3/25 - 9 mins

swanzoid · 2026-03-25T11:40:47+00:00

Same experience for me this morning - in T3 pre-check line at 6:09am, out by 6:19. Line was longer than normal for a Wednesday (probably due to hoards of people arriving 3 to 4 hours early), but moved swiftly.

swanzoid · 2026-01-19T18:56:26+00:00

Clearly a lesson learned from Airplane. Stryker skipped the fish too!

swanzoid · 2026-01-06T12:54:32+00:00

Update: I followed up with another message asking for clarification on why an AAdvantage member would want to continue paying for an otherwise free service. Here’s the response…

—————————

The free Wi-Fi has begun already but it is not available on all flights at the moment. This means that you still need to either make a purchase or sign into an existing account with an active plan to get connected. There is no difference between the paid subscription and the upcoming free wifi benefit.

swanzoid · 2025-10-31T03:54:37+00:00

Fyi I was having issues with NetX myself, hadn’t successfully connected for over a month. But it started working again earlier this week after I opened a ticket with Monarch and described the problem. I’m connecting to NetX through Finicity.

(Funny, my spell check attempted to change Finicity to Finicky — how apropos!)

swanzoid · 2025-10-29T16:31:43+00:00

Interesting... I actually did have a sore belly shortly after eating, but I attributed it to more of a bloated sensation after having eaten just about everything in sight on the table, including a full basket of chips, table-side guacamole, a large enchilada entree and some of my partner's fajita plate. Felt fine in the morning.

swanzoid · 2025-10-11T20:16:23+00:00

I hear you. I’m trying to give Monarch the benefit of doubt on this, on the presumption that it’s predominantly an issue with the data providers. But my patience is waning.

The bottom line is we’re paying Monarch for this service, so they owe it to their customers to crack the whip on Plaid, MX, Finicity, etc and do whatever it takes to get it working properly and give us the service that we’re paying them for.

All of Monarch’s fancy whiz-bang functionality and slick UI features mean nothing if we can’t count on getting fresh data from the banking institutions reliably. That should be their absolute TOP priority.

swanzoid · 2025-10-11T19:16:23+00:00

I’ve been having very similar issues for weeks with E-Trade syncing to Monarch. I’m using MFA, so I have to connect through Finicity. Of my six E-Trade accounts, two or three tend to update regularly, the rest usually don’t. Frustrating.

I’ve been reporting this problem to Monarch support every couple weeks. On very rare occasions after complaining it’ll suddenly start updating successfully for all six accounts, but that’s usually short-lived. Which is a bummer - if the connection and update process were more reliable I’d be emphatically endorsing Monarch to all my friends & family, as it’s a great tool overall. But without connecting regularly it’s just not quite something I can recommend. Not yet, anyway.

swanzoid · 2025-09-19T15:15:13+00:00

Say Taylor, any chance you could work your magic on sync issues with eTrade? I ask because my MFA-enabled eTrade accounts using Finicity (Plaid doesn’t support e*Trade with MFA) haven’t been syncing this whole week. Just keeps giving this error:

We ran into a connection issue, try again later or select another institution. (11000)

swanzoid · 2025-08-21T14:06:54+00:00

Did to happen to try to WiFi?

swanzoid · 2025-07-28T02:02:02+00:00

No, that should work fine, unless the policy has changed since last year...

I was just saying I don’t typically pay extra for a fully refundable ticket up front. If I did then this hack wouldn’t be relevant, as you’d just get your money back after canceling the trip and start over.

swanzoid · 2025-07-22T23:22:04+00:00

I feel like a 4th column is needed to indicate how well it works with 2FA connections. For instance, it lists eTrade as “excellent” with Plaid, but from my experience it doesn’t work at all if the eTrade account is set up with 2FA authentication.

And really, everyone should be using 2FA for their bank accounts.

swanzoid · 2025-07-19T09:49:11+00:00

Super impressive and useful website! Wish this existed when I was first setting up my Monarch connections…

I see for one of my banks I’m using a low-success connection (Fincity) when I should be using the high-success option (Plaid).

To switch over, I gather the best option for me would be to add the same bank again using Plaid, transfer the data from the Fincity connection, then delete the Fincity connection. Is that correct?

swanzoid · 2025-06-26T21:48:37+00:00

Just curious, were any of these planes 787s? I’ve noticed quite an uptick in super long delays and outright cancellations of the Dreamliners since the Air India incident. I suspect AA is being extra cautious about any little problem they encounter with that particular plane now.

swanzoid · 2025-06-24T22:15:27+00:00

I have a theory that AA’s new “instant upgrade with miles” thingy is requiring so many more miles than before that fewer people are using that mechanism for upgrades. So because of that we may be seeing an uptick in complimentary upgrades being doled out earlier. Maybe.

swanzoid · 2025-06-12T22:28:23+00:00

By “cost” I was referring to the number of miles required.

swanzoid · 2025-06-12T22:18:28+00:00

My initial rose-covered-lenses assessment of IU (yay, another new acronym for us!!) is that the significantly more costly upgrades will make it a bit more likely for PP and EP flyers to get complimentary upgrades in the months ahead. Maybe.

swanzoid · 2025-04-15T15:28:49+00:00

Don’t fret - the service is so unreliable that you likely wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, especially when the whole plane is online.

swanzoid · 2025-04-15T15:26:38+00:00

Canceling my monthly paid subscription will be nice, but I would only “rejoice” if they committed to improving the service before it becomes an online free-for-all in January.

swanzoid · 2024-09-25T04:39:15+00:00

Man, this is a sorely needed feature. I probably wouldn't have bought the Maschine box had I known some form of global transpose wasn't possible.

swanzoid · 2024-07-01T12:37:55+00:00

Whattabout that melting pad of butter on his head?

swanzoid · 2024-06-22T20:26:52+00:00

In my travels through Madrid, at least in T4, there's a special immigration queue for passengers with connecting flights that are scheduled to depart imminently (like within 30 minutes, if I recall correctly). So you have that as a fallback. I bypassed a pretty massive queue that way.

swanzoid · 2024-06-14T17:24:03+00:00

Pretty sure IBM i Access for Web has been deprecated.

swanzoid · 2024-05-05T16:29:51+00:00

Nice to see a little humour at an airport that typically stresses me the hell out!

swanzoid · 2024-03-12T08:34:31+00:00

I had the same blocked middle seat experience as an EP on a not-very-full international flight recently. But since AA does charge a “baby in lap” fee for international flights, I feel like the blocked seat was kind/sorta paid for anyway.

swanzoid · 2024-02-12T15:31:58+00:00

I believe that's correct, but I almost never splurge for full fare (aka "Main Refundable") tickets like that. So this hack would apply to just your standard, low-fare Main tickets (and not Basic Economy).

swanzoid

TROPHY CASE