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Ed and Richard discuss recent aviation enthusiast events, specifically highlighting the Cranky Dorkfest at LAX and its impressive collection

Key takeaways

• The new 'Flight Wall' interface allows users to track specific flights or draw polygons over airspace to monitor traffic.
• Cranky Dorkfest at LAX featured notable aircraft including the Lufthansa 100th anniversary 747 and Southwest's 1776 livery MAX 8.

Main topics

• Aviation enthusiast events
• Credit card reward optimization

Notable quotes

It's a heck of a lot of gas on a little plane.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable value for travelers looking to maximiz

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Happy to be educated live on air. I Speaker 2 (0:04) did not. And here's why. Really? Speaker 3 (0:07) Perfect. Wow. I don't know why you wouldn't be. It's a heck of a lot of gas on a little plane. Yeah, it is. But it's a good story. Speaker 2 (0:15) Wow. Well, don't forget the $9 bottle of water with the $25 club sandwich. Wow. Party fell. Party fell. Party fell. Oops. These things happen, folks. Giddy up. Speaker 1 (0:27) Climb aboard. This is the Miles to Go podcast, your source for the latest in travel news, reviews, and strategies you can't afford to miss. And now here's your host, travel expert and road warrior, Ed Pizza. Speaker 2 (0:48) Hey guys, welcome back to the Miles to Go podcast. Richard has finally dragged his birthday gift on the air with us. So if you're not watching the show, which I don't know why you wouldn't be, you're missing the incredible flight wall interface and the three dots in the middle of the screen because it does seem that every plane in the New York City area is on the ground at the moment. Speaker 3 (1:08) Yeah, man, this is, well, first of all, I gave it the price is right treatment. You know, they just take their hands and they roll it. It's like, this is, you know. I still haven't Googled how much it is because I don't want to be impolite and put how much you and Julian care about me. But right now, it's pretty cool in the app. You can do one of two things. You can track a live specific flight when you see the configuring right now. Speaker 2 (1:30) Otherwise, Speaker 3 (1:31) you literally go on a map and you draw like a polygon shape. And then any plane that flies through that polygon, the flight information will display here. But as we were just looking, I was like, why isn't any flight showing up right now? Because I have a pretty long box drawn all the way. Basically from LaGuardia to Newark here over Manhattan. And there's nothing flying right now, man. But I see a lot of planes on the ground. So I don't know if we're seeing something happen live or if, like, it's not, it's almost 11 here on Sunday morning. We should be some planes in the air. So I'm not sure what's going on. Because as I look at flight radar, there's not a lot happening except a lot of planes on the ground. Speaker 2 (1:59) Maybe just need to make a bigger polygon. Just, you know, I mean, cover the whole New York City area and then we'll get like one new flight every, you know, six nanoseconds. So then when it's regular ops, this thing will get overwhelmed. This is too many Speaker 3 (2:09) flights and you got to decrease the box. If you get like, because I started that. I was like, oh, Speaker 2 (2:14) I'll Speaker 3 (2:14) cover LaGuardia, Newark. And this thing freaked out and it was like, no, can't do that. Speaker 2 (2:18) Well, you know, so you don't have to be in flight. I'll tell you that there are two sizes of flight wall. That size of flight wall is about $150. So I think, you know. For aviation geeks, I think a relatively good value for something that's, you know, a fun toy to play with. Speaker 3 (2:33) Yeah. I am going to bring it to the office because it's just my limited time here. And then, you know, Mrs. Curve doesn't particularly want another aviation piece here in the house. Interesting. See the new background for those of you watching on YouTube, trying to set this up and look a little bit more couth than just sitting in my son's room in the New York City apartment. So leave a comment and let you know how you feel about Uncle Richard in the rocking chair here with the flight wall. We can see Speaker 2 (2:55) how. I, it's very much on brand. I don't know why you don't have like a, a cup of like Nestle tea or something