It is always a good sim day when I can enjoy the two sims that don't have CTD's, Xplane11 and P3DV4.4.  I enjoyed two real time flights today, a 30 minute flight from SFO to Reno in the Carenado Citation 550 and a two hour plus flight from Vegas to Phoenix in the Xplane11 172.  The scenery on both flights is varied, farmland, city and desert and mountains, I love flying to a destination with different scenery than where I took off, although Phoenix and Vegas resemble each other more than Frisco and Reno. 

In real life I always loved flying from Phoenix to Orlando, or the shorter Phoenix to Puerto Vallarta flight, due to the way the scenery goes from desert to tropical on such flights.  Phoenix to London last year was a blast, going from desert to United Kingdom and Irish Farmland, over icy Canada and the Atlantic iceburgs, flowing even in late may.  I remember on the way home looking down on Hudson Bay and the ice, then the Rockies and the snow, as the Rockies gave way to New Mexican and Phoenix desert. 

It is a crazy feeling, stepping into an airport terminal a continent away and not stepping outside until you have crossed the Pacific, or Atlantic, and a large chunk of your home country.  I have always sailed thru customs for some reason, in Mexico I get move to the front of the line because my in law Dagoberto works the airport customs in Zacatecas Mexico, much to the anger of the other passengers, but it is cool being a US VIP when clearing foreign customs there, which I have a few times.  Returning to the US, or traveling into Canada I always get special treatment since technically I am a dual national. 

But in Europe I join the queue like everyone else, same was true of Japan and South America.  How does one get a free first class upgrade?  Just be empathetic to the gate agent, if you see him or her having a rough time with a previous passenger, give them your empathy, tell them you are early for your flight, to take a breather, not to rush.  I have been upgraded to first class with no airline miles many times just trying to comfort the gate agent and make him or her have a sincere smile.

John

Very cool. That worked for me years ago on PanAm to Frankfurt.

59 minutes ago, lennie said:

Very cool. That worked for me years ago on PanAm to Frankfurt.

I've flown TWA and US Airways to Frankfurt, loved the US Airways flight because it was on a 767 which just had window and aisle seats, no middle seats, and I had a row to myself going and a good, but smoking companion going home, from a three week business trip in Bologna Italy in 95 right after I married. 

Spent my birthday in Europe in '95, flew home, then had to fly to San Diego the very next day on another WAN installation and training session for my client, a UNIX install vs. the Novell Install I had just done in Bologna.  My San Diego client took such pity on my jet lag, they gave me a VIP ticket to a Michael McDonald concert the night I arrived, I watched the concert from the VIP deck with free drinks and his family and his band's family, it was very cool.  I was about to go down into the general seating and they said no sir, you are up there!  I was floored, like a first class upgrade at the expense of my client who owned the arena as well as their Holiday Inn Hotel. 

Then they suggested I fly my wife to San Diego feeling I'd work better with her there by my side, they said they would take good care of her while I worked.  So I flew her Southwest to Phoenix the next day and my client spared no expense making her happy, she said it was the best vacation she ever had had to that point.  I was quite the road warrior that May/June, going from Bologna Italy,visiting Venice twice, via Frankfurt, Pittsburgh, and Philly, then Phoenix, a lot of cities with P's in them, then on to San Diego, Across the Atlantic and back then on to the Pacific. 

It is just the way my business had me travel, I was a salaried employee, and if I was not on the road at home, they were losing money on me, so I traveled and traveled and traveled until my daughter was born and I nearly missed her first Christmas.  After missing her first New Years, Y2K, when they worked me like a racehorse in Seattle just after I spent three weeks at JFK, I played my deck of cards and became a WAN manager months later, with some travel but much less travel, only a few weeks out of the year vs. 51 weeks.

John

I've flown from Puerto Vallarta to Dallas before, in January.   In Dallas it was unusually cold for them, probably about 30-35 degrees and windy.  It was a shock stepping out of the terminal into that.  To me that is an amazing thing about air travel...how different it can be at your destination.