Ben's Air Blog

How I redeemed an United Mileage Plus RTW award ticket What do you do when miles are burning a hole in your mileage bank?  You go straight to the bottom of the award chart and pick an award that costs the most miles, of course – the Round the World (RTW) award!

Trip Report:  Flying on United’s Inaugural Day of Boeing 787 DREAM)LINER Service  

On October 12, 2012, I went down to Los Angeles to see Space Shuttle Endeavour’s 12 mile street move from Los Angeles Airport (LAX) to the California Science Center in Downtown LA. 

Chasing Endeavour from Coast to Coast

--> Barrow in an Alaska 737-400 Combi --> In planning my spotting trip to Anchorage, I had an opportunity to choose a stopover on my mileage award ticket at no extra cost. I chose the most exotic, remote, and geographically interesting destination on the Alaska Airlines route map:  Barrow.

--> On this trip to Alaska, I accomplished three firsts on a single flight: ·       I flew in my first floatplane ·       I flew in my first Beaver ·       I chartered my first airplane

--> Everts Air Cargo is the last large cargo airline in Alaska flying a fleet of vintage piston-powered propeller airliners. Everts varied fleet includes two World-World II vintage Curtiss C-46s and eight post-war vintage Douglas DC-6s.  Seeing these classics at work was like taking a time machine to a bygone era, witnessing what air travel was like back in the golden age of propliners.

Here are some highlights and a sampling of the variety of traffic from my spotting trip to Anchorage International (ANC) in early May.  Unfortunately, the weather was not great.  We got partial sunshine only three out of the eight days there.  :(

--> Flight :  UA595, San Francisco (SFO) to Los Angeles (LAX) (337 miles) Aircraft Type :  Boeing 777-222 (ER) Aircraft Registration :  N794UA (built in October 1997) Scheduled Departure - Arrival Time :  8:21 am - 9:47 am Actual Departure - Arrival Time : 8:20 am - 9:50 am Actual Flying Time :  53 minutes