Delta Air Lines will deliver the first arriving flight at MEM Concourse B at 6:18 pm on Tuesday. Departing flights kick off in the concourse on Wednesday, February 16.
The multi-year $245 million project features the modernization of the spine and east leg of MEM’s B Concourse as well as consolidation of all airline, retail, and food/beverage operations. Included in the redesign are wider corridors, moving walkways, larger boarding areas, higher ceilings, increased natural lighting, and seismic upgrades.
Travel Contests: You can’t win if you don’t play
Virgin Atlantic is hosting a Valentine’s Day “Tickets to Love” contest, offering the opportunity for single Americans a chance to apply to fly across the Atlantic to find romance in London.
Through February 13, 2022, interested participants can pitch their stories and explain why they deserve a trip to the U.K. to find long-term love.
Eight winners will be selected to fly from New York to London in Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class cabin on March 11, 2022.
Recreation.gov is hosting the second annual “Share Your Story” adventure writing contest.
Visitors to America’s federal public lands are invited to submit stories detailing their experiences exploring and spending time in the great outdoors.
Experiences must have taken place between January 1, 2020, and April 30, 2022, within the facilities of participating agencies: National Park Service; U.S. Bureau of Land Management; U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; U.S. Forest Service; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; National Archives; and NOAA Marine Sanctuaries.
Submitted stories can be between 900 and 3,500 characters and include photos.
Categories include Traditions (Old and New), RV/Campbervans, Family Trips, and Activities and Adventures.
Deadline: April 30, 2022. Winners announced May 15, 2022.
Participants can enter up to two stories during the contest for a chance at winning one of 29 different prizes includingmerchandise from an outdoor retailer and America the Beautiful – National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands passes.
Baseball is back. (Sort of). And Alaska Airlines has a fun promo running with the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants.
Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants fans – or anyone – can enter to win one million miles as part of Alaska’s Million-Mile Home Run Sweepstakes. Register with your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan number, or sign up to get one free.
As a bonus, each week of the season Alaska Airlines will also pick one winner to receive air travel and tickets to 2021 Spring Training.
We also found an easy to enter sweepstakes from Bojangles. Prizes include $2,500 in cash, a $500 hotel gift card, a $500 gas card, a $500 rental car gift card, and $500 to spend at Bojangles.
Giant Robots at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport
Ten-foot-tall robots, a whole family of them, are now ‘living’ in the Phoenix Airport Museum’s Terminal 4 Gallery at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX).
The robots are part of an installation titled “Electro-Symbio Phonics for Phoenix,” by Nam June Paik.
What you’ll see: a mother, father, and child robot in an athletic pose with arms raised nearly touching the ceiling. Their heads, appendages, and torsos consist of 63 televisions blitzing with fast-paced video clips of sports highlights, popular culture, and desert imagery.
Ready to reconsider cruising?
Do you think you – and the world – might be ready to embrace cruising again in a year or so? Then you might want to go all-in on Viking’s new 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise. The trip will last 136 days, with visits to 27 countries and 56 ports.
The ship sets sail in Fort Lauderdale on December 24, 2021. After visiting ports of call in Central America, transiting through the Panama Canal, and going up the West Coast of North America, the ship will cross the Pacific Ocean and visit Hawaii. From there it’s off to New Zealand and Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean before ending in London.
Too long a trip for you? There’s a shorter, 119-day sailing. The 2022 Viking World Horizons which departs from Los Angeles on January 10, 2022, and visits 22 countries and 49 ports before ending in London.
Prices (which include lots of extras, such as business class airfare and transfers to and from the ship) start at $49,995 per person for the 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise and $45,995 for the 2022 World Cruise Horizons (based on double occupancy).
Celebrations are
already underway to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon
landing and the first steps taken by humans on the moon.
July 20 is the official anniversary day, but United Airlines and Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport are among the groups that have a planned more than a month’s worth of activities to mark the lunar milestone.
Win a seat on a
special United Airlines celebration flight
Top among the events
is a special flight from Newark to Houston on July 17, the anniversary of the day astronauts Neil
Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin Buzz Aldrin made their first TV
transmission from Earth to space.
On that day, United Flight 355 from Newark Liberty International Airport to Houston will be a celebratory flight with space-themed entertainment, inflight gifts and special guests who have been to space.
Want to go along? United is hosting a social media contest on Twitter with a prize that includes seats on board the Apollo 11 celebration flight as well as a behind the scenes tour of NASA facilities in Houston. Deadline to enter is June 22, 2019 at 10:29 a.m. CT.
Mission: Space City is a go! Retweet for a chance to win 2 tickets on our special flight to Houston and a behind-the-scenes tour of @NASA_Johnson & @SpaceCenterHou in celebration of Apollo 11's 50th anniversary.
Beginning July 1, members of United’s Mileage Plus mileage program can bid miles on space-themed experiences such as VIP access to Space Center Houston’s Apollo 11 50thAnniversary Celebration featuring the band Walk the Moon. More information on that here.
Courtesy NASA
No contest entry needed
for these Apollo 11 activities:
There’s more: Starting
July 1, seatback and personal device entertainment on United flights will
include a channel with dedicated space-related program from NASA, including
action cam footage of astronaut spacewalks.
In United’s Terminal C and E at George Bush
Intercontinental Airport (IAH), there are lots of activities planned as well:
In Terminal C, gate lounges will display digital photographs from the Apollo 11 mission on the monitors.
