Flying United's Island Hopper and Visiting The Marshall Islands
One of the most fascinating routes operated by a US-flagged airline is United Airlines' Island Hopper. Flying from Honolulu to Majuro and then on to Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Guam and the reverse, these flights connect otherwise un-served islands in the Pacific Ocean. The flight, operated by a Boeing 737-800, is so unique that it has become an AvGeek bucket-list item.
Senior Points and Miles Writer JT Genter and I flew this route back in 2017 shortly after giving up our apartment and hitting the road as digital nomads. But, as we sat down with Miles Away Host Zach Honig to discuss the Island Hopper and our experience staying in the Marshall Island's largest city, Majuro, the memories of island food, chartering a boat to a private island and getting a passport stamp at all but one Island Hopper airports quickly came back to us.
You can listen to this episode of Miles Away above, or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including:
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Looking to take the United Island Hopper yourself? Here are some articles you should read before your trip:
- 12 Things to Know Before Flying the United Island Hopper
- Your Guide to the Best Seats on United’s Honolulu to Guam Island Hopper
- Review: United’s Island Hopper from Honolulu (HNL) to Guam (GUM)
If you have any questions, thoughts or topics you’d like the team to cover on the Miles Away podcast, please send them an email at milesaway@thepointsguy.com, tweet Zach Honig at @zachhonig or find him on Instagram — he’s @zachhonig there as well. And please don’t forget to subscribe!
Full Transcript:
J.T. Genter:
Most of these runways very short and so there's no floating down the runway before touching down. They slam that plane down right on the threshold. Thrust reversers on and still you're using up much of the runway.
Katie Genter:
Well and you'll see the fire trucks at every landing. Nothing's wrong with the plane, they just have to be out there because the brakes may catch on fire.
[00:00:30]
Zach Honig:
Welcome back to Miles Away. Today we have two of our world travelers in the office with us in New York City. The Genters. The story of J.T. Genter who is our Senior Points in Miles Writer. Welcome to the podcast J.T.
J.T. Genter:
Thank you Zach.
Zach Honig:
And we have Katie Genter, who is our Senior Reporter. Welcome to Miles Away.
Katie Genter:
Great to be here.
Zach Honig:
So you guys can work from pretty much anywhere in the world as long as there's decent connectivity, right?
J.T. Genter:
Yes.
Zach Honig:
And one of those places, it was along the way on the island hopper.
J.T. Genter:
That's right. I hope Google Fi has come a long way since then. Via's connection was a little slow, but we did work from...
Zach Honig:
Majuro.
[00:01:00]
J.T. Genter:
Yes.
Zach Honig:
You're leaving that to me, because we're a little unclear on some of the pronunciations of these islands, but just for some context, the United island hopper has been connecting some of the the islands in the South Pacific for quite some time. I feel like a few decades at this point.
J.T. Genter:
It was like 1967 that they started Continental Micronesia.
Zach Honig:
[00:01:30]
Exactly. And so Continental Micronesia actually became part of the United family as part of the merger with Continental, and so United assumed this island hopper route and thank God it stuck around. And it's really, it's kind of a lifeline for the islands there.
J.T. Genter:
It is. It is fascinating to see how they use this only airline that connects them with the rest of the world to deliver all sorts of goods, fresh foods, mail their families to and from the islands. It was really fascinating to see.
Zach Honig:
Are there ferries that go between these islands as well or is it really limited just to the United flights?
Katie Genter:
There are some cargo ships, but obviously it's a bit hard to get on those as a passenger.
J.T. Genter:
Yeah, I mean it is quite a distance between the islands too.
[00:02:00]
Katie Genter:
Definitely. I mean most of the flights are at least an hour.
Zach Honig:
Walk me through the itinerary. How does the island hopper breakdown?
