I am back in the U.S. this week for Thanksgiving and am just grinning tonight that my little ploy worked.

My company booked me on a non-stop Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles tomorrow but I opted to change it to the evening United flight from Frankfurt to Washington tonight with a connection on the late flight to Los Angeles. While I likely would not have had a problem standing by for the business class upgrade on Lufthansa tomorrow, at least I knew I'd have business ...

I do not always blog about my weekends, but if I am not traveling overseas I am usually traveling around Europe. Last weekend, I had a trip planned to London, departing Friday evening and returning early Monday morning to get me back to the office in time for work.

One of the benefits of my job is having access to live LH flight loads. While that does not do me a lot of good when booking my cheap €99 fares weeks in advance, it is nice to take a look at loads before my ...

Continuing on the theme of bumps, Chicago O'Hare (ORD) might be a wise airport to connect in this summer if you are looking for a bump. It also might be the airport you want to avoid if you are concerned about getting to your destination on time.

Travelers at O'Hare International Airport face delays this summer that could be easily avoided if the airlines simply overcame their penchant for jamming too many flights into the most-congested hours, the Federal Aviation Administration ...

Sunday evening I travelled from BUR-SFO-IAD-PHL, including a redeye from SFO-IAD. United is currently running two redeyes from SFO-IAD Sunday evenings, a 767 departing at 2230 and a 757 departing at 2315. I am used to taking the 2230 flight, but chose the later flight for the following reasons:

To give me time to grab a snack in the Singapore Airlines' loungeSo I would not miss my connection to IAD if my flight from BUR was delayedI prefer the 757 to the ...

Yesterday I blogged about a LA Times story bemoaning the fact that more passengers are being bumped off of flights.

Just an hour after posting, I got a bump of my own. My Sunday evening IAD-PHL flight was zeroed out, but I wasn't expecting to be bumped (based on past flights that had been zeroed out and departed with a dozen empty seats) and did not even present myself to the gate agent before the flight. For those of you familiar with the A Terminal at Dulles, you know that 4-5 ...

After landing in Baltimore at 0115 this morning, I curled up in a quiet spot in the airport for a few hours before my 0600 departure to PHL on the obscenely expensive 90-mile BWI-PHL flight.

As I walked over to the deserted US Express gates, two rats scurrying around D36 greeted me. Lovely. I managed to fall asleep quickly, but was awakened an hour later by the cleaning crew, loudly discussing the Baltimore Ravens and how hot Beyonce was. For good measure, every other word was a ...