Palo Will Travel Blog

Big Sur, CA 0

Happy New Year! 2022 Review

Happy New Year! 2022 was a significant improvement over 2021 as most COVID restrictions were lifted. During 2022, I was able to fit in an international trip in April, October & November! I flew 87,000 miles and visited 7 countries. This reflects a ~30% increase from 2021. Below is an...

Qatar Airways B777-300ER 0

Qatar Airways Business Class: DOH-MLE B777-300ER

After an overnight stay at the St. Regis Doha, we headed in an Uber to the airport to catch our flight to Malé as we continued our journey from LAX. The sunrise was amazing on our drive to the airport. Security and passport control was quick @ DOH. As Qatar...

Aisle View from 10G 1

Qatar Airways Business Class QSuite: LAX-DOH A350-1000

Earlier this year, I found award availability on Qatar Airlines in Business Class using Alaska Airlines miles for 85,000 one way from LAX to MLE via DOH. An amazing redemption to fly to the Maldives again in style 🙂 I had my eye on Le Méridien Maldives since they opened...

JSX N264JX 0

JSX (JetSuiteX) Semi-Private: LAS-SAN E135

I was excited to try another route that JSX (JetSuiteX) offers as they grown significantly since I reviewed them back in 2018. They now serve 19 destinations domestically (route map below) compared to just 8 in 2018. Flying from Las Vegas to San Diego is a quick 45 minute flight,...

Lufthansa A350 @ SAN 2

8 Year Anniversary

8 years, 3,000+ photos & 250 posts later… I still enjoy contributing to my travel blog. The past 2 years have been different given COVID-19, but we are seeing the world back to normal for the most part and travel is open 🙂 I’m truly blessed with the opportunity to...

B737 MAX 9 0

Alaska Airlines Premium Class: SFO-HNL B737 MAX 9

At the end of 2021, I was short on qualifying for Alaska MVP 75K Gold so I decided to do a 28 hour trip to Hawaii. I was sitting on some expiring credits due to COVID-19 so the $408 trip was well worth it. I was lucky to be able...

Seat 1A B777-300ER 0

American Airlines First Class: EZE-MIA B777-300ER

It was around 4 weeks before this flight, I saw an in-app upgrade offer from Premium Economy to First Class for $1,056 on my EZE-MIA segment. With a flight length of ~9 hours, it was over double my threshold of $50/hr to upgrade my cabin out of pocket. This was...

Buenos Aires, Argentina 0

American Airlines Business Class: DFW-EZE B787-9

My first international trip outside of North America since February 2020 when COVID-19 started was to Argentina. I was able to find “C” class availability using ExpertFlyer on the DFW-EZE segment which allowed me to upgrade my Premium Economy ticket to Business Class for 15,000 AA miles one-way. Flying on American’s...

Nā Pali Coast 1

Happy New Year! 2021 Review

Happy New Year! 2021 was an improvement over 2020, but still restricted due to COVID-19. During 2021, I was able to fit in an international trip in March & November, but all of my other trips were domestic. I flew 67,000 miles and visited 2 countries. This reflects a ~49%...

Separate Cargo Hold 0

Using Apple AirTag for Luggage Tracking

Technology keeps evolving and tracking your luggage just got easier. I used LugLoc previously in 2017 and was disappointed with the accuracy of tracking as it relied on cellular towers for triangulation to provide the location. Apple released AirTags in April 2021 to track your items. “AirTag sends out a...