It always astounds me how safe aviation has become over the past 10-20 years. Even with commercial aviation growing at steady rate of 7% annually, the number of accidents per million flights has dropped to an all time low of 2.4 per million departures.
We arrived in Christchurch after another long, but beautiful drive from Franz Josef Glacier through Arthur’s Pass National Park and Korowai Tussocklands Park. Combined with all the stops along the way, the standard 6 hour drive took more like 8 hours with all the stops. I chose the Crowne Plaza …
Many people don’t realize the beauty of driving through New Zealand’s wilderness. Most of the landscapes just open up right before you as you drive through the well paved, well marked roads. Unlike many other destinations across the world, there isn’t much separating you and the views from your car …
Having done a proper Norwegian Fjord Cruise last time and a cruise down Miford Sound in New Zealand (more recently), I thought it was quite unnecessary to spend the big bucks on an all day cruise through the fjords once again. Hence, I chose the option to take a shorter …
I am absolutely frustrated with British Airways at this point and their seemingly lousy process they have for cancelling and refunding tickets. In the past I’ve had almost no trouble receiving refunds for award tickets and paid tickets, but as of late I’ve had trouble with both.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have flown United (even in business) and found myself having to push through throngs of people huddled around the gate to find the Premier Access line. Often times priority boarding or my boarding group will have already boarded by the time …
A recent trip to Houston with a long layover and a fairly packed Centurion Lounge led me to the KLM Crown Lounge where I gained access using my Priority Pass card. Priority Pass is a benefit of multiple premium credit cards, which include the AMEX Platinum Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve …
My second day in Norway consisted of some ridiculous reflections on the waterways in and around Bergen.
After leaving Lake Tekapo we drove nearly 7 hours to the Franz Josef Glacier on the West Coast of New Zealand. Hotels in this area of New Zealand are limited in both service and scale so there are very few affordable options. Couple that with the fact that we were …
So one of the huge pitfalls of the Marriott-SPG Merger has been that SPG Amex Card no longer earns 3 Marriott points per dollar spent. I mentioned this in my previous rant about what I do and don’t like in the new program.