J.T. Genter:
Well, it depends on which direction you want to go. We went sort of the opposite way that a lot of people do. But let's start in Hawaii. So you start in Honolulu and from there you fly, it's a multi-hour flight. It's sometimes overnight to Majuro. From there you fly to Kwajalein, which is a army airfield in the middle of the ocean.
Zach Honig:
And you can't actually get off the plane there. I think in Majuro you can and you can stay and [crosstalk 00:02:27] people do. I think they've gone scuba diving, is that right?
[00:02:30]
J.T. Genter:
They do, yeah. That's what a lot of people were there for. And we kind of felt bad that we didn't have a scuba certification.
Zach Honig:
So you went from Majuro to Kwajalein.
J.T. Genter:
Kwajalein. And that's an army airfield and yes. So only people with active orders to get to or from this army airfield are able to get off the plane. Even if you are continuing on any of the other stops, you at least get off, walk around. It's not that long of a hop between these flights, but it's sometimes kind of nice to walk around on an island in the middle of the Pacific.
[00:03:00]
Zach Honig:
Yeah. So you really, you stay on the plane, you can't even get off the aircraft?
J.T. Genter:
Yeah, they actually ask you to lower your shades and you can't take photos. Anything like that.
Zach Honig:
Oh wow. Interesting. Did you sneak a photo or two or ...
J.T. Genter:
Not on the ground. I was by a letter of the law and may have taken some photos on final approach, but hopefully the statute of limitation there is passed on that.
Katie Genter:
Well, and that airfield actually has a golf course on it for the military base.
Zach Honig:
Oh, interesting.
[00:03:30]
J.T. Genter:
Right next to the runway. It's fascinating. Like an errant tee shot probably ends up on the runway. And then so from Kwajalein, it goes into Kosrae. So that's just a one hour flight. Kosrae and then onto Pohnpei, and then another hour to Chuuk. And then from there you fly to Guam.
Zach Honig:
And does it make all of these stops everyday? Is it a daily flight or kind of, how does that break down?
Katie Genter:
Yeah, so it runs three times a week, but once a week it doesn't stop at Kosrae. So some people are disappointed thinking that they've booked the full island hopper and then it doesn't stop at all the islands.
[00:04:00]
Zach Honig:
Okay. So walk me through how you did the island hopper. And I know you said you did it a little bit differently than how someone might, but you guys actually did a round trip on the island hopper?
Zach Honig:
Yeah, so we approached it a little bit differently. We started actually in Nagoya, Japan. From there we took a flight down to Guam for a few days, and then from Guam we went all the stops to Majuro. We stopped there for about four or five days. I'm trying to remember exactly.
Katie Genter:
We did a City Prestige fourth night free.
J.T. Genter:
[00:04:30]
Oh yes, that's right. And then we turned it around. We went right back to Guam. And then from there we continued on on that same United award into Saipan.
Zach Honig:
Yeah. Very cool. What was Majuro like? I mean, for five days, that's a decent amount of time to spend there.
J.T. Genter:
It was. We got to really know that atoll. There's countless atolls.
Zach Honig:
Which are the islands that are kind of volcanic rings. Right? a
Katie Genter:
Majuro is a very interesting part of the Marshall Islands. It's the capital of the Marshall Islands. It has about 27K people that live there, but there's not many international visitors each year. It's one of the least visited countries.
J.T. Genter:
Pretty remote as we know.
[00:05:00]
Katie Genter:
It's very remote. I mean the only way you're going to get there is on the United hopper or by a cargo ship, but it actually has an interesting history, especially for U.S. visitors, because we did. We as the U.S. did a lot of our nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands atolls, so there's definitely some history there and you'll still see like the nuclear court pretty close to the hotel we stayed at.
J.T. Genter:
[00:05:30]
The history is still very raw there and right across the street from the main hotel, which is where we stayed was yeah, the atomic core and that's where they award people who are still dealing with fallout, damage from the fallout. If people can't work, they live off of the government through this. There's whole communities that are pulled off of atolls, because we were testing bombs there and then there are some explosions that were much larger than expected and fallout was a huge issue.
