I was the last person to board this Boeing 737-900ER flight; at the door, there was a sticker with the DIRECTV logo, just in case you were not sure.  As I boarded, the flight attendant pointed me to a box on the right in the closet.  It said “Take a free headset,” so I did.  The flight attendant then advised me that there was a charge for DIRECTV and the directions were on the screen at my seat.

As I made my way to my seat, I noticed that everyone had headsets in and were all quiet and watching TV.  I remembered this same experience on jetBlue when I flew them for a month back in September/October 2009.  It was the quietest I’ve ever seen a boarded airplane.

I eventually got the attention of the passenger at the aisle as I had the middle seat.  He was really into the TV in front of him.  I moved into my seat and settled in then started sampling the offerings myself.  You can view the offerings at http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/entertainment/directv/default.aspx on the Continental Airlines Web site.

On the tip of the armrest to my left, the system has a GUIDE button which tells you what is available onscreen.  This is in addition to the normal channel and volume buttons plus a SELECT button and brightness controls.  There was a message on screen that advised that the charge was 6.00 USD and that you can use a credit/debit card to swipe on the right.  The same message also advised that you were receiving a free preview so you should go ahead and swipe your credit/debit card now so you don’t get interrupted later.

I played around with it for a bit checking out the channels.  There were lots of sports stuff going on as well as movies.  I did take note that Harry Potter was starting in ten minutes which would have been 3:00a on the East coast of the U.S.  I don’t have DIRECTV at home so this was all new to me.

I did notice that there is a power plug just under my seat to the right; yea.  I had run down both the computer and my phone batteries in the airport, so this would be very useful during the flight.  I had to wait to get above 10,000′ to plug in though.

The door soon closed, then the flight attendants gave the safety demo manually as there is not a recorded one on the system.  We then headed out to the runway and as it was so late, we departed fairly quickly into the cold night skies.

My free time had run out just before we left the ground, so I swiped my card when we got airborne and followed the instructions to activate the system.  There is no charge in First class by the way.  I was not really watching anything, just surfing channels.  It was late and not much to see on TV anyways.  I looked around and the folks I could see were not watching TV as they had the “your free time is up” screen up; I guess they were asleep. I was trying to find some audio channels, but could not, so I nodded off, just as the beverage service started.  I did have some cranapple juice, but not the pretzels before going to sleep.

I was awoken a few hours later as we were preparing for landing in Houston.  I put my stuff (computer, cell phone and electrical plugs) away and went back to sleep awaking when I got to the gate and heard the ding from the seatbelt sign going off.

All in all, it was a good experience; I have to plan a long flight during the daytime so I can experience it all without falling asleep.

Have you flown an airplane with DIRECTV?  If so, how was your experience?

To make it even more fun, there is a photo contest which starts on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009.  Just take a picture of you using the free WiFi in an airport and voila.  Umm…I wonder how they can prove that you are using their WiFi?

Personally, I think that WiFi should be free everywhere and never understood why some airports charge and others do not, just seems strange to me.  I have an airline airport Club card so I get free WiFi in the Club anyways, but at airports where such a Club is not present, I’m hosed as I refuse to pay for WiFi in an airport unless it is absolutely necessary.  I wonder where my airport tax goes?

You can find additional details at http://www.freeholidaywifi.com/.

Please lease a comment and let us know what you think of all this?  What’s in it for Google?  More  Gmail accounts?  The Global domination continues…

As it turned out, his bag was stolen while he was on an inbound train for Amsterdam from Paris.  He asked me not to use his image, hence the focus on the hotel’s door/signage in the video below.  Listen to his story below.  Have you had a similar experience?:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Transcript

Me: Tell me your story, what is your name first?

Sugarto: My name is Sugarto (in a low tone).

Me: Say it again?

Sugarto: Sugarto.  So the problem is that I was coming from Paris to Schipol and maybe in Brussels or any other place so somebody stole my luggage [trails off].

Me: Wow!

Sugarto: and that is the hand luggage.

Me: And this was on the train or on the plane?

Sugarto: It was on the train, the Thalys.

Me: O.K.

Sugarto: I informed the train manager, but he said that I had to inform the Schipol Police but eventually I got my eTicket from the KLM counter and they were very helpful to me [his tickets and not his passport were in the bag as well].

Me: Good.

Sugarto: The problem is that if something goes stolen in the train which I know is the responsibility of the passenger who is traveling, but there should be some responsibility on the part of the train manager, basically it sucks!

Me: Absolutely.  So where is your next journey?

Sugarto: I’m going back to my country, that’s India.

