A Lufthansa Airbus A380 at SFO
Traveling from the Bay Area to Europe? Chances are you may find yourself on the Star Alliance trunk route from SFO to Frankfurt. I did recently as I kicked off a trip to Germany, India, and Southeast Asia, celebrating my final few months of freedom between a journalism job and medical school. In my experience, flying to Lufthansa’s ’œFraport’ mega-hub from San Francisco generally meant a trip on United’s venerable ’“ and noticeably aging ’“ 747-400s. While they are beautiful birds from the outside, they don’t make for the best long-haul economy class flights: no seatback screens, no power outlets (although that has since been corrected), and cramped seats, unless you can bump up to Economy Plus or better. Interested in something new, I leapt at the chance to try out Lufthansa’s A380 flight on the same route.
I was glad to be able to book the flight on United ticket stock (ticket number beginning with ’œ016’), which meant I earned both premier qualifying miles (PQMs) and dollars (PQDs) for the flight. With the current UA premier qualifying system, you earn PQMs when you book non-UA ticket stock with Star Alliance partners, but not the PQDs – which are needed for elite qualification.
Heading to the back of the plane, to then go upstairs
Curiously, the confirmation code United provided me allowed me to manage my reservation on Lufthansa’s website, but did not work for online check-in. I found a Lufthansa-specific code buried in a separate email. A bit confusing, but not a huge deal. One downside of booking a Lufthansa-operated flight through United is that you are not always able to pick a seat in advance. That ended up being the case for this flight, and I was dreading the possibility of a back-of-the-bus middle seat. Luckily, seat availability was still good when I checked in online, even though the flight ended up being full.
I had only flown the A380 once before (on Emirates) and assumed that the upper deck was first and business class only. To my surprise, there was an ’œupper deck’ tab on the seat selection window during online check-in. It turns out that on Lufthansa’s newest layout for some of its A380s, there is a premium economy section in the front of the lower deck and a small section ’“ five rows, to be exact ’“ of standard economy at the back of the upper deck. I snagged a window seat at the front of the latter section, thrilled that I would finally get upper-deck bragging rights (though without the usual business class accouterments that usually go with it).
A Nature Air De Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter/VistaLiner at La Managua Airport, Quepos, Costa Rica – Photo: Daniel T Jones
It is easy to find travel sites touting Costa Rica as the new Hawaii for tropical vacation destinations. I had intended to test this theory for some time, and see some sloths and monkeys in the process. Having found a discount fare for my girlfriend and me from Tijuana to San Jos via Guadalajara, my AvGeek/travel skills were put to use to figure out how to get from the Costa Rican capital of San Jos to our intended destination, the Pacific coast town of Quepos.
A nice view of Volcán Arenal through the captain’s sun visor – Photo: Daniel T Jones
NATURE AIR: Background & Aircraft
Ten seconds of Googling later, it was readily apparent that roads, road travel, car rentals, and long distance bus service in the country were less than ideal. Not expecting to find many other options, as Costa Rica is a very small country (roughly 80% the size of West Virginia), I was pleasantly surprised to find not one, but two, choices for domestic air travel in the region. SANSA Airlines (Servicios Areos Nacionales S.A.) operates a fleet of eight Cessna 208B Grand Caravans from its hub at Juan Santamaràa International Airport (SJO/MROC). As nice as a ride in a C208 sounds, I decided to go with SANSA’s main competitor, Nature Air.
I chose Nature Air for a few reasons, the most important being that they fly the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300, as well as a few Cessna 208Bs – but more on their fleet later. Specifically, they operate the ’œVistaLiner’ model, with oversized windows. As if that weren’t enough to choose them, they have some of the most amazing aircraft liveries you’ll ever see!
An American Airlines Boeing 737-800 – Photo: Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren | JDLMultimedia
Recently, I had the chance to fly pretty similar flights from Seattle to Puerto Rico and back on Delta Air Lines and then American Airlines.
I had not flown on two domestic airlines back-to-back with so much the same, and I found there to be a pretty stark differences.
To San Juan, I took two Delta Boeing 737-900ERs with the newest interior (one was only a few weeks old). I flew from Seattle to Atlanta (shocking), then on to San Juan. On the way home, I took two American 737-800s. One had the Boeing Sky Interior cabin, but still shared entertainment screens. The second was an older 737-800, with no sky interior and also shared screens (but more on that later). I flew out of San Juan, through Miami, and then on to Seattle.
The cost of the tickets were exactly the same: $236 each way. I also earned Alaska Airlines miles for both flights, so I didn’t care about miles on either, nor did I have any status [update: I did not realize that Delta only gave me 50% Alaska miles vs American’s 100%. Still knowing this, it doesn’t change any of my choices or opinions since I am not much of a miles guy]. I was also in window seats and had similar seat-mate setups.
I went into these flights with no expectation of doing a story, but the fact that on similar flights, there was an obvious winner, I became motivated. And yes, you will have to wait until the end to see which airline won no cheating!
N863GA, a 26-year young MD-83
Earlier this year, I was excited to learn Allegiant would be the newest airline to bring service to my home market here in Kansas City, MO. Allegiant was the last piece of the puzzle to complete the ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) trifecta. So, naturally I had to be on their very first flight out.
Just last year Spirit inaugurated services at Kansas City International and in the following months brought with them unprecedented fare disruption across multiple markets. The effects were unlike any I have witnessed in a decade of paying close attention to fare trends in KC. And herein lies the secret with ULCCs; even if passengers never intend to fly with them, they bring normalcy to entire markets with LCCs and even legacies adjusting their own fare structures to keep from losing too much market share.
Inaugural Cake! An A319?
New airline aside, I’m a bit of an inaugural hound. When the day came, I elected to skip the press conference and focus on becoming the first confirmed booking, which I’m proud to announce I accomplished, while the press conference was still going, in fact.
As I tend to do, I booked the outbound leg, making a mental note to fill in the rest of the details “later” – I wound up scrambling to find a way home. When I realized I was one week from my trip with no way home, I went to my preferred carrier who wanted nearly $300 one way. This, in contrast to the mere $82 (fare + exit row + carry-on) I paid Allegiant outbound. Reluctantly, I looked elsewhere and found similar prices. I soon realized what began as a one-way experiment with Allegiant would wind up being a round trip with them out of equal parts laziness, frugality, desperation, and curiosity.
Our ride: Q400 Dash 8 – Photo: Alastair Long
My 10-year-old son and I recently treated ourselves to an alternative from the usual routes over to Paris and Continental Europe. We’d done enough easyJet or British Airways hops on A319s and A320s, out of the various London airports, to merit trying something new. We therefore headed to the south coast to check out Flybe’s Bombardier Q400 Dash 8 that the airline deploys from Bournemouth (BOH) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG). This was a day of firsts for us: the aircraft type, the airline, and the airport – kind of a “perfect storm” for an AvGeek.
Getting into mood: croissant at BOH – Photo: Alastair Long
Part of the Manchester Airport Group of airports and with annual passenger volumes of approximately 662,000, BOH is a delightfully quiet place to jet (or, prop) off from for a few days. “Easy (Like Sunday Morning)” as the Commodores’ song goes, I don’t think I’ve ever been the only one in the security queue before or even the only one in duty free shop, much less the only one buying breakfast at BOH’s Olive Tree restaurant. Admittedly, we’d gotten to the airport that Sunday morning earlier than usual, but even when other passengers began to arrive the airport never lost its charm. It’s one of the few airports through which I’ve traveled without succumbing to any bouts of “airport brain.” So far, so good.