Zach Honig:
Did you get to talk to any of the locals about it?
Katie Genter:
We went to a museum actually that had a few locals working on it that had personally been affected by it.
Zach Honig:
Yeah.
Katie Genter:
So that was very somber, but really powerful too.
[00:06:00]
J.T. Genter:
The Marshall Islands is actually one of the interesting things. So Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands actually gets its funding from the U.S. It seceded from the U.S. was able to become its own independent country, not fully autonomous. We still provide them defense. We as the U.S. still provide them defense and funding.
Katie Genter:
But that's expiring.
J.T. Genter:
And that's expiring in 2023, so it could be very interesting after that.
Zach Honig:
[00:06:30]
Yeah. So you said you stayed at the main hotel, used the city for fourth night free perk, and so typically we spend the second segment digging into points and miles options. There aren't very many when it comes to these islands. So let's just talk about the hotel right now and so hotel did you stay at?
Katie Genter:
[00:07:00]
So there's no branded hotels on the island, so you can't use your Hyatt, Hilton, any of those points. We stayed at the hotel, Robert Reimers. It's the main hotel. It's the place for international tourists to stay on the island. It has hotel rooms as well as some semi-over water villas, like they're half on land and half over water. And we stayed in the hotel. It's very basic. It's not what you would consider luxury or new or ... It was clean. The wifi, J.T. tried to work a lot while we were there and the wifi was maddening.
J.T. Genter:
Right? Okay. Yes. How they have Internet connection, this is an island in the middle of the Pacific. How they have connection is through satellites.
Zach Honig:
Right.
J.T. Genter:
[00:07:30]
So they have satellite receiver, we have actually got to see it and right next to it is the cell tower. And from that I think we were getting, not even 3G, I forget what the connection was, but that's what powers the Internet-wise powers the island, right?
Zach Honig:
Yeah. You know the majority of the road gets their internet through fiber optic lines, and undersea cables. And when you have these very remote communities like this, the only connectivity they have is through satellite.
J.T. Genter:
Exactly.
Zach Honig:
[00:08:00]
And so over time that may get better. I know Viasat which powers a lot of the aircraft now, they're launching Viasat three I think in 2022 and that's going to cover much of the world. So if Majuro gets on board with Viasat three, they'll potentially be able to offer decent connectivity. But, if you're planning to work in the meantime, it sounds like maybe not the destination for you.
J.T. Genter:
Not the destination. And the time differences is rough. It is a lot of offline writing,
Katie Genter:
You really don't want to be working there though. You want to be out on the streets meeting people in the communities, exploring the supermarkets, which are fascinating on a remote island like that.
Zach Honig:
And so what's the weather like? I mean is this a trip that you want to make only in the summer or does seasonality not really factor in?
[00:08:30]
J.T. Genter:
It was pretty warm when we were there. We didn't have too much rain while we were there. But because it's pretty close to equator, I'm guessing it's pretty similar throughout different seasons, which makes it great for diving and all that. I don't think they have a rainy season.
Zach Honig:
Did it remind you of any other islands that you've been on in the world? I mean, what-
J.T. Genter:
Hawaii from the standpoint of, there's a lot of just staples. Spam is very popular there. [crosstalk 00:08:50] I imagine and stuff that's very easy to transport via these cargo ships.
Zach Honig:
[00:09:00]
Right. Is it walkable or are you just kind of walking around from the hotel or do you get a rental car? How did you get around when you were there?
Katie Genter:
So you can get rental cars at the airport. They're rather expensive and generally not necessary. We generally walked everywhere. There are a decent number of wild dogs, which can be concerning. Then there's not many sidewalks, but most of the people that live there are walking down the street. So people are used to seeing pedestrians on the side of the road.
