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Sat
4
Mar '23

Trip Report: Five Mileage Runs To Cincinnati In Two Months

And One More To Come

One might ask, why Cincinnati? To keep my status on Alaska.

Every winter one city stands out for cheap, long-distance turnarounds (out and back on the same plane). The previous five years, it was Raleigh-Durham. At around $250 r/t, which I can book in Premium which is the free booze and extra legroom portion on the plane, not First, but I usually get upgraded. At this point, only one leg did I not get upgraded.

Again, why Cincinnati? $152 round-trip for 1,914 flight miles each way, plus 2,455 bonus miles because of how much I fly (which won’t be as much this year as last). Doing the math, that is $912 for 22,968 flight miles (which gets me MVP Silver for 2024) and 29,460 bonus for a total of 52,428 redeemable miles, which is just a few thousand miles short of a one-way business class ticket to Europe. It’s also a little cheaper (0.0173) compared to the value of Alaska miles (0.018)

Cincinnati is also an hour shorter in each direction, making the flights more tolerable if I don’t get upgraded. And it’s a 9am departure, which is civil.

We will start with all the pretty, out the window shots – I try and seat in window seats on the way east if I get upgraded to First for the mountain views:

And some interesting infrastructure shots:

Braidwood and Byron Generating Stations outside Rockford, Illinois. More info at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braidwood_Nuclear_Generating_Station

And then there is this:

The Fowler Ridge Wind Farm in NE Indiana. For more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fowler_Ridge_Wind_Farm

And then the personal and food stuff:

Feta and sweet potato omelette on the way out:

And the Jerk Chicken on the way home:

For the next trip I’m trying the vegetarian pasta dish, though the Jerk Chicken was quite nice. And here is what you can order if you don’t get upgraded:

End of the day…

And the most amusing thing about the Cincinnati Airport is that there is a Bourbon Tasting Bar and Store next to gate that I fly in/out of:

I’ll end this post with the two most amuzing things from the 5 our of 6 miles runs…

Number 1 — A new cocktail (to me). A Nutty Irishman. Oregon Hazelnut liquor and Irish Cream liqour:

Number 2 – When a group of Coral Directors is on board and they want to sing a song to the First Offier who is taking his last flight as one, to become a Captan. That beats my hitting Alaska MVP Silver on this trip. I got a bit of video:

Sadly, for some reason I can’t get YouTube to embed the video as usual, so click on the link below – it’s a quick 21 seconds.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Qc7AGeGzWyI?feature=share

Well, there is our humor for the day.

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