Tagged: LAX

My Last Apollo Flight

Last United Apollo Flight

For the fifty-ninth time, I flew between JFK and LAX, which I did for my nephew Alex’s second birthday.

Of those fifty-eight flights, all but four have been on United Airlines, and Thursday’s flight was the last I would fly through United’s now-retired reservation system Apollo. As of March 3, the new United switched to SHARES, Continental’s legacy system. Since I have a fascination with deprecated technology, it is interesting to see a long standing technology platform go by the wayside. But unlike most technologies, which either fail or fade into obscurity because they stop working, Apollo is being retired because of a corporate merger, and a merged airline needs only one reservations system.

The end of Apollo won’t mean the end of anything for my flying or anyone else’s, other than the backend computer system that processes flight reservations and other passenger services. However, it’s hard not to feel a bit nostalgic as it marks the end of an era.

Our First Mileage Run

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Perhaps it is a bad sign that Sarah and I didn’t get to ride our bikes to Montauk this year, but we are taking our first mileage run this weekend. We will be going to Seattle, by way of Los Angeles, leaving at 7:00 AM on Saturday morning and landing at JFK just 24 hours later.

I upgraded our seats to business class on the westbound JFK-LAX segment so we will have a very comfortable place to sleep and a little breakfast once airborne. Unfortunately, we won’t have the sundae bar, which is one of my favorite parts of flying United’s JFK-LAX/SFO business class service, but we will have an almost lie-flat bed. We have a long layover in Los Angeles on the outbound portion and will be having breakfast with my dad at Pann’s Restaurant near LAX. On the turnaround in Seattle, which begins about three hours after we land in Seattle, we will be having dinner with Sarah’s friend Grace at Thirteen Coins, what Sarah calls an old man restaurant near the Seattle Airport.

Sandwich at Thirteen Coins

The inbound portion of the run will be pretty streamlined with no long connections so there won’t be much time for any more visiting. At best, we will have time to hang out at the club, get a nightcap, board our flight, and get some sleep after a long day and almost 6,900 butt-in-seat miles.