J.T. Genter:
[00:09:30]
The directions are really easy there, especially in Majuro because it is just one main road that circulates the island and from one coast to the other coast. I mean we're talking the island might be a hundred feet, 200 feet wide at parts?
Katie Genter:
And it's not a full circle even because as the ocean rises, parts of the atoll are underwater, so it's really kind of a half circle road that starts past the airport. There's a beach that's popular. Then you have the road, goes to the airport and then you have the road continue around to where our hotel was.
J.T. Genter:
[00:10:00]
And because there's just this one road, the taxi drivers will drive up and down and you can just flag them. And even if there's people in there you hop on, it's almost like a little bus or Uber pool or whatever. You pay just a dollar per person to go pretty much as far as you want to within the city.
Katie Genter:
Between the airport and the city.
Zach Honig:
So what did you do, besides trying to work?
Katie Genter:
The local food was fascinating. I had two restaurants that I actually wrote down because they were delicious. One was a nameless restaurant. It didn't have a name.
Zach Honig:
Just a restaurant over there.
Katie Genter:
[00:10:30]
Yeah. But it was by a [Rewit 00:10:26] corner gas station, and it was delicious. So if you go, we highly recommend finding it.
Zach Honig:
What was the food like there?
Katie Genter:
A lot of fish, delicious tuna, some of the best I've had. Also just a lot of coconut-based and things that you can grow on the island. They had a lot of root vegetables.
J.T. Genter:
Lots of vegetables, really fascinating foods that I don't think we've had since, hadn't even heard of. Sort of like what's a special today because that's what they just caught that day or the day before off the reef round the island.
Zach Honig:
Wow. So did you have multiple meals there?
J.T. Genter:
We did. We went back. I think we had three meals there.
Katie Genter:
Three or four? Yes.
[00:11:00]
Zach Honig:
And then what was the other restaurant?
Katie Genter:
The other restaurant was Dark Coffee Corner. It was closer to the hotel Robert Reimers. And of course they had delicious breakfast, but they were also open for lunch, but they closed for dinner and we wouldn't really recommend the food at the hotel. It was not very inspired.
Zach Honig:
That was very diplomatic. What's the currency there?
Katie Genter:
They use U.S. dollars.
Zach Honig:
Oh, okay. That makes sense. Okay.
J.T. Genter:
[00:11:30]
Yeah, and what was fascinating is there still, as part of this transition period, they still use U.S. mail, so you can send a letter from there using a normal U.S. everyday stamp.
Zach Honig:
Yeah, I think it's called the forever stamp.
J.T. Genter:
Thank you.
Katie Genter:
You took one out of your wallet and put it on a postcard and ...
J.T. Genter:
Right. It sends it over and it probably actually, [crosstalk 00:11:45]
Zach Honig:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:11:47] It went on the island hopper. Is it expensive? Do you need to budget quite a bit for food, and hotel, and activities in Majuro?
Katie Genter:
[00:12:00]
It was expensive for us at that point because we had just taken off on our trip, if I remember correctly, after the fourth night free, we paid about 120 or 30 per night for a hotel .
J.T. Genter:
For a very basic hotel. So remember, this is not luxury at all. It did have AC.
Katie Genter:
It did have AC>
J.T. Genter:
It was, I think maybe the only option on the-
Zach Honig:
Hot water in the shower?
Katie Genter:
Yes. Hot Water. It was fine. It was just basic.
J.T. Genter:
Very basic.
Katie Genter:
Meals, if I remember correctly, our tuna that we loved at our favorite restaurant was about $14.
J.T. Genter:
[00:12:30]
Yeah, something like that. So, less than $20 for a meal with a drink, which isn't bad. Again, you're in the middle [crosstalk 00:12:31]
Zach Honig:
For a New Yorker.
J.T. Genter:
True.
Zach Honig:
So after Majuro, you got back on the island hopper to continue your journey.
J.T. Genter:
Right.
Zach Honig:
I want to talk a little bit about the experience on board. So obviously, get a window seat if you can. Right?
