Pic credit: WSJ

This is 42 year-old Anthony Toft. He has re-created a Pan Am first class cabin in his garage.

He’s gone to a great amount of detail, right down to the original Pan Am nut packets and sealed headphones, and has flown all over the place getting parts to create that authentic Pan Am experience. Pan Am was the first airline to fly internationally from the US, and also the first to fly the Boeing 747, so it kinda became glamorous for a lot of Americans.

It is a bit sad to note that Anthony is single. However, you can read more about it at the Wall Street Journal along with more pics. (Via Gizmodo)

I use AA.com all the time – booking flights, checking my AAdvantage miles, and checking seat availability, requesting upgrades bla de bla.

Their site honestly sucks big time. It looks awful, is clumsy, and is a nightmare to navigate. So hats off to Dustin Curtis for sending an open letter to AA about their site design, posting a possible redesign, and getting a response.

It doesn’t sound like AA.com’s gonna get a redesign anytime soon, but if only!

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I had to do a mileage run when I was out in Dallas. That’s basically taking a flight for no other reason but to keep your status with an airline frequent flyer programme. I needed 500 miles to go platinum with American Airlines. I know it sounds stupid, but there are big pluses to having that status – upgrades, boarding first, lounge access, and more. So I decided to do it.

Only thing was that all the interesting places (Houston, Austin and so on) in Texas weren’t more than 250 miles away, so I took a day trip to Corpus Christi. Me and my friend Kevin had been there before on a Greyhound tour of Texas a couple of years ago. It’s apparently a college party town at Spring Break, but unfortunately we got there the day after all the college people went back, so there was nothing to do. I thought things might have changed. I was wrong, and had a very boring day there. It was hot as well – I have never had sweaty pants like that before in my life.

Anyway, because I was bored, I made a video while I was there. But be warned, it’s boring like the place itself.

Hullo there! (Scottish accent) So after heading to bed at 9.30pm and falling asleep immediately last night, I have now recovered enough to tell you about my weekend! I am splitting it into each day otherwise it would be a long post. And you would probably be falling asleep. If you didn’t know, last weekend I visited Islay, a small Scottish island, for my friend Nick’s stag weekend.

I also have a video version of the weekend which I will hopefully be editing this weekend. Read more about Day One though after the jump!

I arrived in Islay on Friday afternoon. A pretty uneventful trip to be honest. My flights connected in Glasgow no problem although I was annoyed that there was no BA lounge in the section of the airport my flight was leaving from. I spent 90 minutes sitting staring at a vending machine, so I think the facilities could have been better!

The flight to Islay was on a wee propeller plane (above), and the flight only took about 20 minutes.  The airport on Islay is probably about the same size as Dundee airport. However there was a sign on the door telling you to look out for adders! That sign is not at Dundee airport. Anyway, my friend Nick’s future wife-to-be Kate, ’s Mum kindly picked me up (apologies for shocking grammar there).

My first impressions of Islay were that it was a lot bigger than I had imagined. Apparently it would take around four hours to drive around it. Also there are a couple of towns on the island as well (although they’re not big).

We were staying in some lodges at a hotel called The Machrie, which was really nice. Also the staff were very friendly there. After dumping my stuff in one of the lodges, I met up with the rest of the guys who had arrived on a ferry from Scotland, and we headed out to play golf on The Machrie’s course. I don’t play, so I drove the buggy and opened beers.

After about 12 holes, I was completely freezing, and Martin had had enough of golfing, so we headed back to the hotel and started drinking. This was about 4.30. Then after everyone had finished golfing, we had Scottish burgers and sausages on a barbecue outside our lodge before heading to the hotel bar, where we all played a never ending game of snooker in teams. Andy and Martin won about £20 from that!

Weirdly of all the places to choose to have a stag weekend, there was one other stag trip at the same hotel, and they were from Northern Ireland. The stag from that challenged our stag to some weird sing-off kind of thing. We think it was a set-up though because he had a voice like Pavarotti.

Anyway, we headed to bed at 4.30am, and I was completely sozzled. My first day in Islay was over already!

You can see photos from the entire weekend here.

BBC News Online has an article tonight saying that Ryanair might soon be flying from Belfast City Airport. I for one hope that is not true.

I’ve never flown with Ryanair, and I don’t plan to either – something about them just doesn’t really appeal to me. I’d like to pay a bit more and experience a little bit more. Weirdly, Easyjet doesn’t bother me – but I think they just seem a bit more professional or something.

Anyway, the main reason that I’m hoping Ryanair will not be coming to Belfast City is that it is going to make an already pretty small airport very very busy. The last couple of times I’ve been there, there hasn’t been much room in the departure lounge. That certainly hasn’t been helped by the fact that the new owners of the airport put in another cafe and a duty free shop, taking away seats. Thing is – if that area is already pretty busy, what’s it going to be like when Ryanair start flying from there? Mental! That’s what, and I like my flying experience to be calm, not stressful.

I’ve blogged before about full-cost carriers stripping out costs by getting rid of nice things like free food, so I was interested to see an e-mail from BMI today saying that from the beginning of April, all Diamond Club members holding blue plus, silver or gold cards and flying in Economy will get priority seating near the front of the plane, and complimentary food and drink.

I think this is great – I fly to London a bit with work, and I think my last ticket worked out at something like £187 return. Expensive, right? But you get no free food (they took that away ages ago) and you can’t choose your seat. That means there’s very little difference between BMI and Easyjet or Flybe.

This announcement is good news I think – it does reward loyalty and at the end of the day, it is a better service than what’s provided at the moment.

When I’ve been travelling with BMI, I’ve been using an old Lufthansa frequent flyer card, as I’ve nearly got enough miles for a round trip to the US in Business Class. However, this might make me re-think which card I’ve use, as I just recently signed up for Diamond Club.

To get the new blue plus Diamond Club card, you only need to get 3000 miles in 12 months with BMI. That is two round trips from Belfast to London on BMI with a mid-price ticket. It’s also worth noting that BMI recently announced that flights on BMI Baby – their budget airline – will soon earn Diamond Club points.

Nice to see airlines increasing their service rather than taking them away for a change! You can read more about all of this here.