The Seat 1A Podcast

Jan 31 2025 73 ep. 58 mins 27
The Seat 1A Podcast artwork

With more than five million miles flown on 6 continents - Seat 1A is a journey into how to use this experience to your flying advantage. Join Geoff Dahl and Vinod Viswalingam as they share travel experiences, tales, tips and interviews.

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Experience 082. Island Hopper & Round-the-World. Wrapping up 2024 Experiences.

Jan 31 2025 55 mins  
The podcast is back, and Geoff is flying solo for the first time in 6 years. Thanks Vinod for everything you brought to the podcast. Geoff takes a look back at his 2024 round-the-world trip and other Canadian aviation experiences. Geoff checked the Island Hopper off his bucket list, travelling from Honolulu to Guam via the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. He forced a long layover i

Experience 081. Summer Travel Plans With a Chance of Turbulence.

Jun 26 2024 46 mins  
In this experience we review some recent travel along with a overview of our summer travel plans. Severe turbulence has been in the news recently in various locations around the world. Turbulence is always there and always has been there and always will be there. Remember the words that Vinod would tell passengers concerned about turbulence "The people flying the plane have famili

Experience 080. A Special Interview with a Six-Million-Mile Flyer

Jun 07 2024 67 mins  
In this experience we are happy to bring you a special interview with senior leadership advisor Marco Villa. Over three decades Marco has flown more than 2800 flights and 6125000 miles. Geoff and Marco flew together in 2022 on internal flights in Mozambique complete with a crazy trip to Nampula (listen to experience 64 for more details). We ask Marco about his alliances and statuse

Experience 079. Furry Fliers. Flying with Pets and Animals.

May 20 2024 61 mins  
We’re happy to be back after a few months of hiatus. In this experience we examine pets and other furry fliers, and Vinod shares a couple of trip reports. We have talked about animals as cargo in previous experiences. Airlines should know that there is an animal in the plane. Vinod remembers a dog that escaped out of the plane in Edmonton and went missing for weeks. Geoff remembe

Experience 078. Swiftly Getting Through Airports. Why is This Airport so Busy Today?

Dec 18 2023 41 mins  
In this experience we look into the reasons why airports may get much busier than normal. We start out the podcast with a trip review of Vinod who recently flew to London-Heathrow. It was his virgin flight on an Airbus 350. There was no free seat selection with the ticket that he purchased. When Vinod flew out of Vancouver the British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Plaza Premium loung

Experience 077. Can anyone help me? Issues with customer service.

Nov 03 2023 48 mins  
In this experience we look into the world of customer service and examples when the experience goes sideways. We review the situation of the passengers who were flying from Paris to Singapore with a farting and drooling dog in premium economy. Singapore airlines finally got the issue resolved and credited them for their experience. In days gone by, your travel agent would have been

Experience 076. That's the Ticket. Another Look at Bookings.

Oct 09 2023 69 mins  
In this experience we take a trip into the show’s archives and review tickets and booking. We start out with a review from Vinod about his flight in the summer with Porter from Toronto to Vancouver. As people are looking for good fare prices, this is a good lead-in to a discussion about ticketing. We talked about ticketing in our very early experiences and are revisiting it in th

Experience 075. Celebrating 75 Episodes in Person. 2023 Summer Travel – The Analysis.

Aug 29 2023 87 mins  
In this experience Vinod and Geoff are both in Toronto, recording in person and celebrate the milestone of 75 episodes. We proceed to do an analysis of travels in July 2023. Geoff had a trans-Atlantic adventure, with flights to Germany, Austria, and Turkey. Geoff's trip was from Toronto to Frankfurt with a premium economy ticket that had been booked early in the year but wanted to

Experience 074. Summer Skies. 2023 Plans for Vinod and Geoff.

Jul 20 2023 73 mins  
In this experience we take a look at our summer 2023 travel plans, and also look at trips we took in June. It’s a very different summer than that of 2022. We’re getting closer to how things were pre-pandemic with higher amounts of staffing, however now we have to really search again for cheap fares. Vinod and Geoff had travels in June in Canada. Geoff flew to Yukon and did a la

Experience 073. Flew to a Room. A Deeper Look at Airport Hotels.

Jul 04 2023 45 mins  
In this experience we take a deeper look at the world of airport hotels. Sometimes hotels can be the best thing but can also be the most horrible desolate places on the planet. We’ve discussed many different types of hotels in previous experiences, from the incredible to the incredibly terrible. Big airports have the big global hotel brands. But there is another tier of just a pl