J.T. Genter:
Absolutely.
Zach Honig:
Did you both have window seats?
J.T. Genter:
[00:13:00]
We did. And one of the fun things we did was we did different window seats for each leg, which we weren't sure if that was just gonna really mess with the flight attendants when we kept switching seats, but you can literally select a different seat for each one of the legs. And so one of the things I've really wanted to figure out was what is the best seats for photos for all that. And so we literally tried eight different seats between the two of us.
Zach Honig:
Wow. So which was your favorite?
J.T. Genter:
I liked in the back, like in the last few rows because you can get a little bit of the wing tip in your photos, but you can still get the very clear view.
Zach Honig:
Do you get a little bit of the exhaust from the engines kind of clouding up the photos or is it not that big of a deal?
J.T. Genter:
I don't remember that being an issue. I [crosstalk 00:13:25] in others.
Katie Genter:
[00:13:30]
The cool AV Geek part of taking a different seat for each flight is that you get a boarding pass for each flight. So instead of just having one for the entire route, you get one for each leg.
Zach Honig:
That's right. So do you have our poster of all your boarding passes from the island hopper in your storage unit, I guess right now?
J.T. Genter:
Well that's one thing that we collect from all around the world. As we traveled, the only thing that we collect is boarding passes the physical boarding passes. So yeah, I'm sure we've got that.
Zach Honig:
So one other very unique thing, there's two, about the flight, at least that I can remember. One is that there's a mechanic onboard, right? That flies with the aircraft?
[00:14:00]
Katie Genter:
He sits in seven C. So if you want to interact with the maintenance guy, feel free to take seven B or seven A, ideally so you can sit in the window.
J.T. Genter:
He does a walk around each time. So this is a standard issue. 737 800-
Zach Honig:
And they're flying in the U.S. right? I mean I know that recently they'd upgraded the interiors and they took aircraft that were flying within the U.S. and brought them out to operate the island hopper.
J.T. Genter:
[00:14:30]
Yeah. So they do have a few modifications that they do for this because it's a very, very tough, I mean most of these runaways are very short and so there's no like floating down the runway before touching down. They slam that plane down right on the threshold, thrust reversers, on and still you're using up much of the runway.
Katie Genter:
Well, and you'll see the fire trucks that every landing. Nothing's wrong with the plane. They just have to be out there because the brakes may catch on fire.
Zach Honig:
Really? Wow. Okay. The mechanic, do they have to swap the brakes sometimes after some rough landing?
J.T. Genter:
I imagine they do. I know that they traveled with supplies so they can do that on the fly.
[00:15:00]
Zach Honig:
You guys spent quite a bit of time on board. I mean this is a long time to be on a 737.
J.T. Genter:
It sure is. We didn't do the Majuro to Honolulu, which is the longest [crosstalk 00:15:06] .
Zach Honig:
Six hours or something.
J.T. Genter:
Something like that. Yeah. But it's a very long time. And one of the unique parts about the island hopper is that the flight attendants and the pilots, which actually, so there's four pilots on board, they have a reserve crew. The flight attendants work the entire way. It is actually a 17 hour duty day, which I can't imagine working that long, especially with all those ups and downs.
Zach Honig:
On a 737, too.
[00:15:30]
J.T. Genter:
A 737 yeah. ut most people get on and off each stop. The flight attendants we talked to, were absolutely passionate about it. They wouldn't switch to any other, I mean a lot of them have 20, 30 years of seniority and they absolutely love this route.
Zach Honig:
And they're based in Guan right?
J.T. Genter:
[00:16:00]
They are based in Guam. So United actually has a pretty large base in Guam. They operate flights throughout Asia as well. I know that they have a flight to Manila, I think they, United services a handful of destinations in Japan from Guam as well. There's at least one nonstop triple seven flight a day between Guam and Honolulu. That's one of the ways of getting back unless you want to route through Japan on your way back.
