Friday, August 16, 2019

Everything finally aligned

Non-rev travel is a fun way to see the world.

When I was pretty new my wife and I took an awesome trip to Tokyo. We enjoyed First Class suites for the 14 hour flight to Tokyo. Those seats together cost more than I made that year as a First Officer flying a CRJ. Because I worked for a wholly owned subsidiary it was less than $200 each.

Since then we have traveled on hundreds of flights Domestically with each other and our children. My nine year old has been on over 350 flights including 5 flights "across the pond".

Of those 350 odd flights less than 15 have been in a premium cabin. A few of those were mileage award seats and a handful were non-rev. The reason being my airline requires non-rev passengers to be at least six years old to sit in a premium cabin.

My oldest is a very experienced traveller. She knows how to clear security, find the gate and, most importantly, find the nearest emergency exit.

She's been asking forever to travel in International Business Class.

We finished a huge (17 people total) extended family vacation last Saturday.  Monday we headed to London. We had just a backpack and a very small (fits under the seat) carry on. That's it.

To increase the odds of sitting next to each other we first flew DFW-PHX then PHX-LHR. He had seats next to each other on the 777-200. She was beyond excited.



After 9 hours we walked off the plane just before 10 AM Tuesday morning. We took a few hours nap in a hotel then went to explore the city on a very sunny day.


Wednesday was rainy so we made the best of it.

Thursday morning we headed back to LHR and got lucky again with Business Class Seats next to each other on a 777-300 to DFW.



Ten hours later we were home. Being frequent travelers we are both Global Entry. The new biometric Global Entry scanners are amazing. They just took our photos and knew who we were. From plane to curb was under 8 minutes...with most of it being walking.