I am starting to plan a trip to Thailand/China/North Korea/Japan for August and my goal was to snag a First Class seat on LH's new A380.

Looks like I'll have to look into other options.

"The [FRA-NRT] flight is almost fully booked through September with very strong bookings in first class," LH Chief Pilot and COO Juergen Raps told ATW Daily News onboard the flight from Berlin Schoenefeld to BRU.

I'm not going to give up yet, but it appears my ...

After starting A380 service between Los Angeles and Australia last year, Qantas will soon be doubling A380 flights on its Los Angeles-Melbourne route.

Right now, QF uses an A380 to fly from Los Angles to Melbourne three times a week. By spring next year, it will fly six times per week utilizing the 450-seat A380. The A380 is also used on flights between Los Angeles and Sydney.

I can't see how the Australian market can bear more capacity and maintain profitable price levels for tickets. I am still predicting that either Virgin Australia or Delta (more likely) will pull out. Delta Economy fares to Australia have been $699 r/t for weeks. That's great for consumers, but not for DL's bottom line.

Always looking for a way to make a few dollars (and I certainly cannot blame them), United is now hawking paid upgrades when you buy your ticket.

I bought this ticket a few days ago and received this "special premium seating" offer after I clicked through on the final purchase screen:

The price is about $780 more than I would pay, but I can imagine many will take advantage of this ...

I've always kept a close watch on my upgrade balance in the past, but since United's unlimited domestic upgrade (UDU) program started earlier this year, I have not had the need to use any of my banked upgrade instruments.

I was thinking about that this morning and decided to check my balance. To my dismay, one of my systemwide upgrades expired last month. And I had no idea...

I've got loads of systemwide and regional upgrades and my next systemwide upgrade expires next month. I have no use for it, so I plan to gift it to someone at IAD next week on the way back from my trip to Montreal ^{_{(unless one of you can suggest a better use)}}.

Learn from my mistake: keep track of your upgrade balance. I'm not feeling too bad because my only travel last month was on Continental, but I could have given it to someone else.

Yeah, I'm going to get political again.

Remember this post over a month ago? After the Faisal Shahzad incident I warned that the TSA would soon be taking over the passenger watchlist.

Now this from the TSA blog:

Secure Flight started rolling out in 2009 and I'm happy to announce that TSA is now performing 100% of the watchlist matching for domestic flights. (Airlines used to conduct all of the passenger watchlist matching)

What is watchlist ...