Photos from the Saturday night event

The party tonight was damn amazing.  Not a lot of text here, but lots of good pictures.  More fun details tomorrow, but enjoy the pictures now.

All about OnePass and alliances

Some brief notes from the session earlier this afternoon.

CO Gold will be *G.  No more speculation on this front.

Will CO Gold/Platinum have upgrades on United? 

We are working towards that.  There are a lot of complexities that are being worked through.  Still working through all the details but trying very hard to make work.

What is the plan on STARNet Blocking?

There are no blocks today, and there is no intent to implement anything of the sort.

What about first class redemptions?

Will be part of the individual bilateral discussions but CO has no intention to prohibit it.

Not likely to see a GS level equivalent for CO * or any other similar level.  $30K/year is a number being bandied about as an “extraordinary” amount of money to be spent annually.  Something that is being looked at.

We don’t have a desire to have our reward chart to look fundamentally different than our onshore *A partners.

What about the AS partnership?  Is it going to stay the way it is?

“Alaska is a good partner of Continental’s and we don’t see that changing right now.”

What is going to happen with US in the group?

We’ll have a partnership with US pursuant to the requirements of *A.  But more focused on the UA and general *A partnership than anything else.

Will Biz come down and F be at the Biz redemption level?

US and UA publish fundamentally different numbers for rewards and CO will have their own numbers that come out of that.  The goal is a similar “formatting” of the reward chart but not necessarily the exact same numbers.

Will “fuel” fees come down now that fuel prices have come down?

Look forward to Larry & Jeff’s presentation.

“We love fees.”  We found that some of them were very effective and made us very competitive with other airlines.  Prices assume that there will be baggage fees, for example. 

Trying to come around on connection SDC fees to be waived at the connection point, but not certain yet.  Look forward to Larry & Jeff’s bit later today.

AS soon as we leave SkyTeam we want to have all the necessary bits in place to make the transition into *A as quickly as possible.  We want the gap to be as short as possible.

What about 50% EQMs on partner flights and whatnot?

“Right now we’re still comfortable with that policy….  Just changing alliances wouldn’t make us change that.” 

“We’re on a mission to expand interline availability on co.com.”

Sorry that things are so disjointed, but I’m not a great transcriptionist.

CO Gold IS Star Gold

Confirmed and announced just now. Not a surprise, but great news nonetheless.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

They really wanted to fly the 73E for us

They wanted the 737-900ER for us to fly. They wanted the one with the new LiveTV system in play, but they’ve had trouble getting the LiveTV system working just right apparently. It is supposed to be going live this weekend (finally) but the plane is still in Orlando so we didn’t get to fly on it.

Still, they took us on a great tour of Texas, and the flight was ridiculously awesome.

We buzzed the tower at HOU, and had the appropriate comments about WN to go with that. We flew around for another hour and got to see Texas and otherwise have a great time with the folks working the flight. Truly they double staffed the plane, plus had some “special” guests working as FAs. It was really quite amazing.

And now, without further ado, some pictures:

A welcome from Eric, the guy in charge of in-flight product.

Kerwin, in the middle, remembers me. I think that might be a problem.

Looking down on Galveston.

My little moment of fame – a photo with Allison (I think) and Chavon!

And then in the cockpit with the copilot’s hat on.

Holy shit...that was awesome!

Just landed on CO 9920. That was just plain awesome. I've been asked to hold off on more details until the next trip departs, but damn, this was amazing.

--
Where am I going today?
http://www.wanderingaramean.com/

In-flight Product Updates

September for 772 lie flat seats starting.
December for 752 lie flat seats starting.
May for 772 AVOD retrofit to complete.
Power on for 739 AVOD is supposed to be this weekend. March 15 is the
target for the first plane in flight and all 220+ are expected to be
converted in about 14 months.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

The Magical Mystery Tour is Going to Take me Away

After much secrecy we are finally learning what is going on with the
great mystery tour. They didn't even tell the bus driver where we were
going until just now. And I had the post mostly written about exactly
what we are about to do but I was waved off at the last minute.

Suffice it to say that the number 9920 will never be the same in my mind.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

The last “deal” of the night

Congrats to Colleen, who won 130,000 OnePass miles tonight in the last episode of “Miles or No Miles.” 

She did a great job and I believe that she walked away with the most miles of anyone tonight.

Kudos to Scott/CO Insider for putting on such a great show tonight and putting up with me.

