May 6, 2015

Our Experience Assisting Firsthand in a Medical Emergency on our Flight 37,000 Feet Above the Pacific

Note: On Saturday, my wife (Andrea) and I flew Hawaiian Airlines Flight 50 HNL-JFK on our way home from our Hawaiian vacation. About 3 hours into the flight, there was a medical emergency on board and the flight attendants asked for any doctors or nurses onboard. Since my wife is a registered nurse (RN) in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CTICU), we jumped into action to help the ill passenger. Here is our firsthand experience of what happened and what I learned about medical emergencies on a plane.

This flight started off like almost every other flight we’ve taken and about 3 hours into the 9 hour, 15 minute flight home we were comfortably lounging, watching Horrible Bosses 2 after dinner. We were sitting in 1A & 1B, unaware of the commotion behind us in row 15 until a flight attendant asked for any doctors or nurses onboard. Andrea is a CTICU nurse who jumped up to help & I accompanied her in case I could help in any way (for the record, I have no medical certification).

Upon arriving at the passenger in row 15, it was very obvious an older man (we later found out he was in his 70’s) was in severe distress. The thing I noticed were his eyes, which appeared slightly rolled back in his head and he seemed disoriented. His breathing was extremely labored, his shirt was pulled up exposing his stomach and you could see his chest & stomach expand greatly as he tried to breathe. He could not speak nor was making any other movements outside of his labored breathing. I should note at this point we are at least 2 hours away from land, as I’ve approximated our position on the map below (the flight path below was our actual flight path on 5/2 per FlightAware).

Probably the worst possible spot for a medical emergency along this route

The first thing Andrea asked for was oxygen which a flight attendant had ready for her. After placing the oxygen mask on him (which was connected to a small handheld device), a doctor identified himself and began working on the passenger with my wife. A flight attendant passed the doctor a stethoscope and he proceeded to listen to the passenger. He then asked for a blood pressure cuff and took that reading. His blood pressure was 180/100, which was extremely high.

For whatever reason, the crew did not turn on the cabin lights at this point yet, so myself and the doctor’s wife were shining our phones’ flashlights on the passenger the whole time, which naturally attracted the attention of the whole plane and caused more of an immediate crowd around us. His breathing was still very labored and he appeared to be getting worse as the doctor (who started taking more command over the situation) now asked for any medicine the passenger may have with him (the passenger’s son was present) or any medicine the airline had onboard. The doctor turns around, motions to the nearest flight attendant and clearly remarks “This man in this state will not make it to New York. What is the plan?”

This set off a chain reaction with the flight attendants, as one rushed to call the captain, another got the medical kit and my wife turned to yet another one and asks for the defibrillator to be brought to us just in case. The passenger’s son found a list of medicine his father took (very smart of him to travel with that list) and asked the doctor if he wanted any of those meds if he could find them. At that time, I was surprised to see a large and very complete looking medical kit arrive from the flight attendant. Inside it was color coded with a sheet listing all the medicine by color group in the bag. The doctor was looking for nitroglycerin and began looking for it in this large kit.

All of a sudden, the ill passenger for a lack of better word appears to have “come to” and jolts up in his seat and is now responsive. The doctor quickly assesses his vitals, takes his blood pressure, asks him to squeeze his hand and some other basic commands. He is appearing to look much better now and the doctor holds off on giving him the nitroglycerin. The son comes back and states this “occasionally happens to his father when he goes too long without a cigarette”. Well, sorry giving him a cigarette isn’t an answer at this point!

The doctor continues to monitor him for the next 5-10 minutes and the patient rapidly appears to be returning to normal again. In fact, he is slightly agitated at the oxygen mask still on him and wants it taken off. A flight attendant then came over and told the doctor the captain would like to speak with him (presumably whether we still needed to divert and make an emergency landing). We were unfortunately not apart of that conservation so I don’t know what was said or how they arrived at the conclusion to not divert.

At this point, there isn’t much more for the doctor or Andrea could do. The doctor suggested there might be some underlying condition with his heart or lungs that caused the labored breathing but it appeared to have passed for now. He proceeded to watch him for another 15 minutes or so when we all finally went back to our seats and tried to enjoy the rest of our flight. The captain chose not to divert based on his conservation with the doctor (which again we were not privy to) so we continued onward to JFK. Once back in our seats, we were asked to fill out an incident report detailing the situation. We also got another form to fill out from Hawaiian so they could contact us afterwards. Thankfully, the rest of the flight was uneventful though both Andrea & I definitely took a few looks towards row 15 to make sure everything looked ok.

