My Two Upcoming Trips To The Middle East

We'll be floating around there at about the same time. I shall keep an eye out! Safe travels.

You should make a stop in Tel Aviv too - best party town in the Middle East!
Dubai is cool too, but I always found myself looking over my shoulder and the police there are nasty. Tel Aviv is the most free-spirited and safe place I've ever been + great beaches and even greater women 🙂

Wow, that looks like an amazing itinerary. I can't wait to see your reviews. I wish American offered better rates out of ATL. Their FF program seems so much better than any other I've seen. It's tough living in Delta's hometown!

I've been on that EY DUS-AUH flight last month and saw that F class was offered. Did they change the flight to 2 class?

@ Mochi -- Nope, it's still a three cabin route.

And LIS to MIA? TAP business class?

Is the Etihad to LAX no longer a 77W or 772? It shows A340 now?

Mentioned it on your last thread as well but it probably got lost in the comments. If you are spending time in the UAE, drop me a note. I'm up in Ras Al Khaimah (maybe worth your while to try out the Waldorf Astoria here?), but can easily make the drive down to Dubai or Abu Dhabi to meet up if you can spare the time.

Any plans to visit Bahrain while you're in the Middle East? I'm flying BAH-AUH-DUS next month with one way on Etihad and the other Air Berlin (except fort the BAH-AUH part). I've flown my wife back and forth between Bahrain and Europe a few times on Etihad, can't beat it for 60k AA miles RT and free chauffeur service!

225K miles just for this. Most of your travel appears to be on miles redemptions. How is it that you are able to accrue so many RDMs?

"You should make a stop in Tel Aviv too – best party town in the Middle East!"

After Beirut, naturally.

I wish you had taken a trip to somewhere. I mean, a trip to the Middle East, and...Abu Dhabi? Not much to see there besides the hotels. Granted, this isn't the best time to visit much of the Middle East, but Jordan is stable and Amman has lots to see, even if you don't want to take the trip to Petra or the Dead Sea.

And I understand if you don't feel cool with flying Royal Jordanian, but it would have been interesting to fly Etihad or Emirates to Amman, just to compare regional flights in the Middle East vs the service offered in the US, Europe, and Asia.

@ Miro -- Yep, that's the plan.

@ Brian -- For the first couple of months it's an A340-500, and then after that it's a 777-200LR.

@ Nic -- Hope to make it to Bahrain on my next trip to the Middle East, as I've heard it's quite interesting.

@ Eric M -- I do a lot of paid travel on American whereby I earn lots of RDMs, and also earn a lot of miles through credit card sign-up bonuses.

I know zilch about electricity. Europe England, and Sweden what do I need for my computer, coffee maker and curling iron?
Thanks

Lucky, you are on the inaugural A380 Singapore - Mumbai flight as well, right?
Remember reading it somewhere here on your blog.

Looking forward to the Abu Dhabi - Los Angeles review. The direct flight is 16hrs 30 minutes! - only business and above will do on this kind of ultra long haul flight.
Hyatt Capital Gate is amazing.

You should make a stop in Tel Aviv too – best party town in the Middle East!

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Be careful if you are getting your passport stamped, then trying to get into other ME countries

How's your kickstarter going Ben?

Do you have a YYZ stopover or are you just connecting? You didn't say how you are positioning there.

Your map implies you won't be going to Cairo to take the first leg - you don't want to give the wrong impression to people of what is allowed!

Could you clarify your comment on the DOH-LHR flight originating in Cairo? I know booking ex-Cairo can save a tonne of money, but you dont appear to be originating in Cairo?
love the blog by the way. cheers jeremy

Lucky, you are able to combine Air Berlin & Etihad in one award, and Jet Airways & Qatar in another single award?

I didn't know that non-oneworld alliance award can mix within AA; most others only allow combination within their own alliance.

Can you do a list of partners mix in different awards of major mileage programs?

I remember reading that ANA allows mixing ANA with non-staralliance partners, i.e. ANA & Etihad, but I cannot find information if JAL allows a mix of JAL & Emirates. But in these 2, I know they cannot mix awards with other partners.

Can US airways mix oneworld partners with non-oneworld partners (their former star alliance partners)? or can they mix the non-oneworld partners?

Looking forward to your reports as usual!

*But in these 2, I know they cannot mix awards with other partners.

Sorry, clarification: they (ANA & JAL awards) cannot mix awards if that partner is outside their alliance.

But I am not sure if JAL can mix even with their non-alliance partner, i.e. Emirates with JAL.

@lucky Do you find it in any way awkward being in places like Abu Dhabi and Doha as a gay man?

Mike S -- Israel no longer stamps passports by default: see https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/israel/entry-requirements (strangely enough, that's from the UK government, I wasn't able to find an official Israeli link). You will still get "incriminating" stamps from the Jordanian and Egyptian sides of Israel's land crossings, but we know that Lucky doesn't travel by land...

@Mike S. you dont get passport stamps in tlv for several years now. its all electronic.

@ arnette -- And you're based in the US? If so, you just need a converter.

@ Ani -- I was booked on it, but spoke to a contact at Singapore Airlines who said they were only planning something special for the inaugural OUT of India. So ended up canceling since I figured it wasn't worth the hassle otherwise. Hopefully soon when I can actually visit India for a while.

@ CP@YOW -- That's because I haven't decided yet. 🙂 Hope to maybe spend some time in Toronto, I haven't been in a long time.

@ Jeremy I -- I accidentally left Cairo off the map, should have been a roundtrip DOH-CAI-DOH. Whoops!

@ ASAS -- Thanks, good idea for a blog post. You can on AAdvantage awards mix partner airlines.

With US Airways you can't mix oneworld partners with non-oneworld partners, though.

Given you love Hong Kong so much will you be coming around to stay at different hotels for, say, two weeks? I'd like to see what you think about an extended time in Hong Kong - if it gets boring you can always drive into Shenzhen.

How do you book Etihad through A.A? they don't show it on their website !

@ CARLOS -- You'll want to search space through Etihad's website. If they show "Guest" space available then it should be bookable through American as well.

Glad you decided to take TAP back to MIA. Would love to visit Portugal so look forward to your review.

Lucky, check this thread out:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qatar-airways-privilege-club/1580368-qr-a388-schedule-changed.html

Are you affected?

@ Charlie -- Yes I am. OUCH.