From July 9-11 Space Center Houston will provide Apollo 11-themed pop-up science labs in the terminals. In the United Clubs, customers will have a chance to meet and take photos with retired Astronaut Ken Cameron.
During July, travelers
will also have a chance to eat like an astronaut at In United Airlines’ at two restaurants at
IAH, one in Terminal C and one in Terminal E.
What did the astronauts eat?
Courtesy National Air and Space Museum
Between liftoff and touchdown
back on earth, astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins were running
experiments, taking pictures, gathering samples and making history.
They also took time to
eat.
“More than 70 items
comprise the food selection list of freeze-dried rehydratable, wet-pack and
spoon-bowl foods,” NASA explains in the 250-page typewritten press
kit for the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing Mission on July 6, 1969.
The press kit lists the day-by-day,
meal-by-meal menu for each crewman and explains how some of the meals were
prepared.
“After water has been injected into a food bag, it is kneaded for about three minutes. The bag neck is then cut off and the food squeezed into the crewman ‘s mouth,” the release explains.
Freeze-dried ice-cream isn’t
on the list, but powdered fruit-drinks (not Tang; NASA doesn’t use brand
names), along with bacon cubes, shrimp cocktail, beef stew, frankfurters, fruit
cocktail, tuna salad and many other familiar foods are.
“Familiar foods, or even just fresh
foods, are often hugely satisfying in space for the memories they trigger and
warm feelings they generate,” said Jennifer Levasseur,
Museum Curator, Department of Space
History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which has 13 packets
of food the Apollo 11 astronauts didn’t eat.
Like modern day travelers, food is one of the few
things astronauts can control during a journey far from home. “Food must have
had a very important role on Apollo 11 because they were doing things that had
never been done before,” said Vickie Kloeris, NASA Food Scientist Emeritus.
Dine like an astronaut
Many of the foods found
on those original Apollo 11 menus are featured during July on a special menu at
OTG’s Ember Tavern and Tanglewood Grille in United Airlines’ Terminal C and E
at IAH.
To ensure authenticity, OTG’s culinary team visited NASA’s Space Food
Systems Laboratory in Houston to learn about and taste food prepared by NASA’s
food scientists.
“We wanted to understand what food meant to astronauts having that
experience and what it means now,” said Dan O’Donnell, OTG’s Head of Culinary, “We
wanted to know the science and philosophy behind space food; where they were
then and where it is now.”
The biggest take-away, said O’Donnell was that
the astronauts could choose a lot of the foods they wanted to eat. “It wasn’t
just about sustenance. Much of it was food that reminded the astronauts of home;
like beef and potatoes, tuna salad and sugar cookies. Our menu is a play on
those items.”
Travelers who order from
the Apollo 11-inspired IAH menu won’t be served meals that need to be
reconstituted and squeezed into their mouths from bags. Nor will they find 1969
prices.
Instead they’ll find modern-day
versions of many menu items from the Apollo 11 mission.
“For instance, our take
on the Tuna Salad uses seared ahi instead of regular tuna, but we prepared it
in the same way with walnuts, grapes, celery, apple and some fresh yogurt,”
said O’Donnell, “The Beef & Potatoes is made with grilled ribeye, scalloped
potatoes and parsley pesto.
Although there was no alcohol on Apollo 11, there’s are cocktails on the IAH Apollo 11 anniversary menu.
“The original menus said, ‘orange drink,’ ‘grapefruit drink’ or ‘citrus drink.’ They were very flavor focused and on the sweeter side, because people taste things differently in space,” said Allison Kafalas, OTG Beverage Director, “I took those flavors and translated them to cocktails that are a bit more relevant and modern for today’s eater, including a peach bellini, a martini using an orange vodka from Texas and a pineapple margarita.”
Have you seen Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit play Hamilton yet?
Me either.
But here’s a cool contest that not only includes tickets to the play – with Lin-Manuel Miranda back in the role of Hamilton – plus plane tickets from New York to Puerto Rico, where the play is being performed.
Winners get two roundtrip flights from New York City’s JFK International Airport to San Juan, Puerto Rico; two premium tickets to Hamilton; and a one-night hotel stay in San Juan.
This is a ‘last-minute’ type of contest. So read the rules carefully.
A winner will be chosen each day at 9 a.m. If you win you’ll have just an hour to respond to a phone call and email prize notification. And you’ll need to be ready to take the trip to San Juan the next day.
If you don’t live in New York, you’ll need to get yourself there in time to fly out of JFK on a 5:40 a.m. flight on the day of the performance. And if you do live in or near New York, you still have to get yourself to and from the airport in time for that early flight.
Whether or not you end up a middle seat on an airplane this holiday season, or just live in fear of finding yourself there, Stella Artois has a contest for you.
The beer-maker will be granting “upgrades” in the form of gift card vouchers and free Lyft ride codes to frustrated travelers who post a photo and a message on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram about getting stuck in a middle seat.
To be entered in the contest, be sure include a photo and include #StellaUpgrade, #Contest and @StellaArtois in your message. (More instructions here).
The contest runs through December 21. Social media posts will be judged during 29 posted entry periods, with prizes to include gift card vouchers worth up to $500 for upgrades on return flights, $500 e-card for adventures on the ground, and codes for free rides on Lyft.
Judging criteria includes creativity, originality and relevance to the contest theme of showing the woes of travel.