Upon landing at JFK and arriving at the jet bridge, the crew held all the passengers back as an EMS team came on and pulled that passenger off the plane into a wheelchair. Once we were able to deplane, I saw the passenger recounting the events with EMS add several police officers as well. They had a stretcher ready to presumably take him to the hospital though we do not know what ended up happening, We were not asked to stop or talk to anyone though we did see the son and wished him the best of luck with his father’s health.

Sight upon arrival at JFK

What Did I Learn From All of This?

I was very impressed by the medical kit that Hawaiian had onboard. It was much more comprehensive than I expected (I was expecting a small little first aid box for some reason). This makes me feel more comfortable and confident should anything happen to me on a flight.
In that medical kit, there are intravenous medicine which I was shocked to find. I assume this would require a qualified profession to insert an IV into the ill passenger (which is no guarantee to have on a flight), so I was shocked they would even carry an IV kit and applicable medicine. I guess it can’t hurt to have this, so again another positive.
I think it is a great idea to carry a list of all the medicine and medical conditions you have so someone could better assist you if necessary. I plan on doing this going forward.
There was a ton of paperwork – both my wife and doctor filled out a report and after the flight when EMS personnel met the passenger, I saw them looking him over and asking a lot of questions after the flight.
The airline take your help seriously – we were each given the following form so Hawaiian could say thank you and were told to expect contact from a Hawaiian official within a few weeks.

Thank You from Hawaiian

I’ve never experienced firsthand a medical emergency onboard before this and I hope to never again. I definitely was (pleasantly) surprised by how prepped the airline is and I can only hope other airlines are as ready as Hawaiian. I’m glad my wife and the doctor onboard were able to help the ill passenger and I can only hope that all nurses/doctors onboard would make the same decision to help a fellow passenger.

March 13, 2015

Problem with a Flight or Hotel Stay? Don’t be Afraid to Say Something, You Might Earn Some Extra Miles

If you travel enough (and if you are reading this blog or any points/miles blog you probably do), inevitable there will be times where the service at a hotel wasn’t satisfactory, or there was an issue on your flight. In most cases, you should bring the problem to attention of the manager or person in charge in hopes they could accommodate you or at least provide a satisfactory solution to your problem. Ideally, at this point, the issue would be resolved but say it can’t be fixed or the solution didn’t work out as you hoped? My advice is to document everything and followup with customer service after your flight or hotel stay and you might be presently surprised to receive miles or points for your trouble.

Before I detail my situation, I recognize handing the situation after the fact only serves as a method to complain and can’t really fix the problem, since that problem is now in the past. However, if my problem wasn’t fixed to my satisfaction, I feel it is totally justifiable to raise an issue afterwards in hopes of getting compensation for your troubles. Sometimes that compensation will be actual dollars while other times it will be in the form of points or miles – it really depends on the situation.

My most recent travel issue a few months ago involved a red-eye Delta flight from Phoenix to JFK on a Sunday night after the #WestCoastDo. Being that this was a red-eye flight and I planned on going straight to work afterwards, I was really hoping to get 3-4 hours of sleep on this flight. The flight takes off as schedules and once we are allowed to recline our seats, I attempt to do so to maximize any chance of getting sleep. However, my seat was “stuck” and would not recline even a little bit.

No recline for you!

My first course of action was to immediately call over a flight attendant and let them know about the problem. Truthfully, she didn’t seem to care that much but noted she would write a note to maintenance letting them know the seat was not working properly. I then asked if there were any open seats on the plane I could switch to and of course, the flight was completely full. That mean I was stuck for the remaining four hours in an upright seat on a short, red-eye flight in which I really needed to sleep. Not ideal at all.

After the flight, I contacted Delta via email to explain my issues. I described the situation, what was done to fix it and most importantly, I asked for compensation for my troubles. I didn’t list out a specific amount but it was important to make it clear that since Delta didn’t provide their standard level of service due to a malfunctioning part on their plane which was their fault, I should be compensated for the hassle.

The next day, I got a response from Delta below:

I ended up with 3,700 SkyMiles for my trouble. I’m not sure how they determined that amount but I was happy with the resolution and considered the issue closed.

