Washington DC 2013
Flights:
JFK-IAD UA Y
DCA-EWR UA Y
Hotel:
Embassy Suites Crystal City
Cost:
JFK-IAD: free
DCA-EWR: 10k UA
40k HHonors points
Short preview:
With God's help and a little of my intervention, I ended up with a few free one way tickets to Washington DC. I had to produce these tickets in order to make work of something (much better). Hint: AirTran.
I thought it might be a shaila of בּל תשׁחית not to make use of them, so we decided to do a day trip to DC with plans to fly in 10:00 AM in the morning and fly back on the same day 8:00 PM to New York on a 4.5k Avios ticket.
We took the subway to JFK.
We had no luggage, just a small bag with 4 sandwiches and pretzels.
We landed on time in IAD.
We covered the Halacaust Museum, Bureau of printing and Engraving and just toured and taxied around town.
But when we got back to the airport for the return, AA first delayed the flight with 2 hours because of heavy rain and after finally boarding the aircraft and waiting 30 minutes on the tarmac with closed doors the captain announced that the flight is cancelled(!).
After getting back to the airport we realized that AA and UA grounded all planes and only US was still flying out that night. But of course their flight DCA-HPN was fully booked.
AA rebooked us on the next morning flight. But I didn't have my tefilin with me and that flight would get me back too late for davining, so I cancelled the ticket and booked an early morning award on UA for 10k.
We overnighted in the Embassy Suites. Got the presidential suite because of my HHonors Gold status (or more likely because they didn't expect anymore guests anyway..).
Next up: Cancun