These are some of the participants in the first official “On the Fly” Seminars in Washington last week. Everyone who came was extremely satisfied — in fact, none of my students had expected to learn nearly as much as they did.
As you can see from the comments on the seminars’ website, they were called “a traveler’s dream,” “incredibly revealing and extraordinarily valuable,” and “a mandatory tool to save money for frequent fliers and corporations.”
“These are perfectly practical methods to make the system work to your advantage — just a few steps to get inexpensive flights, ideal itineraries, upgrades, no fees, and free flights,” said David Aidekman, founder of Adventurati, a group travel company.
Charles Zhang, who came all the way from Princeton, N.J., to attend one of the DC seminars, said he has had top elite status with a couple of airlines for a while, and flies more than 150,000 miles a year. “But I still learned lots of new things from your seminar, which I had never heard before,” he said. “I will use my skills from you seminar toward my future flights, and enjoy my travel more.”
Of course, I couldn’t be happier with the feedback, but it seems I have a serious challenge to overcome: It’s clear the seminars are extremely valuable for those who attend, but the problem is that they don’t know that until they come. Despite the detailed curriculum and syllabuses I’ve posted, last week’s participants said they had no idea that much of what I taught was possible and available to all travelers.
So it seems I need to come up with a catchier way to compress material that takes hours to teach into a few soundbites and paragraphs. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, I’m pleased to announce that the next seminars in Washington will take place on July 23 and 24. Before that, I’ll be offering a seminar in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 6. I’m also looking into doing the same in New York, either in July or August.
Continue reading about Lessons from ‘On the Fly’ Seminars, and July dates announced
I’ve always been puzzled by the grand “international” designation of numerous small airports throughout the United States, just because they boast the odd flight to and from Canada.
While Canada is, indeed, a foreign country, this week’s incident with a Virgin Atlantic plane at Bradley Airport in Hartford, Conn., provides sufficient justification for my bewilderment.
The image on the left is the official logo of the airport at issue, with the word “international” displayed very prominently. Yet, when the Virgin flight from London to Newark, N.J., was diverted to Hartford because of bad weather further south, about 300 passengers were forcibly confined to the aircraft for four hours without water or food. Some of them got sick and fainted, and chaos reined on board, according to press accounts.
Why? Because there was no one from the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division — immigration and customs officers, in plainer English — to process the travelers.
It’s unclear why it was decided that the plane should land at Bradley, instead of Boston, for example, which has a fully operational CBP facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever made the decision didn’t even think about the lack of immigration and customs in Hartford.
Or perhaps they assumed that having “international” in the airport’s official name actually meant that it could handle international arrivals. Alas, flights from Canada don’t require such processing, because all CBP procedures are done at the respective Canadian airport, and those flights are treated as domestic arrivals once they land in the United States.
So it’s time the U.S. government rethought its “international airport” designation policies and made sure those designations match an airport’s true capabilities.
Continue reading about U.S. should change ‘international airport’ designation policy
The first “On the Fly” Seminars are just days away, and I thought I’d review the media mentions of my new venture and my appearances so far.
USA TODAY’s “Today in the Sky” travel blog was first, on June 11. Its author, Ben Mutzabaugh, asked me a few questions while I was at a conference in Moscow, and did a writeup, which prompted some reader comments about the need to teach the material I offer. Here is an excerpt:
Want to become a frequent-flier expert? There’s a class for that. In fact there are two: “Saving on airfare and redeeming frequent-flier miles” is the basic course, while the “advanced” class is dubbed “Securing top elite status and flying in luxury.” Each course comes complete with its own curriculum and “recommended reading.”
The courses are the brainchild of Nicholas Kralev, who has wracked up more than 1.5 million miles during the past decade in his previous job as the diplomatic correspondent and business travel columnist for The Washington Times. A large part of Kralev’s job involved traveling with the U.S. secretary of state, a position which took him to far-flung corners of the Earth while covering the likes of Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright…
“In a way, I owe much of my travel knowledge and experience to the State Department,” Kralev tells me by e-mail. “Had it been cheaper and more comfortable to fly on the secretary’s plane — any secretary, and I’ve traveled with four of them — I wouldn’t have flown so much commercially. Consequently, I wouldn’t have figured out how to spend much less or airfare but [still] sleep in flat beds, eat gourmet meals and earn hundreds of thousands of miles…”
The next day, Tom Johansmeyer picked up the item on gadling.com, which I warmly welcome — except that he misspelled my last name, putting a “y” where the “v” should be. Not the end of the world…
Another blog, that of Travel Sentry, which its website describes as a company that “creates and manages standards which improve travel security in cooperation with government security agencies, airlines, airports and the travel goods industry,” did a post on June 14. Here is now it ended:
Not only is the cost reasonable, but just imagine acquiring the skills to fly like a king for a fraction of the retail cost. Kralev hopes to take his show on the road soon. If he comes to a city near me, I’ll definitely give him a shot.