Here is a list of tips if you find yourself in a similar situation:

First try to have a manager/flight attendant/whoever is in charge fix the problem themselves
If not successful, ask them to document the issue so there is a record of it
Try to remember names of who you dealt and exactly how they offered to fix the problem
Upon returning from your trip, determine the best way to contact customer service to further discuss the issue
Describe the issue and how the manager/flight attendant/whoever is in charge attempted to fix the issue
Important: Ask for compensation since you didn’t have the typical experience (Delta/Hilton/Hyatt etc) strive for
- In my situation, if I had paid for an upgrade to economy comfort, I would ask for a refund of my upgrade fee
- Since I didn’t, I asked for “fair compensation since I was not able to properly utilize the seat as intended.”
Lastly, be professional and courteous with your response. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be stern and upfront about the issue but name-calling or cursing will not get you anywhere

If I didn’t complain about my issue with Delta, they would have not known about the seat malfunction and more customers down the line would been upset once they sat in that seat. Furthermore, while it didn’t solve the issue, I wouldn’t have received 3,700 Delta miles if I didn’t complain, which is worth about $37. Does that make up for a crappy flight experience? No, but it does make me feel better that Delta agrees there was an issue and wants to make me happy as a customer.

I’ve had similar experiences with JetBlue (when one of the bathrooms didn’t work on a flight) and on another Delta flight (where my TV didn’t work) and I got miles or a $50 credit in those cases. Have you ever got miles or money back for a bad flight or hotel stay?

Note: This is a scheduled post and I will be unable to answer comments or emails after undergoing laser vision correction eye surgery yesterday. I will respond once I am able to work on a computer again.

January 26, 2015

PointsCentric’s Kinda Sorta One Year Anniversary! A Thank You to My Readers

So technically, today is my one year anniversary as a blogger as my first post was published on 1/26/14 about a way to get 100 Free Hyatt points. Safe to say that was not my best post but as I alluded to in the title, I didn’t start consistently posting until March 2014 as I had only a total of 6 posts in January and February 2014 so maybe March should be the “real” anniversary date? That seems to be time when I started getting “real” readers instead of just my supportive wife (who deserves a lot of credit for putting up with me while I spent many late nights working on this blog).

The initial logo and color scheme. Added some color to it since then.

Anyway, I am writing this as a thank you to my readers who give me the motivation to keep blogging. I’d also like to thank anyone has linked to me, shared my blog with others or given me feedback (both positive and negative) about the blog. If no one was reading my blog, I wouldn’t have the motivation to continue. A lot of people don’t realize this but blogging is a huge time commitment and a ton of work, even more than I initially estimated (and I used to blog about Boston College sports with my college buddies at AroundTheRes so I’m not a first time blogger). Not only does it take a fair amount of time to type up a post, there is a lot of background work from doing research, learning WordPress, talking to others, thinking of post ideas, finding photos etc. all of which sometimes takes hours to do. So for those interested in blogging, even if it isn’t points/miles related, be prepared to make a serious time commitment.

I remember back in March when I started posting more regularly, how thrilled I would be if I got some views on a new post. In fact, I find it kind of cool that starting in March 2014 even though I didn’t always have a new post up everyday, I had some traffic each day as an unknown, unheard of blogger in a competitive space. Seriously, even if my traffic was only 5 views that day, it gave me hope that as I got bigger and better, more people would find my blog useful. While my blog is still super, super, super small compared to others in this space, each month traffic is increasing and days that had only hundreds of hits are now turning into thousands.

I think my blog has improved the travel hacking community as I have posted and discovered some great deals many people were able to take advantage (2 Free Rental Days, New Hack for 75k Amex Business Gold, Two Browser Trick with Alaska Airlines etc.) in addition to posting about the latest promotions or credit card offers. Additionally, my consulting and award booking services have taken off and it is actually truly satisfying to help people achieve their travel goals when some of them didn’t think it was possible until they discovered just how valuable points & miles can be.

In closing, thanks for reading PointsCentric. I look forward to having another year of great content and helping others realize just how plain awesome points and miles are.

– Ralph

January 13, 2015

Billy Joel Helped Me Meet My Minimum Spend & a Good TicketMaster Hack

I recently signed up for the 100,000 American Express Business Platinum card in which I had to spend $10,000 in 3 months to get the signup bonus. Now that amount is outside my normal amount of spending for everyday expenses over 3 months so I had to figure out a way to hit this minimum spend. While I could turn to some manufactured spending (and I did), I also turned to my friend Billy Joel.