like that. Just there like round, round the time. Oh, see, there you go. Tea. Very good. You didn't even know I have Speaker 1 (3:06) it. Speaker 2 (3:06) For those, for those of you not watching. Uh, yeah, I call it, there's a very big mug of, of tea and I haven't had my caffeine yet this morning. It's pretty early in Vegas. I'll need to go and hunt of caffeine, uh, right after we're. After we're done recording, but I did have a little bit of an aviation geek fun yesterday. No flight wall for me. I had the live flight wall hanging out at Cranky Dorkfest in Los Angeles. For those who don't know what Dorkfest is, a fun aviation geek event. Holy cow, the crowds were big this year. I Speaker 3 (3:40) saw some pictures. It looked like a bigger crowd than I remember seeing in years past. Speaker 2 (3:44) Definitely a bigger crowd. I give the airport authority credit. I'm sure I won't get all the organizations right. I know like LAWA is part of it. There's another LAX group that gets involved. Brett Snyder is the guy that organizes it. And man, I mean, so they do a ramp tour where you can take a bus around the runways. But they also have parked planes on the other side of the airport the last few years. This year we had... Five planes. So we had a United 787. They didn't have the elevated interior, which was a little bit of a bummer. People got to go in the cockpit there. That was a big draw. Southwest 1776 livery, which was pretty cool on a MAX 8. The new Airbus A321 XLR. Oh, look, we got a flight behind you. Milwaukee JFK. A Speaker 3 (4:31) little CRJ. Speaker 2 (4:33) American or Delta? Speaker 3 (4:35) That's Delta Endeavor there. Oh, and it's out of the box. Speaker 2 (4:37) It was still 15,000 Speaker 3 (4:38) feet on its way to Speaker 2 (4:39) JFK. So it's gone now. And gone. So this is the A321. So our American was nice enough to bring the Air Cal American Airlines livery as well. And then Delta had their 100th anniversary livery. I think that was a 757. So good collection of planes. You could get on most of the planes and walk through and see the products. You could take pictures with polar seats, the new A321 product. And then on the other side of the runway, we're there for the in and out part of the event. Like you said, the grassy area was covered with people. They had a ton of really awesome giveaways from the airlines. Like larger, Milwaukee JFK is that. Larger models of like the new Alaska Airlines livery, a larger version of that Southwest 1776 livery. There were some, I think Alaska gave away 100,000 Atmos rewards points. I mean, there were some really. solid giveaway. And then we got to see some fun planes. And this is a part that I think is so cool about this event is, I mean, there's no, you know, there's no like official event. This is an event that, that, that Brent cranky flyer came up with a number of years ago. That's just like an unofficial, let's go hang out and watch airplanes land. If folks that don't know, there's an In-N-Out burger on the corner of Sepulveda. And I forget what the cross street is there, but it's on the other side of the airport, right by the end of the runway. So it's a great place to watch planes land. And so like, A bunch of geeks show up there on this weekend in September, just, you know, casually show up. And airlines are planning and flying in their special liveries this day during this time window so we can see them. So probably the piece de resistance, Mr. Kerr, to use a French this morning. Wow. Lufthansa flew in their 100th anniversary livery on 7-47. And that was right at the tail end of the event, right? Just after one o'clock. And man, the... The people scurrying around to get the right shot of it on the way in, including me, it was something to see. So it was another fun year at Dirt Fest. Fitted into my schedule quite nicely because I was in Montreal right before that to drop off some Freddie Awards trophies for the folks at Air Canada Aeroplan who did an incredible job on the Fridays last year. And then I have to be in Vegas for a few days and then back to L.A. Worked through my schedule again this year, and I was really happy it worked in the schedule. Speaker 3 (6:56) Man, we've been talking about this in the group chat, everybody. I need everybody to send Ed notes of encouragement and reflection. Dude, you got to slow down a little bit, man. You're murdering yourself here with these. I know you're going to cover how long