Mike behind the curtain
search-multiple-city-pairs

Back in 2009 I wrote a quick post on using ITA to search for flights for an American Airlines Challenge by specifying some advanced options. ITA has a number of routing rules (or codes) that can be used to tailor your search requirement. Since I constantly have to remind myself of some of the codes I thought I'd make a quick "cheat sheet" here.

1) Search by month

For those of you new to ITA and searching for mileage runs your first stop should always be the calendar search function. ...

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As you may have noticed I haven't produced any of our three podcasts in a while. We had a limited audience for the podcasts and the scheduling, recording, editing and production were very time consuming. As such I've spent more of my time on the blogs, finding new bloggers and preparing some new features that we'll be launching this summer.

In the mean time Sara from The Crew Lounge has published her own e-book on surviving your first year as a flight attendant. It's a great read for ...

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Flying is fun again.

I flew from JFK to Washington D.C. (DCA) yesterday for the Freddie Awards and wrote some notes on how quick and enjoyable my airport experience was. Then, as I was sorting my files, I noticed another draft post from February entitled "Flying Is Fun". Ironically (or perhaps worrisome that I can't remember what I wrote two months ago) it's almost the exact same post. Yesterday, after arriving at the airport my experience was:

10:55am - Arrived at Terminal 8 ...

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acela

On a recent trip from New York City to Washington, D.C. I opted to take Amtrak's Acela service in business class. I tend to fly this route, as often American Eagle has ~$80 one way fares that are cheaper and faster than Amtrak. But since I had never taken Acela before, and had an expiring $100 credit on Amtrak I decided to "splurge" a little. Remember, "business class" on Acela is two by two leather seats which would normally be called Coach on other Amtrak trainsets. But in the overpriced ...

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air-berlin-a330

I redeemed a OneWorld Explorer award to go to Berlin for the ITB travel conference. After booking my ticket I contacted Air Berlin to ask about taking photos and they informed me of a press conference I could attend in Berlin, during ITB, for the new lie-flat seats they are installing. 

On departure day after checking in at the Air Berlin check-in counters in JFK Terminal 8 I made my way to security. Unfortunately, since I was on an international itinerary, I was unable ...

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air-berlin-business-class

American Airlines Business class awards from the United States to Europe start at 100,000 miles. If you're based on the east coast you can save 20,000 miles by booking a OneWorld Explorer award. Many others have detailed using Explorer awards for elaborate round-the-world travel, but I simply needed to get from New York to the ITB Berlin travel show. 

The American Airlines One World Explorer Award chart  (at the time of this writing) lists business class award ...