Too bad the company’s website doesn’t indicate its location, so I can actually plan a seminar there.
On June 18, I did my first broadcast interview about the seminars, on WTOP radio in Washington, where I’ve spoken on foreign-policy issues before. They wanted me to explain how I’m able to secure the lowest available fares and still not sit in coach — in a couple of minutes. And I was afraid that a four-hour seminar would be too short to achieve that!
Airlinetrends.com, a Netherlands-based website, published a very well-written article about the seminars, which they call a “smart business-feeder concept,” on June 22. Here is an excerpt:
“On the Fly” offers 2 types of seminars: In the “Fly 101″ session, participants learn how to find and book the cheapest available plane tickets without relying on travel agents or third-party online booking engines, and how to use their accrued miles for award flights and upgrades. The “Fly 201″ course is intended for frequent travelers who aim to achieve and maintain elite airline status. Participants are given techniques on how to find seats, and explore all options their miles can get them, including flights on partner-carriers, which are usually not offered online.
Historically, the State Department hasn’t been a big champion of education and training — it has relied mostly on diplomats learning their craft on the job, and taking time for a course at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Va., was long deemed almost futile.
The introductory A-100 class every new diplomats is required to take, has been shortened several times over the past two decades, and is now only five weeks long. Given that many Americans join the Foreign Service with no significant knowledge, background or experience in foreign affairs, it’s hard to understand how they can be prepared to represent the United States abroad in five weeks, before they arrive at their first posts.
However, that attitude has been changing in the last several years, and FSI’s new expansion, which was christened by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on June 18, is the latest proof. Nearly 100 new classrooms have been built, adding to the institute’s facilities that can now train as many as 60,000 students a year, according to Clinton.
“FSI once trained 3,000 students a year with a focus on orientation and language skills,” she said. “the curriculum has been widened in order to provide more of the education and training that is called for, including classes in public diplomacy and outreach, crisis response and stabilization, economic governance and democracy building, and preparation for high-stress assignments to the most difficult posts in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
There are no indications that A-100 will be extended beyond five weeks.
“By adding nearly 100 classrooms, we will help ensure that FSI continues to provide the full training curriculum and the training experience. I mean, it’s not just what you learn in the classroom. It’s the interactions. It’s the space to be able to spend time and learn from each other, the mentoring that goes on,” Clinton added.
FSI, whose official name is George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, was founded in 1947. It replaced the Foreign Service School, which was established in 1924.
Continue reading about Foreign Service school adds 100 classrooms
How many busloads of passengers does it take to fill a Boeing 747? Ask the Frankfurt Airport.
With all the innovations and conveniences brought to modern airports, it’s inexplicable to me why airports in some of the most developed countries on the planet remind one of the Third World. Many travelers often complain about London’s Heathrow, but I find Frankfurt no less frustrating.
I realize there are not enough gates with jet bridges, and some airlines prefer “remote” gates because their use is cheaper, but I can’t remember flying through Frankfurt and not being taken to or from a plane by bus at least once. As of this week, I’ve had 111 takeoffs and landings at that airport.
As much as I hate the buses, by now I’m used to the prospect of having to put up with them, especially for flights to certain destinations. Most of the time, such flights are flown on narrow-body aircraft, such as Boeing 737 and Airbus 320, which can be filled with just two busloads.
This week, however, I experienced boarding a United Airlines Boeing 747 by bus. I was sure the flight wouldn’t leave on time, and I was right. I can hardly wait for the expansion of Terminal 1 to be completed.
What’s even harder for me to understand is why there aren’t enough gates with jetways at the much newer Munich Airport. I was also disappointed by the transfer experience there this week. With 52 takeoffs and landings, this was the first time I had to change terminals. I arrived at Terminal 1 — courtesy of another bus — and it took me about 45 minutes to reach Terminal 2. The signage was very poor, and the shuttle bus between the terminals runs only once every 20 minutes.
U.S. airports may have their problems, but when was the last time you were taken to the plane by bus?