Ok, I’m not really friends with Billy Joel but his residency at Madison Square Garden has created a strong demand for tickets to attend his concerts. I’ve wanted to go for a while now but I’ve always missed the presale events or I didn’t have the right access for the presale. And the tickets on the secondary market have a huge markup that I won’t pay for. The solution is to determine when the next presale event is and get the right access to them. The Billy Joel presale is through Citi Private Pass which requires you to pay with a Citibank card…or rather is suppose to make you pay with a Citibank card.

Here is the TicketMaster Hack:

Since Citi Private Pass handles the Billy Joel presale, you first need to enter the first 6 digits of your Citibank credit or debit card to access the presale. Even if you don’t have a Citibank card, you can Google for the 6 digits (hint: 4128 00) to get access but that’s not the hack I’m talking about. Once you find the tickets you want and you fill out your information (or log in to TicketMaster), it will take you to the billing page to enter your credit card information. One problem though – if you enter a non Citibank card, you will get an error when you submit the form. Here is what happened when I tried paying with my Amex Business Platinum.

Read the last line – this is for Citibank cardholders only!

The system is smart enough to prevent you from paying with a non Citibank card if you use the credit/debit card payment option. However, if you scroll all the way down on the billing page, there is an option to pay with American Express Checkout or Visa Checkout and by using these options, you can pay with any credit card – not just a Citibank credit card. This is the hack to get around using a Citibank card if you don’t want to.

See the Other Ways to Pay?

I clicked on American Express Checkout and it brings up a popup asking you to sign into your American Express account with your American Express login. I did so and was given the option to select one of my existing Amex cards. I selected one and completed the transaction without any errors. My confirmation email arrived almost immediately afterwards with the link to my print my tickets. This confirms the TicketMaster system is not able to stop non Citibank cards when using American Express Checkout or Visa Checkout (I tried this one as well).

American Express Checkout lets you choose which Amex card

Anyway back to how Billy helped me meet my minimum spend. TicketMaster imposes a limit of 8 tickets per event so I cleaned up on the two presales that were going on a few weeks ago for the August and September shows. I got two tickets for my wife and I but the only thing is I don’t have 14 friends who want to go with me so I will take advantage of a strong resale market for these tickets and sell them. As you can see below, I bought my tickets for $145 each and the tickets near my section on Stubhub are going for an average of around ~$200 each. If I can sell these for $200 each (I also have a low row number which helps), factoring in Stubhub’s 15% commission for selling, I will net $170 a ticket so a profit of $25/ticket or $100 on these four tickets below. If I assume similar profits on my other tickets (which are in other sections to not cannibalize these tickets), I could make a profit of $300-$350 while knocking $2,400 off my minimum spending requirement.

Example of Tickets I Bought

Resale Value of Tickets in My Section on Stubhub

Of course there is some risk the resale market with plummet and I could be stuck taking a small loss on these tickets but based on the history & popularity of these tickets, I think that is unlikely. That said, I am pricing my tickets competitively in my sections in hopes of selling these quickly and not having to float the money for a long period. In the event they don’t sell right away, this isn’t a concern for me as I can float the money but for others it certainly should be factored in.

In short, I knew I could make money reselling Billy Joel tickets and by taking advantage of the option to use American Express Checkout, I was able to circumvent the requirement to use a Citibank card so I could meet the minimum spend on my American Express Business Platinum card. That’s a pretty valuable TicketMaster hack to know if you ever find yourself without a credit card from the bank offering the presale.

(Hint: There are presale tickets available to his October show)

November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving and a Quick Recap of My Most Popular Posts

I just wanted to quickly say a Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and clients. Since starting this site back in February, it has grown quite quickly and I’m happy to have helped dozens of people via my consulting services or award booking services. From helping a family of four travel to Europe in business class next summer to helping a young couple plan a vacation to Bora Bora, I’m thankful for the opportunities to teach others the amazing benefits of our hobby.

In addition to helping just my clients, I’ve summarized below some of the blog’s most popular posts over the past few months which I know based on the emails and comments I’ve received, many people have taken advantage of these deals. I won’t have any new posts up until Monday as I enjoy the holiday weekend but feel free to email me or leave a comment with any questions.

Some of my blog’s most popular posts include:

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!