Me: Oh, O.K., so this was just a stop, an interim stop from Paris.

Sugarto: Yes, it was an interim stop from Paris.

Me: Which part of India are you from?

Sugarto: I’m from New Delhi.

Me: Ah, O.K. Excellent, how long have you been gone?

Sugarto: I’ve been in this country,

Me: In Europe

Surgato: In Europe for say around 6 weeks.

Me: O.K. was that business or pleasure?

Sugarto: Business, business.

Me: So here is a quick question, does your cell phone works? [sound of helicopter in the background]

Sugarto: Ah, No, because I’m not on roaming, so probably the cell phone won’t work for me.  What you have to do is you taht you reall have to setup roaming and then you have to use it.

Me: Ah O.K. and it will perhaps cost a fortune if you do roaming.

Sugarto: Yea, it is too costly, especially for travelers.  I’m on a business purpose so it means my expenditure is more or less paid by the company  but people who travel on their own money so its very costly.  Unluckily my cell phone was also in my hand luggage. So let me check when I get back to Delhi how can I get it.  I need to contact my parents and I don’t know how to do it.  So let’s see.

Me: So most of your trip was O.K. until this I take it?

Sugarto: Ah, I think so, yes.

Me: Wow, I’m very sorry to hear that but I think usually if something gets stolen on the train, I think when you buy the ticket, there is like a limit of liability on the ticket.

Sugarto: Yes, I think so, it should be a part on the train as well because  you are spending around 100 EUR for a train ticket and you don’t get any services except for the traveling.  Yes, that should be there, at least you should have the flexibility to log a complaint while traveling with the train, but I don’t know.

Me: So you only noticed this when you got off the train or when you arrived?

Sugarto: When Schipol was arriving and I was ready to back off.  So, however, my main luggage was still there as it was kept in the main part of the train.

Me: Alright, great, thank you.

Please leave your comments below.

The Albuquerque Airport in Albuquerque, NM

Houston, TX 20 Oct. 2009.  I am doing some research for my free “I will teach you to travel” mini-course (you can subscribe to the right) and when I checked the TSA’s Web site about airport wait times, I got this message:

“The Wait Time Calculator is currently under construction. We apologize for the inconvenience while we are working to make the tool more user friendly.”

Other Web sites linking to it says:

 ”We are sorry but our security wait times application is unavailable at this time. The TSA is currently not publishing this information. Once this information becomes available again, we will re-introduce this feature”

I wonder how long it’s been down?  Anyone knows? If you are looking for this information you can check with your airline’s Web site for details.

Remember to give yourself enough time to get to the airport.  As a general rule, I’ll try to arrive at the airport 1.5 hours before the scheduled departure of my domestic flight.   If you are checking bags and going international, give yourself more time.  As usually you have a one hour cut off time to have your bags checked in.  At worst, I can hang out in the airport/airline lounge .

Las Vegas Convention Center

After finding the South Hall as the driver dropped me at the Hilton Hotel (they are not allowed to drop off people at the Convention Center) I picked up my registration information and was able to see Anthony Edwards and Jermaine Dupri greeting attendees at the end of the keynote .  They were two of the four keynote speakers.  I then found @sseagraves, met some new people (@chrispian and @ifroggy) and wandered around.  I was pumped!

It was interesting meeting @ifroggy as I had started to use his discount code to get the 20% saving on the registration fee, but I also had one from BlogWorld.  Thinking that I could use them both I entered the BlogWorld one and it overwrote the @ifroggy one  as you can only use one.  By then I had forgotten what the @ifroggy code was.  It made a funny icebreaker when I met him face to face.  By the way BlogWorld, I think you should have a Saturday only rate for those who canonly make it on Saturday.  Just a thought.

I talked to a guy, @remco, from the Netherlands at a booth for www.yubby.com, a new video aggregation site.  You should definitely check that out.  You can see what I did with it at http://www.yubby.com/i/cruisinaltitudecom/channel/player/8490/first. I will be playing with for a bit to see how it can showcase our videos.  He also has a site at http://www.dik.nl and he had stickers saying “I (love sign) DIK)”, freaking hilarious.  He said “dik” means “fat” in Dutch.

I also attended a travel panel with folks from an Advertising agency, Disney Parks and Fairmont hotels.  It was great to get the perspective from their end.  I learned a lot here.  Mike Taylor of Fairmont Hotels seems to have a good handle on how to use social media in the travel space.  Disney was concentrating on mom bloggers, but I think they are missing out on the other bloggers out there who can bring an audience to Disney.  The guy from the agency, Tom Martin, seemed a little harsh, you can read his thoughts on his blog.  Overall, it was a good presentation on how to get in touch with the players in the travel space.

