Teh Penalty Box | part 2

I'm going through DEN on Saturday morning and I am looking forward to that. I only wish there was going to be some snow. I'm also excited that, for once in my life, traversing DEN does not require any segments on non-mainline aircraft.

There's a show? Seriously? Maybe I should be thankful my hotel has limited TV offerings

I forgot to mention - when I landed at MSY, it was 69°.

Fortunately Southern Louisiana has cooled down a bit today, which is good, since I hauled a coat with me on the plane this week.

It won't last. Someone will poop all over it before the day is through.

It is the way of things.

There was snow when I was there Friday, as well as yesterday. I just checked the forecast for the rest of the week, and I suspect much of it will have melted by Saturday. They're going to hit the 40s several days between now and Saturday.

It's actually much more interesting than Cops or shows like it. They talk a lot about the game wardens and things like that. You also learn things, like that it's legal to own and fire a weapon just about anywhere in Alaska, even in residential zones. The only places that don't have such rules are within the bigger cities.

Add to this the Flying Wild Alaska show and you have a winner.

My OP account shows this:
Year to Date Elite Points: 59.2

How on earth did I get .2 points?

Didn't make the flight out of Miami due to some AA passengers being rebooked over to UA so I went back home and AM glad I don't have to deal with the COLD weather...

Leftover nuggets of fun from the CO.Com maintenance yesterday.

Oh, praise the airline gods! After the work travel agent managed to kick me out of E+ on virtually every UA flight I have the rest of this year, I was just upgraded on Friday's DEN-DCA flight. Once I noticed that I was in E- on that flight, the entire Y seat map was full, so I couldn't move myself to a better seat than the aisle seat three rows from the back that I was stuck in.

Now, if Monday's IAD-DEN upgrade will clear, I'll be set. That's the only other non-E+/F seat assignment I'm sweating out still.

Time to get an new work travel agent buddy...

At least I got .3 points.

I have no say in that matter. If I did, there would be no work travel agent. Period.

But, I work for a fairly large company that, years ago, decided that somehow we "saved money" by paying a third-party a minimum of $20/transaction (that's if I do the work online; $28 if I call them) to push a button and issue the ticket I've selected through a website.

For years now they've managed to knock me out of E+ on UA flights dozens and dozens of times. I tend to check my UA seat assignments every day because of this, but that was a bit hard to do while on vacation last month in parts of Africa where I had no ability to access the Internet for days.

Most of us who work for larger companies are required to use specific services, usually with a pretty crappy web frontend, and we have no choice in the matter. In some cases, and I think ssullivan has run into this, the company TA will be a jerkface if something is not under their system in even the smallest way.

Yep. In my case it's not the TA that's a jerkface. It's the accounting department, who threatens to not reimburse airfare for a work trip.

Fortunately I can, and do, get away with booking hotels and cars elsewhere. I'm not really supposed to do that, but nobody knows the difference. They can tell real fast where a flight was booked, as they are supposed to only reimburse flights from the travel agent's receipt. But, for hotels and cars, the receipt used for reimbursement is issued at the time of room check-out/car return, so they have to pay off of that - and those receipts never indicate the booking source.

I will admit to being quite successful at gaming the airline booking scheme. Multi-city itineraries (researched elsewhere and plugged into the TA's site with each connection as an origin/destination) and booking on weekends when our dedicated agents aren't on duty come in handy.

True enough. We have to use AMEX travel, but I've had great success at booking whatever I need to on that site, then once it is ticketed, going on CO.com and moving myself around. So far, so good with that, and I've never had AMEX come back in and change anything I've done on CO.com. For now

We use a glorified version of Expedia for our travel. Their corporate version... Apparently there are upsides for our company if we book the preferred carrier.

I've had a few times where I ended up explaining simple booking stuff (how to read fare fules) to the agent that is "helping" me. And I ended up having to charge $28 to my credit card for the privilege.

That makes sense. Its because you have the hublette as part of your name.
In other news, is it already April 1?

And in even more other news, it was fun while it lasted.

Probably would be ok taking the train, then, as long as you can squeeze onto the Tube.

I was trying to be sarcastic, unfortunately I know how it is running Travel for my University before having to deal with a jerkface TA that wouldn't do what I knew was allowed so I called his boss and presto...took care of the issues and got the TA replaced with a more knowledgeable one unfortunately they still get $25 per transaction per person, $50 over the phone which is ridiculous in my opinion with the internet today but the accounting department prevails regardless.

PriorityClub website is teh suck.

The whole reason they go this route, is that with a dedicated corporate travel agency, they can enforce the draconian travel policies.

Always has been, and soon they may be hiring the same people behind .bomb