Regular readers know I’m not one to miss a happy hour. And friends know I’m always the first to pick up the first round of drinks in the Sky Club:) So I jumped at the opportunity to attend the opening day at T4 and the new Sky Deck.

Flights

I have literally traveled non-stop for the last few weeks and this was a last minute decision.

So I fired up matrix.itasoftware.com and found the flights into JFK, LGA and EWR were outrageous. My next thought was to fire up British Airways and look at award availability into LGA using British Airways Avios points for an American Airlines regional jet flight. The availability looked good for First Class so I booked a one-way First Class for 22,500 Avios points. The return was more difficult. There was no award availability on Delta, or American out of JFK or LGA at the low level. So I picked up a one-way flight from JFK to Atlanta on Delta. I was all set to attend the opening day of T4 and I was sure to purchase the first drink of some kind from the new Delta Sky Deck. My fall back was to order a gin on the rocks with olives, no one would order that drink on opening day, would they? But I never got the chance.

What Went Wrong

First, the weather on Thursday or Friday didn’t look great at all. I had a 4 am wake up call for my American Airlines regional jet into LaGuardia, so I set up a flight alert to text me if anything changed. Sure enough, at 2 AM EST I received my first text stating that my 6 am flight would be delayed by about an hour and a half. Not a big deal I thought. I could still take the van over to JFK in time to attend the main events. But then around 3 am I received another text that my flight had been delayed by about 2 and a half hours. This was pushing it and basically made the arrival into LGA the exact time the events were to start. Then at about 6 am I received a text message that the flight would be delayed about 3 and a half hours. Ultimately the flight didn’t depart until 9:24 am and didn’t arrive into LGA until 11:06 am. The reason for the delay was stated as a late arriving airplane. But the airplane arrived the night before from Chicago. So I suspect it was a crew rest and weather issue that delayed the flight. Even if I had caught this flight, I would have missed the main event because I would have had to catch the bus over to JFK and get through security. It wasn’t in the cards today.

Bottom Line

Ultimately I had to cancel my British Airways award ticket on American Airlines and the one-way Delta flight. It just didn’t make sense. While attending the opening day at T4 would have been great, another day in the airport didn’t make sense after traveling non-stop for 3 straight weeks. I wouldn’t have even been able to attend the opening event. Plus, I’ll be able to review the Sky Deck in the coming weeks on another flight. Ultimately the opportunity to spend the day with Mrs and Baby Weekly Flyer in Atlanta on a beautiful day won out. At least I can say with a straight face to Mrs Weekly Flyer I have my priorities straight 🙂

While we would have loved to bring you the events live and on video, sadly, we weren’t able to. But there is great news. ModHop captured the opening day on video, so head on over if you’d like to see a video from today’s opening.

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