LufthansaFlyer.com Announces Airline Photo Contest! Win an I-Tunes Gift Card Every Week!

What can I say, I am a sucker for having contests!

We’re having such great interest in the “Hong Kong Mileage Run” contest that I have decided to start another contest. LUFTHANSAFLYER.COM’s Airline Photo Contest will last through the end of this year and will have a WEEKLY WINNER along with an overall CONTEST CHAMPIONSHIP WINNER!

Why an Airline Photo Contest?

One of my absolute favorite things to do while traveling is Plane Spotting. For those unfamiliar with the term, it basically means looking at airplanes at airports or in the air and taking a picture of them. Being that I am only one person, I don’t have the time to go to every major airport around the World to look at airlines as often as I would like. I’m working on it, but there are a lot of airports I have not yet visited. In a good year, I get to go somewhere far and fun 6 to 8 times, the rest of the time I’m stuck in a small city, with a very boring airport (where the biggest plane tends to be an Airbus A320, and only 2 of those come in each day). I thought to have this contest so that everyone can share their best Airline Photos from around the world and have a chance to win something for it!

How the contest will work:

1. Photo entries should be emailed to LufthansaFlyer.Com (please keep file sizes to under 500k). Please include the location where the photo was taken, and an approximate date.
2. Each week’s deadline for entries is Midnight Saturday in my timezone (US Eastern Standard Time). Sundays at 12:00a start a new week for the contest.
3. The Winner will be announced on this site by Midnight Sunday and the winner will be contacted directly as well.
4. The weekly prize will be a $15.00 Apple I-Tunes Electronic Gift Certificate. For those of you not using an American based I-Tunes site, don’t worry, you will be eligible to receive and use the Gift Certificate. There’s just an extra step that needs to takes place.
5. Each WEEKLY WINNER will qualify for the CONTEST CHAMPIONSHIP. I’ll take all the weekly winners, then pick 1 Winner from that group. That means that there will be 6 weekly winners that will then compete for the Grand Prize, a $50 I-tunes Electronic Gift Certificate.

Fine print items:

1. The picture needs to be yours. Not professonal images that are from google searches, airline website galleries or from sites such as Airliners.Net or JetPhotos.net unless you can PROVE they are yours.
2. The picture has to be of an airline’s exterior and have the majority of the plane in the picture.
3. You can only enter 2 images a week.
4. You can win multiple times over the 6 weeks.
5. I will be the sole judge of all entries, and my decision will be final.

As I start to receive pictures, I’ll create a separate gallery for each week so that everyone can see each other’s photos. I’ll update the gallery each night, so please check back often to see everyone’s efforts. As long as there is room, I’ll keep expanding the gallery so that all the photos can be displayed. I’m hoping that we get a lot of people involved so that we can enjoy each other’s best airline photos. So feel free to share this with your friends on twitter, facebook, etc. etc.

Good Luck and Start Sending In Your Pictures!

UDUstats.com – A Database for Upgrade Clearance Success On United Airlines

I had this website (www.Udustats.com)in my bookmarks and had forgotten about it until scrolling through them earlier today. A friend of mine from MilePoint (thanks Pat!) shared this link with me so that I could see what success people were having when it came to their upgrades clearing on United Flights. The database doesnt have an extensive history but there is enough data to show you what the trends have been.

A nice feature of the site is that it sorts upgrade clearance success based on your Elite Status with United so you can see how well each elite level has done in terms of upgrade clearing.

The site is easy to use and does not require any sign up or membership (you can post anonymously). I share this because I would like to see more United flyers add their data so that we can have more accurate and up to date information.

This site will help you see what the upgrade history has been on certain flights which in turn may help you build an itinerary that includes flights with better odds of upgrade sucess.

Let me know if you have any questions about how to use the site.

Lufthansa Wins “Best International Airline In India”

Awarded at the CNBC AWAAZ Travel Awards, Lufthansa was awarded this honor based on its long term commitment and dedication to serving destinations in India. Lufthansa has been flying to India for 52 years, and currently serves 6 cities with 49 flights each week (based on the current winter timetable).

A specific example of Lufthansa’s dedication to the India market that was cited was the introduction of the new first class cabin on the Frankfurt-Delhi and Frankfurt-Mumbai routes currently being flown by Boeing 747-400’s. These routes were among the first to have the new cabin in place.

The award was the result of voting by Frequent Travelers, Travel Journalists, Industry Experts and Managers of Travel Agencies throughout 12 cities in India. The poll was conducted by The Nielsen Company.

Congrats Lufthansa!