Zach Honig:
Got it.
J.T. Genter:
So you do have to be very careful when you're booking.
Zach Honig:
I do want to take a quick break and then when we come back and we'll talk about how to use your points and miles to book the island hopper.
[00:16:30]
Zach Honig:
We're back talking about United's island hopper and so you can actually use your United miles to book the flight. And you did, is that right?
J.T. Genter:
Sure did. Yeah. So it was back before the United program changed up a little bit, but we did use our United miles to fly out there and back. But one great way of using your miles now is through the Excursionist.
Zach Honig:
And so how does that work? The Excursionist, and this is definitely an an excursion.
J.T. Genter:
[00:17:00]
It's the truest form of the term.The Excursionist perk lets you fly between, into a region. So the classic example is flying from New York to Paris. Stop being there to flying Paris to London and that part's free, and then flying back from London to New York, it costs the same as if you were just flying to Paris and back. Well the great part about using that for this is you can now, instead of having just one destination, you can have two destinations.
J.T. Genter:
[00:17:30]
So I was just pricing out right before we started recording. You can fly from New York one-stop through Honolulu, out to Majuro and then stop in Majuro for as long as you want. You can go on from Majuro to Guam, Chuuk, Pohnpei, any of the other ones. And then you can either fly back on island hopper through Honolulu or continue on through Guam to Japan and back. You can really make an excursion out of it.
Zach Honig:
Yeah. Okay. So you can actually book an entire itinerary from even the east coast of the U.S. to, that includes the island hopper for a somewhat reasonable number of miles.
J.T. Genter:
Yeah. So it prices out with the stopovers 70,000 United miles round trip and just under $50 in taxes and fees.
[00:18:00]
Zach Honig:
That's economy. Very, very much economy.
J.T. Genter:
That's very much economy. Yeah. So one of the weird parts about it is business class award availability on the island hopper is extremely hard to find.
J.T. Genter:
So that's going to be your pinch point. You might be able to find business class from the flights from the east coast out to the island hopper, but on island hopper you'll probably be flying in economy.
Zach Honig:
I've been watching it for years and I don't think I've ever seen saver awards pop up.
J.T. Genter:
I mean it's a pretty small cabin and there's a lot of, I think some business travel between the islands.
Zach Honig:
Right.
[00:18:30]
J.T. Genter:
And what you need is availability for the entire length of the island hopper. So you can break it down segment by segment sometimes, but it gets really complicated and it's not easy to do online.
Zach Honig:
Right. Did you try to upgrade to economy plus or are you just going for the regular seats?
Katie Genter:
So you can actually upgrade just for a leg or two since you're allowed to pick different seats for each leg. So I believe we did try economy plus for one leg just for the fun of it.
J.T. Genter:
[00:19:00]
It's important to note that in order to do that, they do have to break it down segment by segment when booking, right. Or you can actually call in afterwards and have the agent break the segments out. I think it was when we were checking in that we we were given this chance to choose seats and we chose one of the economy plus.
Zach Honig:
Got it. Okay.
J.T. Genter:
Paid for it. And the other reason to break it out segment by segment, maybe it works when you're checking in, but you'll earn miles for the individual segments if you do it that way. And so some of these flights are pretty short and they are less than 500 miles and so that minimum kicks in. And if you're trying to qualify for elite status and you've purchased the ticket, you definitely want to have it segment by segment.
[00:19:30]
Zach Honig:
It sounds like you're talking from experience there, didn't get to do the island hopper, but if I someday do, what am I going to find on board? You know, what, what's the experience like and how did you pass the time that you weren't looking out the windows.?
Katie Genter:
I spent almost all of my time looking out the window, but you'll also meet fascinating people. Everyone on the plane has a story about why they're there. Some are traveling to see family, others are AV geeks just like us that are geeking out about being finally on board.
Zach Honig:
Who do you encounter there? Is it someone, anyone that you've kept in touch with? Kind of follow along on Instagram?
