5 Cities, 5 Airlines...

When you book your travel with frequent flyer miles you realize that you are about as welcome as the common cold in a crowded elevator during the peak of cold/flu season. They put you on whatever flight they want and wherever they have space and the lost revenue of putting you in that seat outweighs some model for profitability...or something like that. For this trip I will be visiting 5 airports:

• LAX (Los Angeles)
• NRT (Tokyo)
• SIN (Singapore)
• PDG (Padang)
• HKG (Hong Kong)

Even better is that I'll be flying 5 different airlines!

• American Airlines
  
• Japan Airlines
• Garuda Indonesia
  
• Tiger Airways
• Cathay Pacific

The short flights from Singapore to Padang leave very sporadically and only on certain days so the airline I take down there can't fly me back and I have to find another carrier; American isn't to blame for that one. How's this for cheap... A 1-way ticket from Singapore to Padang and vice versa cost me $18.86 and the flight takes about an hour and 15 minutes on an Airbus A320, so it's not some guy's Cessna or a cargo plane carrying chickens. Can you imagine if a flight from LAX to San Francisco cost $18.86?? For some odd reason, I feel no sympathy for US-based airlines bitching about the rising cost of fuel, labor, etc. and then making us pay for it...