United Airlines, I hate you deeply.

[haltz]

Dreamer, what airline are you flying? Some let you pay for a pre-assigned seat such as an exit row for a fairly nominal fee, which is what I would suggest. It's really all about the leg room and the other amenities are fairly inconsequential imo.

[IMADreamer]

Dreamer, what airline are you flying? Some let you pay for a pre-assigned seat such as an exit row for a fairly nominal fee, which is what I would suggest. It's really all about the leg room and the other amenities are fairly inconsequential imo.

We are open to airline choice so any suggestions on that? We are just now getting everything together and planning. We are shooting for a late spring trip.

[IMADreamer]

Maybe this would be a good time and place to ask this. We are thinking of going to Europe next year. As you guys know I'm a complete Hoosier and I've never flown before. I'm not afraid to I just love driving and I think the journey is half the fun of a trip. Obviously we can't drive to Paris so this means it's time to for me to fly. I dread the idea of being on a plane with 200 strangers and having to poop in a tin can. Yeah I know these are the things I think about.

So economy is like a grand round trip. Economy premium is double. Business is 6k and First class is 9k. First class seems absurd and business seems kinda crazy but whats the difference between economy and economy premium? Basically it's half a day on a freaking air plane so I kinda don't mind ponying up for more comfort on what amounts to a once in a lifetime trip anyway. Well probably.

The only thing I care about is leg room. So I suffer. I have flown transatlantic first class twice. Wife's dad donated miles for upgrade. It was awesome but I'm not going to blow my whole vacation budget on getting there.

Not sure what economy premium is. Oh and I got a better deal using a travel agent even though I only got flight and rental car.

One more thing, Icelandair has a cool deal where you can make a stopover in Iceland for a few days.

Icelandair is one of the airlines we've looked at. Wouldn't mind stopping in Iceland. I've hard it's beautiful.

[lukethedrifter]

https://www.icelandair.us/flights/stopover/

[Swirls]

Another option would be to quickly earn a few credit card signup bonuses and use those miles to pay for the trip in first class or business. Or you could pay for airfare and use those points and miles instead on the hotel stay.

If you're going to spend the money anyway on day to day essentials, why not earn some points at the same time to use for a super fun once in a lifetime type trip?

Mrs. Swirls and I are planning a 2-3 week trip to Thailand next fall, flying first class or business the entire way, and hotel/airfare will be booked almost entirely on points/miles.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Rest of story: I got to the Medford gate minutes after they shut the door. Then up comes another passenger from the Huntsville flight with an airport employee that let us on. He just told me it was a personal friend he recognized!
Lucky beats good.

I want to fill out this story because I think it shows how undeserving of our business United Airlines is.

While I was looking for help to see about getting on the plane I noticed the gate monitor indicated two standby passengers had been put on the plane. When we got on board, the flight attendants was surprised to see us, our seats were already taken, and so they let us sit in two of the extra-cost 'Comfort' seats that were empty. We then sat on the tarmac waiting to be de-iced and my wife texted that the plane had been delayed.

So here's what you have:

United must have known for three hours that we were going to be slightly delayed. In addition to that, both the other passenger and I made good faith efforts to let the airline know we would need a little extra time getting to our connection.

Even though our information was available to them, United filled the seats with standby passengers.
Even though our information was available to them, United was willing to deny entry even though the plane was going to be on the ground for an already announced delay.
Even though our information was available to them, United was willing to fly with two empty seats rather than allow two paying customers entry to the plane.

I have never seen a corporation so antagonistic towards its customers. United shows it over and over again. I don't know how they stay in business.

[Swirls]

Also, Dreamer, if you're looking for places to go on points, there's a website called Award Wallet (www.awardwallet.com) that lists basically every hotel in the world that is tied to a chain/points program of some sort, along with the number of points required for redemption at said location. You can filter by whatever chain you want (Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Starwood, Choice, etc.).

It helps both if you are dead set on a particular area/country/city but don't care about what hotel you stay at, as you could combine the results with a search tool like TripAdvisor to get solid reviews of the hotel you're looking at. But it also helps if you have a buttload of points in a particular currency - take Hilton for example - and don't know where you could go. You could use the map to see which Hilton hotels are available in Europe for the amount of points you have, and slowly whittle down to a particular region/area/city based on that.

[cardinalkarp]

My story is in this thread somewhere, but the synopsis.....[expletive] United Airlines

[Famous Mortimer]

F the lot of them, really.

By the way, I just got back from a long weekend in Iceland and it was chuffing brilliant. I'd go as soon as possible, because it's seriously turning hard into the full tourist economy. Hotels were being thrown up everywhere I looked in Reykjavik. Be prepared for everything to be insanely expensive (a pint of beer cost me like $15) and go visit Arctic Adventures (because that's the company my friend Rich works for) and you should be fine.

[haltz]

Dreamer, what airline are you flying? Some let you pay for a pre-assigned seat such as an exit row for a fairly nominal fee, which is what I would suggest. It's really all about the leg room and the other amenities are fairly inconsequential imo.

We are open to airline choice so any suggestions on that? We are just now getting everything together and planning. We are shooting for a late spring trip.

Here's a good rundown. It looks like you should avoid American Airlines (which I think is good advice in general), but most other airlines have some sort of option for guaranteeing leg room in economy class seating.