Flying through the years

When I was taking business trips to conventions and leisure trips to various parts of the world, I piled up significant amount of reward miles. This enabled me to fly first class or business class most of the time, sitting in relative comfort, and often enjoying wine with my airline meals. How times have changed! Most of my flying these days is between Oakland and Denver, and my airline of choice is Southwest. Because I use a wheelchair, I usually have a choice of seats because of "preboarding". This is reasonably priced transportation, especially if reservations are made well in advance. However, by no stretch of the imagination could I say that I fly in comfort. I still have some unexpired miles in a couple of airline programs. I would still prefer to use these for upgrades rather than for free trips. Barbara and I were able to fly in business class when we went to the UK in 2011, and I still remember my luxurious flights on Singapore airlines when I flew to Johannesburg a few years ago. I was interested to see that my own list of favorite airlines coincided with a list in a popular magazine. After Singapore Airlines came Cathay Pacific and Malaysian.