I did two sessions on video editing, but they were both disappointing as I expected a more hands on approach as opposed to just telling me Web sites and application names.  I wanted a, here is a video and this is exactly how to get it on your site, adding tags, etc. and it works.  Don’t do this, do this type of approach.  Hopefully that will be better next year.

I unfortunately, missed the session with the top bloggers (Brian Clark [never heard of Brian before], John Chow and Darren Rowse and Zac Johnson [I'd never heard of him before today either]), but I’m hoping to find a link to it somewhere.  If you find it, please let me know.  I did get to talk with Darren after so that was good as I did sign up for his 31 Days to Blogging free e-course which was fantastic.  He knows his stuff.  I did meet John Chow too; a super nice down to earth guy. 

One of the weird things is that there were a few good sessions (titled anyways), but they occurred at the same time, so I had to pick one.  I did see recording equipment, so I’m expecting a link from BlogWorld directing me to them very soon, hint, hint…  I did get a book, “The Worst-case scenario Business Survival Guide”  from an author called Mark Joyner from Auckland, New Zealand.  As soon as I read it, I will blog about it.  It looks like a good read.

My last session was the “How to Make 60K A Month With A Membership Program?  with Timothy Sykes and Adarsh Pallian.  These guys were pretty good and did give some good pointers although Tim was like Simon from American Idol and shot down a bunch of membership site ideas.  But he is somewhat of an authority as he is quite successful at what he does.  I did wonder if the 11:30a session called “The Money Making potential of Continuity Programs” with Tim Kerber and Ryan Lee was better?  Did anyone attend that session? or BlogWorld is recorded somewhere?  Would love to have attended, but the Travel session clashed with it and being a travel blogger, I had to attend that one. 

About 15 minutes later was the final keynote with Guy Kawaskai hosting Kevin Pollak, Chad Vader (Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan) and a very funny/raunchy female comedian of whom I’d never heard of called, The Blogess.  It was a great session with Pollak doing his famed impressions of Christoper Walken and William Shatner.  These were priceless.  The Blogess also had this funny recount of a twitter incident with William Shatner.  Pollak talked about how he makes people imitate Larry King on his online show at.  Try as he could though, he could not get @guykawasaki to do an impression to the dismay of the audience.

One insanely funny thing was that The Blogess drank white wine from a bottle given to her by @guykawasaki, then she passed it to the other three guests who drank from it too.  Then Kevin Pollak passed it to an audience member who took a swag and passed it along.  I refrained when it got to me, but that bottle made it to the back of the room to resounding cheers; that was totally awesome!  I’m not sure if this is what a closing keynote should be like, but whatever.  I did ask one guy in a nearby hotel elevator what he thought of the show and he mentioned that he hated the closing keynote as there was too much cursing from Pollak, oh well.

Oh, I did meet @crimpshoes, Qiana Markham who makes her own shoes and blog about them.  One of the bloggers, Tim Skykes, thought this was not a good idea to be a continuity model, but you be the judge, go check out her stuff.

After the keynote was wrapped, we headed to the closing barbecue party at the Hilton poolside.  Lots of food and beverages.  Oddly enough, local beer was complimentary, but anything else was paid including 4.00 USD for water.  We all though that was odd.

After a quick dinner and drinks, I bade goodbyes and headed for the taxi rank.  It was 8:22p and a taxi was the only way to ensure that I got to the airport ontime for the 9:45p to Newark connecting to the 5:45a for Houston.

I got a cab right away and enjoyed talking to the cab driver who is originally from Ethiopia.  He even slowed down to allow me to take pictures as I kept snapping away as we continued our journey.  Once at the airport, the fare read 14.70 USD, I added a 2.30 USD tip and was surprised by a 3.00 USD service fee.  Ridiculous I thought, but I had to pay it.  I did and bade goodbye and headed into the terminal.

How was your BlogWorld Experience?

I did achieve my goal of the nine new airports, you can take a look at them below.

I had a friend of mine interview me about the trip so you can listen to it below:

[podcast]http://www.cruisinaltitude.com/audio/aycjinterview.mp3[/podcast]
Right click here to download this audio file

Trip Statistics

Please feel free to comment.

You can always follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mskonfa1990 as I continue to fly the world one weekend at a time.  Also, you read what others are saying about All you can jet on twitter at http://twitter.com/#search?q=aycj.

