{"id":3526,"date":"2013-03-02T06:13:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T13:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/?p=3526"},"modified":"2013-03-04T20:02:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T03:02:38","slug":"trip-report-the-comfy-run-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/?p=3526","title":{"rendered":"Trip Report – The Comfy Run: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/a>
\nSeattle to San Francisco<\/a>
\nAloft San Francisco Airport
\nSan Francisco to Atlanta
\nAtlanta to Newark
\nFairfield Inn & Suites Newark
\nNewark to Minneapolis
\nMinneapolis to San Francisco
\nSan Francisco to Seattle
\nConclusion<\/p>\n

With the planning of the first MR well and truly complete I was always on the look out online for a 2nd mileage run. \u00a01 was definately not going to be enough and every couple of days I would check the flyertalk mileage run deal forum scouting out either good fares on Delta or Hawaiian. \u00a0Hawaiian would come and go out of San Jose but other than that there was nothing. \u00a0Plus the fact that it was lucky to be 2 or 3 flights meant that the use was minimal at best for me to get a good run on HA. \u00a0So I kept looking at all the deals.<\/p>\n

One day at work trolling the mileage run forum at lunch, I came across a deal from Newark to San Francisco. \u00a0Checked through the thread, yep good in reverse. \u00a0What made it even better was the fact that people were having luck in getting it in F for an extra $100. \u00a0SOLD! \u00a0That would be perfect for me as I had failed to move on the Peurto Rico deals late december. \u00a0So I did what I could to get that flight booked before someone realised that it was more than likely a mistake.<\/p>\n

The hardest part of organising the flights was the choice of what cities to connect in. \u00a0As I was going to have to position to SFO that would be another hurdle but I could only get one stop in each direction. \u00a0Thankfully I found a date that didn\u2019t restrict me to MSP but I had choices. \u00a0I found that I could either do Atlanta over or on the way back. \u00a0SFO to ATL on an international configured A330 sold that segment. \u00a0But on the way back, could I get DTW. \u00a0Well not the best weekend I couldn\u2019t. \u00a0Two possible dates but the MSP back dates were heaps better for the positioning flights. \u00a0So that sealed the deal.<\/p>\n

Positioning flights went to United as VX was out as they don\u2019t go late enough and on the way back was just crap costs. \u00a0I could of gone alaska for a bit cheaper but with my MSP return meant 5 hours on the way back. \u00a0I couldn\u2019t get around it at all and decided if I am going to have 5 hours in SFO I may as well go with United cause i can chill in the lounge. \u00a0So that\u2019s what I did. \u00a0In the end the run looked like this on a map:<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>

My Mixed Delta & United Mileage Run<\/p><\/div>\n

And the flight list ended up working out as follows:<\/p>\n

Friday 1st March<\/strong>
\nUA6426 – Seattle to San Francisco – 2013-2225 – CRJ-200
\nSatruday 2nd March<\/strong>
\nDL1580 – San Francisco to Atlanta – 0630-1402 – A330-200
\nDL2142 – Atlanta to Newark – 1635-1900 – A319
\nSunday 3rd March<\/strong>
\nDL5819 – Newark to Minneapolis St Paul – 0805-1018 – E175
\nDL2105 – Minneapolis St Paul to San Francisco – 1135-1349 – 757-200
\nUA971 – San Francisco to Seattle – 1932-2141 – A319<\/p>\n

A good mixture of Aircraft, services and 2 new airports (Atlanta and Newark). \u00a0All up the cost wasn\u2019t to bad really. \u00a0Good return on investment since the status credits off the SFO-EWR F flights would pretty much give me at least 50% of my needed credits for the year. \u00a0The UA flights were a little pricey but it wasn\u2019t to bad and that would give me some more points towards my LH redemption I want to do. \u00a0Even better the cost of the mileage run went on my new AA Citibank card so that would count towards minimum spend.<\/p>\n

Next up in the planning was the hotels. \u00a0I wanted to stay somewhere different in San Fran as the last time I stayed at the airport it was a hotwire bid and although we got it ok, it failed compared to what we thought it was going to be. \u00a0No hits at the usual industry rates and I didn\u2019t get any love from Club Carlson at all, so I tried Starwood. \u00a0The new Aloft San Francisco Airport came up with a pretty good price for an SFO airport hotel (some wanted $200+ for the night). \u00a0I had never stayed at an Aloft and the price was good at $80. \u00a0So that was set. \u00a0Next up Newark. \u00a0Like barely any choice unless I wanted to trek all the way into New York city but that would up my accomodation costs exponentially.<\/p>\n

Backwards and forwards I went through sites till I made a decision. \u00a0Fairfield Inn & Suites Newark Liberty Airport. \u00a0Why this hotel? \u00a0Well I decided I might as well burn one of my Marriott vouchers for the year (i get 7 industry rate vouchers a year) and for a 1 night stay at $44. \u00a0Well worth it. \u00a0What i REALLY should of done after I booked all this was reverse that train of thought. \u00a0Since I would get maybe 5 or 6 hours at most in my hotel in San Francisco this would of been the time to burn the voucher or go somewhere really cheap. \u00a0Then go for something half decent in Newark for around the $100 mark as I had a half decent departure time. \u00a0Well hindsight is great but it was all set.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t end up booking the car parking till about 2 days before as I was looking into options ready to test out a new car park if needed prior to my big trip home in april (which is an epic tale all of it\u2019s own). \u00a0With that all set and definately going carry on with my mileage run luck in MSP, it came down to the day of departure, ready for my comfiest mileage run so far (my trips back home had only ever had a max of 2 segments in business, this would be 4).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction Seattle to San Francisco Aloft San Francisco Airport San Francisco to Atlanta Atlanta to Newark Fairfield Inn & Suites Newark Newark to Minneapolis Minneapolis to San Francisco San Francisco to Seattle Conclusion With the planning of the first MR well and truly complete I was always on the look out online for a 2nd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4,8,1,18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-spotting","category-expat","category-life-in-general","category-travelling","category-tripreports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49RU0-US","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3526"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigmal.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}