.

My first hint was my trip to the Red Carpet Club United Club. I got there and gave them ...

I walked into the SFO United Club today, and as usual, I gave them my boarding pass to scan for my membership. Usually this is a two second process, but the agent asked me if I was a member. I said that I was, and she said she needed my Mileage Plus number. I did my best to try and remember my new number, but she stopped me and said, "No... the old one..." I remembered that one.

After I sat down, I logged into the T-Mobile WiFi. Once again, I tried my new number. No go. I tried the old one. Success.

I'm sure there will be similar cases of this over the next couple weeks. It looks like it's not quite time to un-remember that old Mileage Plus number yet! 

We just finished up a long weekend at the W Hotel in Austin, Texas, and we really had a great stay there. This stay was actually a combination of a paid stay for business and a points stay for pleasure. Luckily, we didn't have to change rooms when the stays switched over.

The hotel is situated in the heart of Downtown Austin, not far from most of the office buildings, a plethora of great restaurants, and the Sixth Street Nightlife. It's only a ...

Thanks to Ben, I noticed that Starwood had posted their annual set of category changes. Starwood, like most hotel chains, assigns a category to each hotel, and this category is roughly designed to reflect the prestige / cost / location of the property. For example, as New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world, the aloft Harlem there is a category 3 category 5 hotel, but while Le Meridiens are typically nice, because Thailand is relatively inexpensive, the Le Meridien Chiang ...

I don't typically blog about my boring business travel. Every now and then there's something surprising like an emotional support dog or WiFi on a United filght, but today I just felt that not only was the service really great on the United (Continental) flight from Phoenix to Houston, but the food was also great as well. Combine that with the fact that the Continental 737-900 is my favorite domestic plane in the post-merger fleet. That makes for a bloggable flight.

It's been a long ...