ORD to Anywhere

Czech Airlines (OK) Flight 537 - Frankfurt am Main to Prague Vaclac Havel Airbus A319, Economy Class, Economy Class, Seat 26E Just about every winter for the past few years I've taken advantage (wait for it.....) of the reduced economy award ticket cost offered through the American Airlines AAdvantage (see what I did there?) program for winter travel to Europe and have used it as a jumping off point to go somewhere fun and interesting. Generally speaking I've found the best

Belavia (B2) Flight 863 - Minsk (MSQ) to Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Embraer 195, Economy Class, Seat 27A As an avowed aviation geek, flying a new airline can be almost as exhilarating as visiting a new destination for me. Is that a little weird? Probably. But it's the truth, and I'm not ashamed to admit that the moments before I step on a new airline give rise to a tingle up my spine that is usually reserved for my fiance, Chris Evans, a new passport stamp, or a really go

As I explained in my previous report about my British Airways (BA) flight into Johannesburg, I was able to get to South Africa on a relatively inexpensive ticket through London. As excited as I was to be visiting Africa, I didn't think Johannesburg was really a destination that I wanted to spent a significant amount of time exploring on my first trip to the continent. There are certainly interesting things I'd like to see and explore there, but for a first time visit I thou

Africa - the one place in the world that I desperately would love to explore in-depth but varying issues related to work, politics, safety, and money have prevented me from doing to date. My first scheduled trip to Africa involved a trip to Cairo to explore the ancient Pyramids and some wandering through the Khan el Khalili souq, but fate decided that my first trip to Africa was not to be as the events that we now know as the Arab Spring erupted in the city and airlines ceas

After a few short days in lovely, overcast Munich hanging out with the Vice President of the United States, it was time for me to finally start the journey back to Chicago. At this point in my trip I had left Chicago and arrived in Munich through Tokyo, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Budapest. My flight back to the US of A was departing from Berlin though, so I needed to find a good way to get back to Tegel Airport (TXL). Being a oneworld devotee the obvious choice was AirBerlin (

I was connecting to this AirBerlin (AB) flight from a long haul business class flight on Japan Airlines from Tokyo Narita. For European flights, most EU carriers offer a business class cabin where the seats are the same as the ones in economy class but the carrier has blocked the use of the middle seat to provide additional lateral space to premium cabin passengers. This is one of the few areas where European carriers actually offer an inferior product to most American carr

I recently wrote about my experience flying with Egyptair on their Boeing 772 fifth freedom tag flight between Bangkok (BKK) and Kuala Lumpur (KUL). As I mentioned in that post, Southeast Asia is a fantastic location to try out the premium cabins of airlines you otherwise wouldn’t be able to fly. These tag flights are relatively short and often priced at very competitive rates. As a pretty loyal oneworld patron, I rarely have an opportunity to fly on Star Alliance carriers

Background I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to the glamorous world of airline premium cabins, AirBerlin (AB) isn’t exactly the carrier that aviation geeks are smacking their lips over flying. Considered by many to be a glorified low cost carrier and toward the bottom of the quality barrel among its oneworld brethren, there are likely much better uses for my award miles than redeeming on this airline. Yet I’m a bit of a strange bird. As a oneworld loyalist I’ve