I’m a member of BA but only travel with them a few times a year so don’t accrue a great deal of miles.

My main FF programme is Flying Blue, the award scheme of Air France & KLM. As KLM is a member of Skyteam, you can accrue and spend miles on other Skyteam airlines such as Continental, Delta, Northwest etc. This programme is great for me as the vast majority of my business trips are with KLM because a) they are relatively cheap and there are great connections in Amsterdam from my local at MME.

The programme itself is great. After little over a year in my new job, I’ve already achieved Platinum status meaning I get double miles on every trip as well as lounge access, even if travelling economy. I have enough miles now for two free business class flights to the U.S., or more flights if I travel economy. At the moment, I have no plans to use the miles but will one day soon.

If you want more details, check out http://www.klm.com

The miles do add up quickly, particularly if you always try and book with the same airline and you start moving up the ranks.

The best piece of advice I can give is stick to one FF programme. If you don’t travel too frequently, it can take a while to see things build up, this will take even longer if your miles are spread over a number of airlines.

Flew on plenty of Dan Air’s 1-11s and 727s as a kid.

Last year, flew on my first DC10 of Northwest from Boston to Amsterdam. I have a trip report in the archives if you want to search for it.

The DC10 I was on was built in 75 so was just over 30 years old when I flew on it. It looked ancient inside, felt sluggish and was incredibly dated. Even remember the old dials in the seat to tune into the cinema screen audio!

Loved every minute of it though!

Excellent news!!

Aisle TVs in economy; stow away PTVs in business class.

Those 744s are really in need of an upgrade.

I don’t think MME will get it but a couple of pointers for you….

Firstly, MME is far bigger than a supermarket. 🙂

Secondly, if MME get the route before anything happens in NCL or LBA, then MME’s catchment area will range from Yorkshire to Tyneside – a perfect middle ground.

The infrastucture at NCL is far better, however, during my recent NCL flights, I felt the airport was starting to struggle at peak times with the numbers of passengers. The queues for bags, to check-in, through customs etc were all a lot longer than they used to be.

A lot will reside on how the TFS service performs for GSM and if and when CO will announce something from NCL. Can’t ever GSM using LBA to be honest, simply because of Jet2’s presence and the fact that Donny is just down the road. But then again, who am I to judge?

Especially with the American film industries tendancy to distort the facts

Well that and the tendancies of the US to make blockbuster films on whatever far fetched subject they can.

We see dramatic, action, real life films coming out of the US everyday. The 9/11 story was much more dramatic and real than anything that could come out on a screen and to do this, after only 5 years, I find a little dis-tasteful, though un-surprising.

I remember many things from that fateful day, but I remember one comment from me to my wife which was “I wonder how long it will take the yanks to make this into a film”.

I’m sure the film is excellent, but sometimes I believe things should be left alone.

I flew MAS in February for the first time to Kuala Lumpur and then onwards to Perth, Australia.

I flew business class on all my 3 MAS flights on 744 aircraft (MPL,MPO,MPI).

The service was excellent. The crew were extremely attentive. If you like Malay food, you’ll enjoy the lemaks and sates on offer. All flights were on time and to be honest I would sum up the experience as my best ever long haul trip. If you search the trip report forum, I think I wrote up my outbound flight experience in there.

Highly recommended from me!