In a little over an hour, my wife and I are traveling on a family trip to attend a wedding. But it occurred to me that, in the course of planning and booking this trip, I ignored just about every rule that I set for myself, and which I recommend to others. Here’s what I did wrong:
1) Flying at the end of the day.
The flights are the last ones of the day heading to our desired destinations (we have a connection). If either of these flights is canceled, we’ll be out of luck.
2) Connecting, instead of flying nonstop.
My wife and I will have the enormous pleasure (groan) of milling about Washington Dulles International Airport this evening, watching the moon buggies cross the airport grounds. Two flights means twice as many opportunities for getting stuck. (Non-stops were available, but at an extortionary premium, or from a distant alternate airport.)
3) Flying at the end of the month.
In this instance, this was impossible to avoid, since the wedding is happening this weekend, and there’s not much we can do about rescheduling other people’s nuptials. But late-in-the-month flights risk cancellation because of pilot shortages. Pilots are only permitted to fly a certain number of hours per month, so if they meet their quotas early on, they’re grounded at the end of the month. The last week of every month gets riskier.
4) Flying in regional jets.
To fly to Dulles, we’ll be sitting in a 50-seat Embraer 145. Not as miserable as the 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet, if you ask me, but no picnic. But putting comfort aside: A 50-seat flight is still more likely to get delayed or cancelled during irregular operations (such as bad weather) because they don’t move as many people around as the Boeings and Airbuses.
Looking for a silver lining? At least 1) we’re not checking bags (though our roll-aboard will be gate-checked on the regional-jet flight, since those RJ’s don’t have overhead bins that amount to anything), 2) we’re earning miles (…which we’ve got in spades), 3) we’re upgraded on the second leg of the trip tonight (a whopping 1-hour flight, but hey, it’s an upgrade), and, most importantly, 4) we’re going to the wedding and celebrating.
Wish us luck.
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August 28th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Good luck, then - and did you get misconnected, delayed due to weather, stuck for hours in the plane at IAD, etc?
August 28th, 2007 at 5:33 am
Thanks for the good wishes!
And no, none of the above. No misconnects, no weather delays, no missing pilots… none of it. All our upgrades cleared, and we arrived earlier than scheduled at both destinations. The stars were aligned!
A few nasty bumps due to wake turbulence, but otherwise, we were quite lucky.
October 4th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Just like you, I didn’t follow the typical rules when I rented out my summer cottage. Because of that, I was able to find a better, more effective and profitable way. Several homeowners asked me why my property was always rented when theirs was not. And, they wanted to know why my retal fees were higher than theirs. That is why I wrote a book about it. I wanted homeowners to know that if created a better quality property and advertised accordingly, they would get more qualified guests and command higher rental income. The title of my book is: Breaking all the Rules: How to Rent Your Vacation Home. For more information: http://www.howtorentvacationhomes.com