At Layovers, we keep our promises: long time listener Alex Vukolova waited 5 years to be a guest, and this is the day, she’s been awesome, for a very special show — we travel on Condor, JetBlue, Transavia, or BA, from Berlin to Almaty to New York to Tokyo and then some, and we geek out on aviation, from a rant about the bundling of the unbundling, to an admiration for Air Astana (not really for the current Almaty airport).
Show Notes
So small, cozy, cute, a very special airport, that was Tegel, not BER: can the finally (nearly) finished Berlin Brandenburg measure up to the “poor but sexy” German capital? At least the cleverly named lounges have an even cleverer backdoor (and, hey, it’s not a poor bus station like Schoenfeld).
Bundling the unbundling: a (great) rant by Alex (Hunter, but Vukolova chimes in, and Paul got confused having two Alex on the show).
Do the Adidas Lufthansa sneakers give you extra status (you can now buy them, unlike the staff limited editions that Paul bought off from an employee a few years ago, in order to pair them with the Family Mart socks he just got).
Condor offers you a branded beer (another Brewdog airline brew!), but also booking your …overhead bin?? (Alex tested it, and we look at everything that could go wrong).
JetBlue and the inaugural massive dog.
The admirable journey out of fear of flying.
Air Astana is amazing, Almaty airport not so much (the former gives you amenity kits, and slippers, in economy, for 3 hours!! The latter does not have free water in its lounge WTF).
Thanks a million to Alex Vukolova for having joined us (and for having waited FOREVER to be on our podcast).
You should follow Alex on LinkedIn (she posts great avgeek stuff!): http://linkedin.com/in/alexandravukolova
On Instagram (Paul messed up her username all this time!!): https://www.instagram.com/avixalex/
Give a listen to her aviation podcast, Sky Lounge: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/sky-lounge-podcast/id1678045129
And here’s the Ladies Beyond Flying group she mentioned: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12451302
(See, there are links in our show notes for once).
Apologies for the audio quality, we had to work around a ton of glitches, and preferred recording than postponing.
See you in the next one! Happy flying!
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