 

Looking like this, you really have to appreciate that he puts up with anything that I do. I certainly appreciate it.

I made it up on stage

Tonight in the second round of "Miles or no miles" I made it up on
stage. I had the case with 500,000 miles in it, and I feel badly that
it opened up before the player won it, but such is life. On the plus
side, someone waved me off from showing more cleavage, which was
probably a good thing.

I got 5K for my efforts, which I cannot complain about. Good times.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

Winner, winner, 5,000 mile dinner

The party is well underway at this point, and winners are coming out of the woodwork.  As a door prize for Friday night they gave away 5,000 miles to a particularly broad group of 14 folks here tonight. 

In an interesting development, I know three of the winners, but I don’t really think that it is rigged, other than that I didn’t win. :D

The winners tonight were:

• Art234
• GLCarter
• SaintD
• FlyingForGoldElite
• Lurker1999
• RTRBuck
• PapaJ
• Steve64
• Flyboi421
• Jupper
• Travelbossldy
• Colpuck
• WalkerCI
• KarenK
• WBrininger
• RustyHaight

Congrats to the winners!

Lots of miles to be won

We just finished up a CO version of deal or no deal. It was a good
time. The winner walked away with a piddly 13K miles, but that was
more than he arrived with tonight, so I guess it isn't all that bad.

Having some trouble getting the laptop online right now to post
photos, but I am trying.

--
Where am I going today?
www.wanderingaramean.com

Bugger, I shouldn’t be posting

Yeah…I really shouldn’t really be posting I think, but yet I am here anyways.  Met many,many, many folks and having a good time this evening, but who knows what the hell is going on.

In the IAH PC E right now, but on our way to the Marriott very shortly.

See you soon from there.

The Bar is open

We’re in the PC E hanging out in the corner over by the bar.  There is a FlyerTalk tag hanging on the wall.  Come on over!

Will you be needing…

A wheel chair or a stretcher to deplane?

Yeah…it is bad when the flight attendant wonders if you need a stretcher to get off the plane.  And I honestly have no idea why they’d ask, as I’ve only had six drinks so far, and he asked around number three.  Perhaps they do not understand the values of the Box.

Mas es Mas.

Plus est Plus.

Molto e molto!

But why is the rum gone??

Because I drank it all.  And then we had some fun and made a tower of minis:

And a tower of empties: Nothing but fun so far on this trip, and somehow we ended the flight and haven’t pissed of the crew too much (that I know of).  I don’t know how we managed to land and still have Continental Currency coupons left, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that a large number of our group slept through most of the flight.  Their loss.

Gifts for the crew

One way to make a great positive impression on a flight crew is to give them a small token of appreciation when boarding the flight.  It doesn’t have to be too much and it is greatly appreciated.

Knowing that our group was likely to be a little troublesome on the flight this afternoon, I splurged and bought some good chocolates – Jacques Torres – and brought it on board for the crew.  They were VERY appreciative. 

That and a stack of Continental Currency coupons has made the trip quite pleasant.  Special thanks to all the folks who contributed coupons for the crowd on this flight, including monitor, who contributed quite a stack.  We’re working through them just as quickly as we can!

And now the flight attendants are hanging out, chatting and otherwise being the “most professional men and women in the industry.”  And they’re still serving us, which is rather surprising.  Oh, and I just picked the last couple rum minis on the plane.  I somehow missed one of the six that they cater on the plane, but I can assure you that the other five have been well appropriated.

Definitely not getting an upgrade

Well, I was pretty sure that the upgrade wasn’t going to happen, and I can now confirm that.  I’m number 8 on the waitlist and there’s only one seat left. 

But I’ve got plenty of drink coupons and a reclining exit row seat, so no real concerns on that front.  The bus was on time, the train was on time and our flight is currently showing as on time.  And our inbound plane just landed.  All is good at this point.

Making my way to Houston

And there’s no reason to take the short route when a more convoluted one will accomplish the same goal. 

The morning started with a 5:45am alarm and typical preparations.  Then, on to the subway to get to the bus to Philly to hop on a train to the airport to fly to Houston.  Part of the fun of this routing is the crazy of it, and part is the friends.  There are five people on the bus right now who are all headed to the event.  There are twelve folks who all booked the same flight to the party.  And another missed his flight earlier this morning so we’ve got an extra joining the fun.

We’re stocked up with drink coupons, chocolates to bribe the flight attendants with and plenty of energy and motivation to see if we can’t drink them out of booze.  Good times.