Finally the last day of the Star MegaDO arrived.  Fortunately, for a select few it was discovered late on Thursday night that the morning sessions were being repeated in the afternoon, which meant more sleep!

After catching up on some of the lost sleep it was time to get down to the airport for lunch, marketplace and to hear Wolfgang Mayrhuber, Chairman and CEO of Lufthansa and Thierry Antinori, Lufthansa AG executive vice president of sales and marketing ...

 

Day 3 of the trip was by far the longest and most fun.  The 4:00am wake-up call was rather painful but we did need to be at the gate by 5am.  Today's activities included a charter flight that would start in Frankfurt, head to Oslo where we would pick up some folks and spend the morning with SAS and then head off to Toulouse for a visit to Airbus.  While we had official cabin crew for all of the legs, some of the Flyertalk moderators also participated as ...

 

Upon arrival into Frankfurt, we wandered down to the Lufthansa Welcome Lounge which was a nice breath of fresh air.  The Welcome Lounge has 28 showers for patrons to use.  I decided to skip the shower and get a bite to eat.  The food selection included fresh frutis, hot foods, and a plethora of bread (including fresh pretzels).  

After the lounge it was time to check-in to the hotel and then meet-up to start the day. 

As we all met ...

 

As some may have noticed, I've been a bit quiet this week and with good reason.  This week marked an amazing event, the The Star MegaDO. 

In a nutshell, this was an event that was hosted by Flyertalk, United, Continental, Lufthansa, SAS and Airbus.   It involved a charter plane, much press and all told somewhere north of 200 people.

The event started in Chicago on Tuesday the 3rd.  Unfortunately I was unable to attend this part, but ...

 

In the last year a lot of buzz has been surrounding in-flight internet.  To some it seems great, to some it is the end of the world.  Personally, I am somewhere in the middle.  While I appreciate the convenience it brings, I also dread the same convenience.  Why?  My time on airplanes is my "quiet" time and it lets me disconnect. Having the ability to be on the internet takes that away and also raised the possibility that I may ...

 

A few months ago I signed up for a service called Global Entry.  This is a service that the US Customs and Border Protection offers for a quicker entry when coming in from international destinations.  More info can be found here. 

When it was launched, only a few airports were equipped and it was very limited.  Over the last few months they have been able to install the facilities in many more airports.  The service is still in a ...

 

Obviously there is much "buzz" about Continental joining Star Alliance today.  I just received an email from Delta which made me laugh out loud as to how pathetic their attempt to steal some attention was.

Dear Mr. fozz,
Things may look a little different the next time you fly from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR).

As Delta and Northwest Airlines® join forces, we're working behind the scenes on an airport ...

 

Well it's official, Continental is now a part of Star Alliance.

In even more exciting news?  It appears that Star Alliance rewards are bookable on Continental's website!  I just pulled up a number of itineraries involving any number of Star carriers.

Kudos to CO for pulling this off and having this on day 1 of the migration!

 

One of my all-time favorite lines about Skyteam is "we were the kids that were picked last".  While an amusing line it is also quite true.  The carriers in Skyteam are the ones that were left out of Star and Oneworld.  Skyteam was also the last to be formed of the three.

As of 12:00am CDT earlier today, any thing related to Skyteam was being removed from Continental's website.  I have yet to run into someone, at least from the ...

 

I just returned from two back-to-back trips.  The first was a mileage run to Tokyo that started in Seattle and the second was a quick trip to San Francisco and back. 

My itinerary was:

   EWR-DTW-SEA on Northwest    SEA-IAH-NRT-IAH-SEA on Continental    SEA-JFK on Delta    JFK-SFO-EWR on United

Total mileage: 27.033 miles.  Total time: 4 days.  All of the ...

Earlier this week United announced that it was going to follow the Continental model of upgrades.  Free for all elites and automatic.   Up until now United and American (with the exception of AA"s top tier) used an "instrument" based upgrade system.

The instruments used to be paper certificates on United or stickets on AA.  As technology has progressed these became virtual yet the names remained. 

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so ...

With less than two weeks to go as a part of Skyteam, the time is ticking if you want to redeem for a Skyteam award.

Changing alliances has a bit of confusion surrounding it.  The biggest point of confusion is that some people believe they have to fly their Skyteam award by 10/24/09, which is the day Continental leaves Skyteam.  Not true, your award just needs to be ticketed by that date.

What does that mean?  You can book an award for up to 330 days out (this is the furthest out a airline reservation can be).  So if you want to book a trip for the spring or summer on Skyteam, now is the time. 

So if you wanted to book that trip to Tahiti, now would be the time.