you spent on E2 here in a second, because that's a long time. And I know we're going to see each other next weekend around the New York City area, where you're going everywhere, man. I got a quick hop to Montreal and back this week and then out to Long Island with some folks that we know. But man, I am enjoying not being in the airport so much. I'll tell you what. Speaker 2 (7:29) Yeah, it's interesting. But I was talking to my wife this morning. My aura ring is, so the sleep score is moving up and the readiness score is moving down. So, yeah. Speaker 3 (7:41) That's not the axis intersection or interactions you want to see there. It's aura ring just says, hey man, quit it. Yeah, pretty Speaker 2 (7:49) much. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I want to, you know, I mean, like I said, I don't usually attend Dorkfest. It's actually, oddly, the second year in a row that it worked out. But I did need to be here in Vegas today, Sunday. It was one of our first football Sundays in the restaurant. So the timing ended up working out. So a little bit of housekeeping. If you want to text us or leave us a voicemail, 571-293-6659. He is at KerrPoints on all those social media channels. I am at Pizza in Motion. And if you want to email us, you can email us ed at pizzamotion.com. Selfishly, I'll just say we're going to read a comment from YouTube in a second. But for folks that are listening or watching, leaving us a comment on whatever podcast platform you're on or YouTube, that's super helpful for us from an algorithm standpoint. The more interaction, the better. We had a really good week, Mr. Kerr. People really liked last week's episode. They especially liked the part where you talked about being able to fly to Japan for cheaper than flying to Orlando. Yeah, pretty wild. It's still the case, by the way, Speaker 3 (8:49) ladies and gentlemen, if you want the old nonstop in the back of the American bus from New York City to Tokyo, cheaper than trying to get to Florida, which is pretty amazing, man. Speaker 2 (8:57) Yeah, no, it is pretty amazing. And I mean, like we talked about last week, domestic airfare continues to... Kind of blow my mind. I will say it's kind of surprised. I actually cleared two upgrades on the Dulles SNA route a month and a half out. Right? Wow. I was surprised. Yeah. Especially on that. That's like a, Speaker 3 (9:15) that's the old 737 as well, right? Speaker 2 (9:17) It was 737-700 and they were charging over $2,000 a seat. But we cleared. Yeah. Speaker 3 (9:23) So. So this was, I mean, that was, it was a little bit late last night. I know everybody's everywhere, but I sense. a picture of a return flight munich to newark after the thanksgiving holiday because there might be an opportunity for the courage to go do some christmas markets plane is empty dude like i think of the entire 787 there was like six or seven seats taken and still the premium that was being asked for a mileage ticket on a completely empty plane what do they know that we don't know like why not fill up a plane Where, you know, obviously not too much business demand on what is probably a very heavy business route of Munich to Newark. Why not put something, I think it was 70,000 miles for an economy seat and 200,000 for business on a completely empty plane? What is the, what would be your hypothesis there? I Speaker 2 (10:07) mean, I think the hypothesis is they're, they're just. really gatekeeping on a word in Maduro right now. We should track flights like that and just keep an eye on it and see if they stick that out. What do we got there? Was that a little Raleigh-Durham action on the board? Speaker 3 (10:21) That was a little private jet action there going down to an airport code. I don't know, but it was a Phenom 300 going to LEB. Is that like Lebanon, Tennessee or something like that? I have to Google that one up for me. That would be my guess, ladies and gentlemen, going for Lebanon, Tennessee. If it's even, is Lebanon in Tennessee? I think it is. I think I'm pretty sure. I don't know. Somewhere down there. Speaker 2 (10:37) Lebanon Municipal Airport in Lebanon. new hampshire oh Speaker 3 (10:41) there you go well mess that one hey we're even we're even tracking the private phenom 300s you're listening live on the mouse to go podcast nowhere else such excitement as reading an led screen Speaker 2 (10:53) live on tape delay on my old video podcast yeah yeah but yeah so i mean i think i