On Mon, 11 Feb 2008, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
All these sound like me. Except the blogging, and that I probably
wouldn’t fly to the US east coast through Singapore and Taipei .. would
take a European carrier instead.
Knowing that you meant to say "west"....
Flying through Europe has downsides when you're trying to rack up miles on
Star Alliance airlines:
The Lufthansa flights seem to all leave in the middle of the night - 1am
from Chennai, 3am from Delhi. Those are really rough on one's ability to
adjust, especially since I agree that moving forward in time should be
better, but it just isn't. The flight to Frankfurt isn't long enough to
really get any sleep in between the meal served (in the middle of the
freaking night) and drink service before landing.
I've been on a 3am flight in Delhi which sat on the tarmac fogged in until
it was cancelled at 9am. There is a Lufthansa through Munich, but every
time I book it seems to either be significantly more expensive or sold
out.
And as a Star Alliance very frequent flier I get diddly squat treatment on
Lufthansa. Trying to use the earned international upgrades in my United
account involve getting United to send you a *paper* coupon, which you can
only use to get on the wait list for an upgrade the day of the flight,
which means I practically never get it. Lufthansa also has no equivalent
to "economy plus" in United - so there's lousy distance between seats.
The seats *seem* narrower too; I'm admittedly a bit wide-chested, but i
still shouldn't be forced to sit leaning to the left or right if I'm next
to someone similar, that's deadly on one's back.
I'd much rather fly in SQ, but when I'm on my way to India I'm often
taking care of other business in Europe, as round-the-world flights or two
one-ways are much more pricey, and that ridiculous 16 hour layover on the
way back in SIN is also a pain. Looks like China Airlines now has a
Delhi-Taipei flight; and then Taipei-SFO; which could work nicely, CA
isn't as bad as Luft. But it also seems to come up as much more pricey
when I try to book.
The positive thing I'll end this note with - use Kayak, it's *so* useful
for figuring out one's options.
Brian
