Ranking United’s mid-continent hub airports for connections

Having a major United Airlines hub be a one-seat Metro ride from my home does not ensure that I get a nonstop flight as often as I might like. The obvious reason is that flights to smaller cities usually require connecting somewhere; the non-obvious reason is that United will often price a connecting flight for significantly less than a direct one.

Whatever the cause, the outcome leaves me as a traveler with a choice: At which United hub should I plan to change planes after flying out of Dulles? Or National?

This week’s travel treated me to more time at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport than I had planned on, which got me thinking about how I would rank ORD and UA’s other two options for connecting somewhere in the middle third of the U.S., Denver International Airport and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport

ORD: The worst part of O’Hare is the inexplicably long taxi every flight seems to take between runway and gate or vice versa–even though this airport’s taxi times are bad but not the worst, my flights never seem to take anything close to a direct path. But once I finally reach ORD, hopefully after postcard views of the Loop’s skyscrapers on the way in, seeing Helmut Jahn’s glass-and-steel architecture in Terminal 1 puts a smile on my face. And Michael Hayden’s “Sky’s the Limit” animated sculpture in the tunnel connecting T1’s B and C concourses brightens any travel day a little more. T2’s dreary F concourse, however, adds no glee to my travel experience and can be a long walk away from B or C.

Most of the United Club lounges are good, while the larger, newer one by gate C11 is outright great. ORD is devoid of credit-card lounges in United’s terminal spaces, but it offsets that shortfall by having the best airport restaurant in the U.S., Tortas Frontera.

O’Hare offers one other advantage: an easy, cheap transit ride to downtown that should vastly open up housing possibilities if I get stuck overnight–which somehow hasn’t happened to me since 2009.

DEN: America’s largest airport has been strikingly efficient in my experience despite its vast size–by which I mean, taxi paths don’t make me think of Chicago. Moving walkways speed getting from one end of each terminal to another, and the underground train system does the same for transfers between terminals… except when it breaks down, which has been happening an alarming amount of time lately.

That possibility makes me nervous, as does the potential of having to relive some bad security-line experiences here.

To DEN’s credit, United has immensely improved its selection of lounges at Denver International Airport after years of neglect. And Capital One’s upscale lounge in the A terminal constitutes a good reason to keep that travel-rewards credit card.

DEN’s train to downtown isn’t as cheap as ORD’s, but I do appreciate having that option in addition to all the hotels dotted along Peña Boulevard as that highway makes its lengthy way to Denver.

IAH: The worst part of the airport named after the 41st president (as in, not his far less successful son) isn’t specific to the airport or even Houston in general–it’s the weather. The lines of thunderstorms that regularly roll across Texas frequently hold up my flights to or from here and have twice left me stuck overnight. Bad weather can be a risk anywhere, but it seems to put the biggest dent into my travel hopes here.

IAH’s sprawling layout also routinely leaves me walking longer than at any other United hub, and its taxi times seem second only to ORD’s in my experience. And while United has renovated some of its lounges at Houston, none of them stand out–and the one by gate E11 now qualifies as borderline crummy. The two Priority Pass-accessible lounges from Air France and KLM at the farthest corner of the D concourse don’t add much value in practice.

IAH abounds with nearby hotels, but its inadequate public transportation options generally mean that an unplanned overnight stay either requires an Uber/Lyft/taxi or a wait for a hotel’s shuttle van.

(What about United’s other hubs outside of D.C.? I have to exclude EWR until Newark Airport wraps up the reconstruction of one of its two main runways that has made connecting through there so dicey this year. I think SFO is a great airport overall, but its vulnerability to weather delays and the reconstruction of much of Terminal 3 undercuts its appeal as a connecting airport. LAX does offer the superlative Star Alliance Lounge, but that’s a long walk from United’s gates at T7 and T8–and this airport is not great for short taxi times either.)

Looking at everything I just wrote, I realize that I’d look forward to returning to O’Hare more than I would Denver or Houston. Even though I spent more than three hours at ORD between Tuesday and Wednesday… or maybe because I did.

#airportLounge #Chicago #connectingFlights #DEN #Denver #DIA #EWR #flightDelays #Houston #IAH #LAX #loungeAccess #ORD #SFO #TortasFrontera #UA #United #UnitedAirlines #UnitedAirlinesHubs #UnitedHubs #UnitedLounges

The cost of travel-rewards credit cards: not just annual fees, but cognitive load

You can’t sign up for a credit card without signing up for some math–not unless you enjoy paying steep interest rates after spending more on the card than you can pay off in full each in month. But over the past three months, the three cards we use with the highest annual fees and the highest potential rewards have begun requiring some advanced arithmetic.

In March, Chase increased the annual fee on the the United Club business card I use for work while dangling an expanded set of credits for third-party purchases. Then Capital One went in the other direction, keeping the fee on our Venture X cards intact but taking an axe to its airport-lounge benefits. Finally, this week saw Chase reveal an even steeper hike to the annual fee on our Sapphire Reserve cards, again theoretically offset with an even wider set of deals and credits.

