Last American Airlines Trip

The pleasures of flying American Airlines, one of the rare advantages of being based in Dallas-Fort Worth area, will unfortunately come to an end with my plan to head back to India. So this trip will be the last since AA cancelled their ORD-DEL route. And this is one of my most frequent routes too. Flying to Philadelphia and then driving to New Jersey - it costs, on an average the same, but budget constraints very often are perfect illustrations of a Penny Wise Pound Foolish thought processes. Anyways, of all the miles I have accumulated on my AAdvantage membership, 35% would probably have come from this route.

The convenient DFW airport is one of those things that almost sticks to your memory as a tourist attraction. It never ever took me more that 15 minutes to get from the outside gate to the boarding gate - in fact 15 minutes has been the case on the occasions where the rush has been high.

One of the other things that I will remember, slightly less than fondly is the Exit Seat. Once I got to a Gold Level membership, the Exit seat was the poor man's Business Class, making cattle-class travel bearable. It is cramped in spite of the increased leg space but then, compared to the discomfort of knees touching the front seat, this makes flying worthwhile. Since I never managed to make it to the coveted Exec Platinum, this option of exit seating had to replace a lifetime of free upgrades.

Well anyways, I am happy to say it has been a good run with AA and hope that next time when I fly AA again, bankruptcy will have been put in the past along with MD - 80s aircrafts.