Weekend Mileage Run Trip Report - Introduction

It has been some time since I have been up in the air so I ended up booking a mini weekend mileage run when great fares became available from Los Angeles to New York as well as from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The plan was to fly to Los Angeles in the morning on Saturday and then take a transcon to JFK with an overnight in the city before returning to Los Angeles and then back to Minneapolis.

There was a large snow storm that impacted the East Coast and thousands of flights ended up getting cancelled. My flight from Los Angeles to New York was impacted by a cancellation and I was offered the option of rebooking it for another day or time. That would have been easy if I did not have the other reservation going from Minneapolis to Los Angeles which was not impacted by weather. So I had to think creatively in order to preserve the flights.

I called into AA and was informed that I would receive a call back after about an hour by the automated system due to the high call volumes. I attempted Twitter to adjust the flights in the meantime; however, because I needed to modify the entire trip, they suggested I call into the Executive Platinum Line.

I waited for the call back before being assisted by a friendly agent who searched various options for getting to New York and back so that I could still make the existing flights from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and back work.

There were only a few Los Angeles to New York flights available on Sunday and the only seats left were middle seats. I was crossing my fingers to hopefully getting an upgrade to business on the original flights; however, due to the weather and cancellation rebooking the possibility was now very slim.

I ended up finding an option via San Francisco that would work where I could do that flight as a turn and still being able to make it back to Los Angeles in time to make my flight back.

It took around 20 minutes or do to get an itinerary that worked. The outbound flight had one seat left in the exit row as well as a couple others towards the back of the plane. I elected to sit in the exit row even though it was a middle seat at the front of the cabin. The return flight had more availability so I was able to get an aisle seat at the front of the cabin.

About an hour after I arrived in San Francisco, I received notice that my flight to JFK was cancelled. I called AA and was put into the callback que. I received a call back after three hours and 20 minutes.

The agent was apologetic and she assisted me in ensuring I was able to get back to Los Angeles so I could make the other flights.

The mileage run trip turned into two nights in San Francisco instead of a trip to New York. Hopefully I will be able to get original route credit from American so that I will receive the full mileage from the trip including the two transcontinental flights.