So far, all three of those cards have been profitable for us, in the sense of yielding mile or point redemptions for travel we were going to do anyway that exceed their annual fees. But with my business card’s “AF” going from $450 to $695 and the Sapphire Reserve’s leaping from $550 to $795 (plus an increase in its authorized-user fee from $75 to $195), all those calculations require a redo.

The first step in answering the most important question in the credit-card business–am I getting a positive return from these slabs of plastic and metal?–is to ignore the “up to” estimates of potential rewards for each card, what View From the Wing blogger Gary Leff calls the coupon book pitch. Instead, only look at credits or discounts offered for expenses you already incur.

For example, United’s offer of $150 a year back in ride-hail credits is worth counting, looking at how often I use Uber and Lyft (FYI, Waymo robotaxis qualify for this too). But I’m not banking on $100 in United travel credit for car rentals booked through the airline’s portal, because I rarely rent cars for work, and when I do I book them through Costco for a cheaper and more flexible rental.

With the Sapphire Reserve, there’s a $120 annual credit on Lyft that also seems worth near its advertised value. But I’m having a harder time assessing the new $300 dining credit, because the restaurants that qualify are higher-end establishments and only nine of them are in the D.C. area. Same goes for the comped Apple TV+ and Apple Music subscriptions; I would like to finish binge-watching For All Mankind, but that hasn’t been enough of a priority for me to subscribe on my own.

As for our Venture X card, Capital One taking away free guest access to its growing set of airport lounges–even if you’re an authorized user of a primary account holder–wrecks its utility on family travel. That $395-a-year card itself remains easy to turn into a free card, between the $300 annual credit on travel booked through Cap One’s travel portal and the annual award of 10,000 points that you can use to zero out $100 in travel purchases.

I get that Capital One is facing a growing problem of crowds at its lounges; I’ve had to skip its IAD lounge because there was a waitlist to get in. But this is still a drastic cutback, and rewarding the company for it by getting a second card (my wife is the primary account holder) seems wrong, even if it would cost us nothing in practice. Maybe I’m overthinking that.

As I started researching this, I came across the fabulously detailed “Which Premium Credit Cards are Keepers?” Google Docs spreadsheet maintained by Frequent Miler blogger Greg Davis-Kean–that’s how I learned that United added a Global Entry renewal credit to my card, which previously didn’t cover it. If you, too, are now wrestling with this math, it’s worth some of your time.

If you’re like me, that time will also have to include adding up the value you’ve derived from using the miles and points generated by these cards, which itself depends on the redemption rates of airlines and hotels that are themselves constantly subject to devaluation. And with the Sapphire Reserve, there are now different earning rates to calculate, including a noteworthy increase in points for travel purchases made directly with airlines and hotels.

The card issuers, meanwhile, should contemplate the cognitive-load costs they’re imposing on their customers. The alternative here is not people switching to a competing travel-rewards card but bailing out on this entire category in favor of a straightforward cash-back offering like the Citi Double Cash card my wife and I use for everyday purchases. That offers a 2% return and an annual fee of zero, both of which have stayed constant since I opened that account almost 10 years ago.

(Don’t get any ideas here, Citi.)

#airportLounge #CapitalOneVentureX #cashBackCards #ChaseSapphireReserve #ChaseUnitedClubBusiness #CitiDoubleCash #creditCard #creditCards #loungeAccess #premiumCreditCards #travelRewardsCards #unbonusedSpend #UnitedAirlines

Inside the Country’s Saddest #AirportLounge

#SwissportLounge at #OHare is a tiny, windowless #lounge that has mediocre food and routinely earns low ratings

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/inside-the-countrys-saddest-airport-lounge-42bc7474

AN WEB MAGAZINE aggynomadi.it
Viaggiare / Mangiare / Pedalare

---
#viaggiaresempre #mangiarecongusto #pedalare #VacanzeDaSogno #vacanzaperfetta #turismoitalia #cicloturista #cicloturista #crociere #Crociera #cocktailbar #ristorante #ristoranti #cocktailexperience #airportlounge #viaggiareinsieme #hoteldilusso #hotellerie #resorthotel #boutiquehotel #crocieremsc #viaggiodinozze #viaggidinozze #stellemichelin #BiciclettaElettrica #partire #gitafuoriporta #villaggioturistico #villaggituristici

Inside Heathrow Airport’s new private lounge where VIPs can buy a Bacon or Hockney.

Among Heathrow’s 83.9 million passengers, a select 50,000 guests a year have access to this star treatment.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20250211-inside-heathrow-airports-new-private-lounge-where-vips-can-buy-a-bacon-or-hockney?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#UK #Heathrow #Airport #Aviation #Luxury #Art #AirportLounge

Plaza Premium Lounge, Kuala Lumpur 🎫✈️ A Balanced Review

There's not much premium about the Plaza Premium Airport Lounge in Kuala Lumpur ...but is it worth the money?

#PlazaPremiumLounge #KualaLumpurAirport #TravelComfort #AirportLounge

https://www.sandspice.com/plaza-premium-lounge/?feed_id=9324&_unique_id=67700517929a7