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A bit early I guess, but . . . .

Hawaii was ticketed yesterday. MRSANCFlyer and I will hop on AA (788) on Feb 21 and return on AA (788) on Feb 29.

AA 74 788 (1A/1D) to HNL then on the to Maui on HA 196 717 whatever seat, return to HNL on another HA 717 in whatever seat and from HNL-ORD on AA 75 788 (1A/1D). There will be a quick hop over to ITO so we can go to the volcano for a day.

Now MRSANC will be able to check that Hawaii block off her bucket list.

LGW-BGI BA B777
BGI-LGW BA B777

The only slight downside being that the trip is in February which may well preclude my involvement in the annual FLAP meet!

Never too early to plan ahead.

APRIL
MIA-BOG A320
BOG-MAD B788
MAD-LIS A320
LIS-MAD A320
MAD-BOG B788
BOG-MIA A320

Never too early indeed, lots of ideas but no firm plans so far...

want to make 2020 the year I go to Oshkosh.

https://www.eaa.org/airventure

February
LGW-BGI BA B777
BGI-LGW BA B777

March
MAN-KBP FR B738
KBP-MAN FR B738

Booked a Chernobyl trip with friends (non-av ones, hence the vanilla routing!)

New country for 2020 !

MAY
CRL-ZAD FR
ZAD-CRL FR

To be continued...

airtrainer wrote:Never too early indeed, lots of ideas but no firm plans so far...

Same here, but have to wait for the approval of my holiday schedule at work first.

Yokes wrote:

airtrainer wrote:Never too early indeed, lots of ideas but no firm plans so far...

Same here, but have to wait for the approval of my holiday schedule at work first.

Approval from the bank might take some time as well

Holiday schedule is approved, so the first trip had to be booked:

MARCH
FRA-PEK CA B748
PEK-HKG CA A321

TPE-PVG CA A333
PVG-FRA CA A350

JANUARY
(confirmed)
HAM-AMS KL B738
AMS-JFK KL B772
LGA-BUF DL CRJ9
BUF-LGA DL CRJ9
JFK-AMS KL B789
AMS-HAM KL B738

FEBRUARY
(to be confirmed)
HAM-AMS KL B738
AMS-SXM KL A332
SXM-AMS KL A332
AMS-HAM KL E190

MARCH
(to be confirmed)
HAM-AMS KL
AMS-MIA KL
MIA-IAH (not sure yet how to do that)
IAH-AMS KL
AMS-HAM KL

APRIL
(to be confirmed)
HAM-AMS KL
AMS-JFK KL
LGA-ORD DL
ORD-LGA DL
JFK-AMS KL
AMS-HAM KL

MAY
(to be confirmed)
HAM-AMS KL
AMS-LAX KL
LAX-SFO DL
SFO-LAX DL
LAX-AMS KL
AMS-HAM KL

OCTOBER
(annual NFL trip, Bills in 2020, tbc)
HAM-AMS KL
AMS-JFK KL
LGA-BUF DL
BUF-LGA DL
JFK-AMS KL
AMS-HAM KL

I'm sure there will be more, and a lot of these plans will still change - but that's the plan so far.

Finally booked the first flights for 2020

January
ZRH-VIE OS 564
VIE-INN OS 913
INN-VIE OS 904
VIE-ZRH LX1579

Zak wrote:I'm sure there will be more, and a lot of these plans will still change - but that's the plan so far.

If you don't change your plans by yourself, KL will fix that for you

Did some FR shopping last night...

FEBRUARY
BRU-LIS FR
LIS-BRU FR

MAY
CRL-ZAD FR
ZAD-CRL FR

JULY
CRL-WMI FR
WMI-CRL FR

Almost certainly starting the year off with an OUL-HEL and an OUL-HEL-TLV, which should see me just barely hanging onto oneworld sapphire if I get them in before February. If I can persuade our travel people to go for it, doing OUL-HEL-LHR-TLV would not only get me BA's A350-1000 (assuming that Airbus fix the one they dinged in their paint shop by then) but also avoid Finnair's horrific 1am departure time out of TLV.

airtrainer wrote:If you don't change your plans by yourself, KL will fix that for you

I'm sure they will My attempt of talking to them about the core of the problem resulted in a nice compensation (almost 90% of the ticket price), but no human interaction that would have allowed me to help them understand why their online booking process and customer communication policy is heavily flawed.

And it still is, as my booking to JFK in January showed:

KLM's website offered me a rt fare in J of some €1450 - that's a steal, gimme!

