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My girlfriend and I did a long weekend in Hawaii: 2 nights at the JW Ihilani and 2 nights at the Marriott Waikiki Beach. On top of it being a great weekend, we were fortunate enough to be there for the tsunami scare. I won’t recap the whole story for you. Check out here, here, and here if you need background. So while the tsunami (or lack thereof) kept us confined to our 24th floor hotel room and resulted in no result whatsoever, we got some pretty cool footage of what Waikiki Beach, one of the ten most popular beaches in the world, looks like without a a single person on the beach. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see.

I put together some video footage above, and I have a few full-size images below to download or view. Enjoy!

$15 for WiFI?! Are you kidding me? I thought $12.95 was steep, but $14.95 really stinks! I’m writing this post from UA 14 Premium Service SFO-JFK on March 1, 2010. I think they just raised their rates today, March 1. The funny thing is that I just played the GoGo game to get a free internet session here. It gave me a FREE internet session up to $12.95 value. I wonder if it will work on the $14.95 United P.S. flights. I’ll try it next time. Anyhow, I think $10 is a fair price to pay for cross-country WiFi. $12.95 seemed steep, and 14.95 really seems bad. I hope people use it less. I guess they just count on business users to not care and expense it.

Do you travel frequently? If you’re answer is no, then you may not be interested in this post. But if you’re answer is yes, then let me rock your world . When bouncing from airport to airport, sometimes on different carriers, it can be tough to keep up to date on flight delays, gate numbers, etc. FlightTrack Pro from Mobiata gives a great interface for tracking ALL of your flight information. Combine it with TripIt and you get all of your flight info automatically entered. Read on to hear how! Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I was flying in United First from SFO to ORD, and I ordered the steak salad for dinner. I was pretty disappointed when my salad  only had three tiny pieces of steak in it. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a pretty cool video I was able to snap with my iPhone 3GS, flying from SFO to ORD on United a few weeks ago. Beautiful sunset with a perfect layer of clouds. Even cooler was seeing other planes in the distance surfing right along the tops of clouds like us! I didn’t catch that on video, unfortunately. Enjoy!

Many people don’t realize that as a Star Alliance Gold flier, they are entitled to certain Star Alliance lounges with their elite membership card. I’m a United 1K and Red Carpet Club member, but even if I had no RCC membership (heck I could even be Premier Executive!), I would still be entitled to Star Alliance lounge access. This is really useful in some places, and not in others. One place that it’s GREAT is in Detroit’s airport. All of the United gates are jammed in the far left corner of the terminal, but that happens to be where the Lufthansa Lounge is. By just showing your Star Alliance Gold card, you will be allowed access to the lounge. The only caveat is that the Lufthansa lounge is only open if there is a Lufthansa flight within a few hours of your being there. Otherwise, it’s closed. But when open, the food is GREAT! You could easily have an entire lunch there, and in fact, I have many times. Free booze as well! The pic above shows an example of the spread there. They actually have two full rooms with excellent seating, little to no crowd, and great amenities. So if you find yourself in DTW, do yourself a favor and swing by the lounge for some free treats!

As both a fan of music and a frequent traveler, I have been in constant search for the best pair of headphones. Like many, I started first with the included iPod / iPhone earbuds. To be honest, I actually find them to be pretty good, especially when walking around the city. The added convenience of the speaker for talking on the phone makes them a great default pair of headphones. But my love for these default headphones ends immediately when i step on a plane. Once the engine noise fires up, the only way to hear music is to blast the volume. Quality suffers, and because your headphones are competing with the engine noise, your ears are stressed and could possibly become damaged. Read on to find more about my slow progression to find my favorite headphones for the frequent flier!

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Big thanks to United for a great Fleet Week Employee Celebration. And thanks so much for inviting the Flyertalkers! Here’s the team picture for the Flyertalk team. Unfortunately, the Blue Angels beat us! Go figure… Click the image below for the full size picture. Also, I’ll be posting even more pics from the Employee Celebration later today or tomorrow.

So I’m currently staying at the Courtyard by Marriott Billerica/Bedford about 20 miles north of Boston. After finishing my delicious meal at The Loft, I returned to the hotel and found a stack of fliers and a poster advertising that the hotel was now hosting birthday parties. HOW FUN! Chuck E Cheese’s, broomball establishments , and the local family fun centers better watch out! J.W. Marriott is going to come and throw the biggest and baddest kids’ parties of them all. I mean after all… the poster DID advertise great things like a 32″ television… Anyhow, I just thought it to be pretty hilarious that someone would actually pay the Courtyard by Marriott over $20/head to host a birthday party with no entertainment other than a large room and a not so large television. Click the image below to see the flier I grabbed.