I made it through my longest single travel leg to date, from London to Hong Kong via Chicago. 11,746 miles. 23 hours of in-air flight time. 31 hours of door-to-door travel time. The one consolation I have is that I was able to upgrade to business class for the entire route using a single United Airlines Systemwide Upgrade Certificate (the result of which you can see in the latest posts to the widely acclaimed Traytable blog).
I slept (with the help of Ambien -- never slept on a plane till it came around) for the first 5 or 6 hours (for timing reasons and because I had stayed up the night before at a wedding reception that only ended for me when I looked at my watch and said "crap, I've gotta go pack up and leave").
The rest of the trip, I worked. Initially on my web site update with the wedding pictures (I took more than 400 pics) and later on the Liberty Alliance Advanced Client spec that I'll be presenting about next week at the Liberty Alliance Day in Tokyo.
This leg of the trip was also significant for me because I crossed the million mile mark on United on the LHR->ORD leg (I've now flown 1,009,082 but-in-the-seat air miles on United Airlines -- ¾ of them in the past 5 years). I even tried to use this fact as a way of getting a gratis upgrade to first class (out of business class) but that didn't help at all. I guess it will be a long time before I feel the comforts of first class again.
Anyway, I'm now a United Global Services Million Mile Flyer, about the top of the top of elites in United's program. All this really helps is with getting upgrades (I'm typically at or close to the top of the list and have only had to "put up with" coach twice so far in my 140,000 miles this year).
Of course, life would probably be a lot simpler for me if I just didn't fly so often. My kids would recognize me when I show up at home. I might even get one or two "honey-do" projects done.
Tags : ual / united airlines / liberty / swu / global services
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