[00:20:00]
Katie Genter:
I guess I did pick up a few people to follow and of course if they're on that type of trip, they're posting really amazing things still.
J.T. Genter:
Yeah. What's interesting is how few of us actually go all the way through. I think we're one of only a few that were going all the way from Guam to Majuro. A lot of people were picking up in Chuuk and then going to Pohnpei. There's a lot of just one or two segments, flights, and then there's people who are on orders from Guam all the way to Kwajalein. But that's pretty much it the longest that most people are doing besides the tried and true AV geeks like us.
[00:20:30]
Katie Genter:
One of the more interesting people I talked to was actually an army recruiter that was going to visit recruits that were getting ready to sign on and he had some fascinating stories.
Zach Honig:
Oh Wow. Where was he based?
Katie Genter:
He was based in Guam.
J.T. Genter:
And we actually, didn't we share a taxi with him from the airport. That's right.
Zach Honig:
This is not the sensible way to get between Honolulu and Guam, I guess.
J.T. Genter:
Oh, absolutely not. There is a, I think daily a nonstop and it's probably going to be a lot more comfortable of a product.
Zach Honig:
And maybe seven or eight hours instead of 17.
J.T. Genter:
Right.
[00:21:00]
Katie Genter:
And maybe you don't have to watch the same video loop over and over every time the boarding door closes.
J.T. Genter:
That's one of the downsides about the DirecTV one is they'd reset the entertainments every single time. And so you would see the exact same thing over and over and over on the TV screens. Of course you had different options, but you wouldn't be able to finish a movie or pick up where you left off.
Zach Honig:
[00:21:30]
I always thought it was funny when United moved the aircraft from the main line U.S. out to Micronesia, they took aircraft with DirecTV and Wifi that only works in North America. And so you have this functionality that just doesn't, it doesn't work. There's no way for it to connect to the Internet. So you are offline, United Wifi might even pop up, but you're not going to get a connection, that's for sure. And then certainly no DirecTV.
J.T. Genter:
Right? Well, it's all the recorded shows. That's nothing live.
Zach Honig:
Okay. So what movie did you ask again and again and again?
J.T. Genter:
I think it was Guardians of the Galaxy again and again and again.
Zach Honig:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that gives us an idea of when you were actually flying, right?
J.T. Genter:
August, 2017 I think it was.
[00:22:00]
Katie Genter:
And I guess the other entertainment is you can get off at most of the stops besides the military base, so you can go into the building and get local food from the stands. You can go get your passport stamped.
Zach Honig:
That's pretty cool.
Katie Genter:
That's always entertaining every time.
J.T. Genter:
[00:22:30]
Yeah. We felt super self conscious about getting off and standing in line at the passport, but not going through and we were the only ones that were doing it and we were telling the flight attendants, hey, we're going to go get a stamp. And the passport agents didn't care at all. They were used to it. The people who are just coming to get the stamp and so yeah, we've each got a whole page of our passport. It says, dedicated to a stamps from the United island hopper.
Zach Honig:
I want to see that right after we're done.
J.T. Genter:
Absolutely.
Zach Honig:
How can people follow along on your adventures?
J.T. Genter:
Yes. I'm at J.T. Genter everywhere. Pretty unique name, that's G-T- G-E-N-T-E-R. It's on Instagram and Twitter
Katie Genter:
And I'm at Katie dot Genter on Instagram and Twitter.
Zach Honig:
Very cool. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us.
J.T. Genter:
Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
Zach Honig:
Safe travels.
Katie Genter:
Thanks.
[00:23:00]
Zach Honig:
Again,. I am your host, Zach Honig. This episode was produced by Margaret Kelly and Caroline [Shaken 00:23:04] . Our music is by Alec [Chef 00:23:07] . If you've been enjoying Miles Away so far, please subscribe, rate and review on apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you choose to listen.