Well, time to bite the bullet so to speak and post my maiden trip report. Apologies in advance if some of this sounds familiar as parts have been posted in various other threads to date.
Well I can honestly say now that this site has had an affect on me (and I mean that in the nices possible way....
)
I had a trip to our head office in Pittsburgh coming up, combined with a few days at a conference in North Carolina, so I set about thinking how I could maximise SC for this itinerary. I was comp’d WP this year with 840 SC, so wanted to make sure that I meet the requalification criteria this membership year to maintain the “perks” of this status.
As our company has a Y only policy, maintaining WP is a bit of a struggle for me (as above). After reading on this forum about the earning potential of YUP/KUP fares it was clear that such fares would make a significant contribution to my requalification attempts. I was also prepared to personally foot for any fare difference between a flexible Y ticket and the P class fare (and then subsequently claim this fare difference as a tax deduction due to flights being work related).
As all AA/AE flights to PIT are single class, trying to earn a
reasonable (my interpretation of reasonable at least) amount of SC would involve a 3 sector itinerary – 2 in P class and the last to PIT in Y. This then raised the issue of misplaced checked luggage, particularly given the recent experiences of simongr and JohnK. Simon then started The
Great Hand Luggage Only Challenge thread, which inspired me to also partake of this quest.
So this trip would see a few firsts for me:
- booking via aa.com
- dealing with the IndiAA call centre
- flying domestic first (P) class on AA
- flying internationally with only carry-on luggage.