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• All you can jet – heading to Aguadilla, PR and back today
• All you can jet – the next weekend’s routing is booked albeit boring
• All you can jet – Rochester to Orlando and back up to Newburgh, NY all in a day
• All you can jet – Flying from Puerta Plata to Rochester, NY via New York’s JFK
• All you can jet – Journeying from Santiago to Puerta Plata Dominican Republic
• All you can jet – next stop is the Dominican Republic
• All you can jet – heading north to Syracuse then to JFK
• All you can jet – an early departure from Buffalo to Orlando
• All you can jet – visiting Virgina quickly
• All you can jet – taking the first flight
• All you can jet – transportation secured
• Meet Blake, the composing flyer
• All you can jet – the first weekend is booked
• Benét Wilson’s column on some of the AYCJ travelers
• All You Can Jet Pass – I’m in
• http://thestrategyblog.com/index.php/archives/281/how-to-book-an-awesome-travel-itinerary
• Two guys with 12 hours in each city visited – http://www.twelvehoursinacity.com
• http://www.wherewejet.com
• 30 Days on JetBlue
• MCCALLYOUCANJET
• Seth Miller’s Journey

New York, NY 19 Sep., 2009

After snapping back to reality, I started looking for signs to the trains. It was a bit confusing and overwhelming, but eventually, I saw a sign to the NYC Subway. There I checked my routing which seemed a bit complicated and time consuming. I did not even see any signs for for to get to the Long Island Railroad whech would have taken me to Jamaica Station where I can catch the JFK AirTrain to the airport.

A bit annoyed, I headed for the streets deciding to take the bus which left from just outside the station. The lady told me that there would be one at 5:40p which was perfect. I bought my 13 USD ticket and waited in line with about four others.

The bus showed up late at 5:45p and we left at 5:55p.  We got stuck in traffic a little as we went through the Midtown Tunnel as we left Manhattan for Queens, NY.  There was also traffic on as we passed by Astoria, Queens.  The driver took the service road at this point, making only minimal stops or slow downs.  Before I knew it, I arrived at JFK Terminal 7 at 6:24p!  This was pretty impressive.  As Terminal 5 was just two terminals away, I disembarked, tipping the driver as I did so and made my way to Terminal 5.  So I went from Grand Central Terminal to JFK Airport in 29 minutes.

What’s the longest has it ever taken you to complete this journey?

Follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mskonfa1990 for constant updates.  Also, you read what others are saying about All you can jet on twitter at http://twitter.com/#search?q=aycj.

Related Articles/Posts:

Knowing I needed local cash for the bus, I changed 20 USD and received about 700 DOP (Pesos) from the local bank at the airport. I then proceeded to the taxi line. I told the English speaking dispatcher/taxi driver in the green shirt as directed by the airline agents, where I was going and he took me to a waiting cab.

It was 18 USD to the city of Santiago and about 70 USD (2,500 pesos, but they wanted 80 USD) to the Puerta Plata airport. I figured there would be a cab cost from Puerta Plata if I took the bus, so I offered 60 USD, but settled at 70 USD.

The overwhelming deciding factor here was timing. It was already 9:45a, my flight was at 2:39p and we had a 2.5 hours or so drive ahead of us. Yes, I took the easy and less stress way out.

Alternatively, I could have walked he short distance to the main road and taken a local transport to the city if Santiago.  That would have cost about 25 DOP (1 DOP is about 0.027 USD).

It was a great and scenic drive to Puerta Plata through the mountains. I got an opportunity to see the city wake up and go about its business. Almost as popular as cars are motorbikes; almost always ridden my a male and about 50% of the time has a pillion rider.  Sadly, I saw a car being removed that had smashed into a light pole breaking it in two.  The car was pretty smashed!

My driver pointed out places of interest from time and we communicated although I have extremely limited knowledge of Spanish. It was interesting but worked very well. The terrain is much like that of the country parts of Jamaica. Also, you can buy fruits from the vendors on the side of the roads.  I wanted to get some mangoes, but the language barrier prevented that from occurring.

As I was getting weary since we had passed through the town of Puerta Plata, I saw the sign to the airport. The airport is actually 18km from Puerta Plata and 7km from Sosua. I looked at the clock in the car and it read 12:05p. We had done really good time I thought, it took about 2:10 and we hit a bit of traffic as we passed through Santiago. I think taking the bus would have really pushed the limits, maybe next time.

Have you ever taken this routing?  I’d like to hear about it.

Follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mskonfa1990 for constant updates.  Also, you read what others are saying about All you can jet on twitter at http://twitter.com/#search?q=aycj.

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