Only I couldn't book it - when entering the payment details, "an error occurred". Same when I tried to book Y for €500 (€660 with Y+ seats all the way).

The problem, once again - KLM's website, when accessed directly, force-redirects me to their German website, and that one clearly has a sync problem with KLM's ticketing database.

So I went to SwooDoo.com, searched for my desired flight option, clicked "book directly with the airline", let SwooDoo redirect me to KLM.com (which right now is the only way I know to stop KLM from redirecting me to their German website), and booked the same Y flight for €320 (€480 with Y+ seats all the way).

I would still have booked J, but SwooDoo only showed a €2200 fare for that.

So instead of paying KLM some €660 for Y+ (or €1450 for J), they now got €480 minus whatever they have to pay SwooDoo for redirecting me to KLM.com. Which I didn't even do to save money, but because it's the only way for me to complete my booking on KLM.com.

Pretty stupid, huh?

But as it's impossible to tell that to the service bots, and no human being at KLM wants to talk to me about this, I guess I'll have to keep using 3rd party websites to redirect me to the cheapest-ass fares, and then claim compensations nearing or exceeding the ticket price whenever KLM screws up.

For the LAX hiccup, they paid me over €800 in total. I would have happily accepted less than half of that if they had contacted me inforehand and offered a hotel plus some goodies if I agreed to get bumped on a flight a day later.

So don't blame me for being cheap, KLM - I tried to give you my money, but you didn't want it.

Still love them for their cabin crews, though.

/offtopic

Side trip is booked for a very good fare in business class.

MARCH
FRA-PEK CA B748
PEK-HKG CA A321

HKG-TPE HX A332

TPE-PVG CA A333
PVG-FRA CA A350

Zak wrote:
My attempt of talking to them about the core of the problem resulted in a nice compensation (almost 90% of the ticket price), but no human interaction that would have allowed me to help them understand why their online booking process and customer communication policy is heavily flawed.

Maybe the root cause for that is the BPO that provides the CRM for AF/KLM/DL etc. A former colleague of mine used to work for them and told some horror stories....and that was 11 years ago, but a quick look at Glassdoor shows that it seems that nothing has changed in the meantime.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Emplo ... 749452.htm

Zak wrote:But as ... no human being at KLM wants to talk to me about this...

Scratch that - just got a call from KLM customer service today. Discussed the problems in detail with them. Their IT department is indeed aware of the issues, but did not identify the source of the problem yet.

I agreed to run a screen grabber and make a video of my next booking attempts, maybe that will help them identifying the problem.

The guy on the phone also told me that they would have disagreed with my €600 EU compensation claim, as they had provided a suitable alternative (AF via CDG). But they accepted in on a goodwill basis, so I kept my explanations why I do not consider AF/CDG a suitable alternative to KL/AMS to a minimum.

Bottom line - all is well, KLM and me are friends again.

Exploring new countries...

FEBRUARY
BRU-LIS FR
LIS-BRU FR

MAY
CRL-ZAD FR
ZAD-CRL FR

JUNE
BRU-GVA U2
GVA-TIA EZS
TIA-GVA EZS
BSL-BRU U2

JULY
CRL-WMI FR
WMI-CRL FR

Adding

January
ZRH-VIE OS 564
VIE-INN OS 913
INN-VIE OS 904
VIE-ZRH LX1579

March
ZRH-MAD LX 2020
MAD-ZRH LX2033

Adding and adding :D

January
ZRH-VIE OS 564
VIE-INN OS 913
INN-VIE OS 904
VIE-ZRH LX1579
ZRH-ARN LX1248
ARN-ZRH LX1251
ZRH-SIN LX176


February
SIN-ZRH SQ 346
ZRH-ARN LX 1250
ARN-ZRH LX1251

March
ZRH-MAD LX 2020
MAD-ZRH LX2033

FlySwiss wrote:SIN-ZRH SQ 346

Awww man, that's the flight number. I was excited for a second!

FlySwiss wrote:Adding and adding :D

JANUARY
CRL-VIE OE
BTS-CRL FR
BRU-MAD IB (A346)
MAD-BRU FR

FEBRUARY
BRU-LIS FR
LIS-BRU FR

MAY
CRL-ZAD FR
ZAD-CRL FR

JUNE
BRU-GVA U2
GVA-TIA EZS
TIA-GVA EZS
BSL-BRU U2

JULY
CRL-WMI FR
WMI-CRL FR

airtrainer wrote:

I see a lot of BRU, but how about FRU?

Zak wrote:

airtrainer wrote:

I see a lot of BRU, but how about FRU?

Well done Sir