So, I decided, screw this: I’m going to use some of these ever-accumulating airline miles on United and upgrade my travel to the UK. Going steerage class on international is tolerable, at best (and last flight it was that way only because of adjacent empty seats).<\/p>\n
Problem is, I’ve never done this before. Which is, of course, the challenge.<\/p>\n
So I call up our corporate travel agent, who gives me the United number to call, the tickets having been issued already.<\/p>\n
I call the United number, get bounced out of the automated system (which I had, to be fair, given the wrong flight info) over to the Mileage Plus desk, but then over to the International desk.<\/p>\n
And, after a few minutes, I’m 45k flight miles poorer (out of 116k), but I’m upgraded to business class on the trip back and on stand-by for the trip out (which is actually the more important one). (And 30k of that is the outbound flight, so if it doesn’t pan out, I don’t spend those miles.)<\/p>\n
I hate being on stand-by, really I do. (See, “Issues, Control Freak” under my dossier), but for the chance to actually enjoy the flight a bit, I’ll do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, I decided, screw this: I’m going to use some of these ever-accumulating airline miles on United and upgrade my travel to the UK. Going steerage class on international is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11774,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/05\/flying_light.html","url_meta":{"origin":7922,"position":0},"title":"Flying light","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 5-Feb-08 8:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"Just ... swell ...\u00a0 United Airlines will begin charging some passengers $50 to check a second piece of luggage on domestic round-trip flights, becoming the first big carrier to impose...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8988,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/09\/woot.html","url_meta":{"origin":7922,"position":1},"title":"Woot!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 9-Mar-06 5:52pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So Margie's meetings let out early today, getting her to Oakland several hours early. 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It does indeed make air travel a very different experience -- quieter,...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5963,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/22\/flying_friendly.html","url_meta":{"origin":7922,"position":3},"title":"Flying friendly skies","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 22-Jun-04 7:53pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm back. Through the oddities of air travel, it was significantly cheaper for us to fly on a United Express commuter prop from ONT to LAX, thence on a United...","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/travel"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2173,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/02\/25\/travelogue_6.html","url_meta":{"origin":7922,"position":4},"title":"Travelogue","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Feb-02 9:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So. Rush-rush-rush on Sunday to get everything packed up and ready to go between the time we returned from Bear Trap Ranch and the time I had to leave for...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":24070,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/26\/the-horrific-crime-of-flying-while-looking-terroristicish.html","url_meta":{"origin":7922,"position":5},"title":"The horrific crime of Flying While Looking Terroristicish","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 26-Nov-11 9:29pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So a pilot, once again, asks for some Arab-looking passengers to be taken off the plane. They're rescreened, checked, and returned to the flight -- which is thus delayed by four hours.First off, kudos to whoever decided to delay the flight while the rescreening was taking place (unless that was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}