So as promised, this week's episode of The Midwest Wanderer is all about air travel. As fellow road warriors, I'm sure you've had your share of stale peanuts, old pretzels, and thousands of miles in an oversized tin can squeezed into a seat that continues to get smaller and smaller.
Today I want to talk about planning for the inevitable (i.e. delays, oversold flights, and overpriced everything), airline mileage programs, and how to negotiate NICELY to get the most you can when you're forced to make lemonade from lemons.
On a recent flight a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of flying out of my little airport (ATY in case any of you actually want to find Watertown) en route to Oakland, CA. I happen to fly Delta Airlines often, as this is the ONLY commercial carrier that flies in and out of our lovely little airport (think the TV show "Wings"). The flight out went relatively smooth with connections in Minneapolis and Salt Lake City. As usual, my flight from Salt Lake to Oakland was overbooked. If you have any experience with flying the friendly skies, you've most likely ran into this situation yourself. However, when I fly, I plan as much flexibility into my plans as possible so that I can take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. In this particular case, my potential reward was $400 in Delta dollars to trade my confirmed seat on a 2pm flight for a guaranteed seat on a flight leaving a few hours later (7pm). That comes out to about $80/hour for my willingness to wait. Most of the time when this situation presents itself, the gate agent announces initial compensation that is mediocre. If no one grabs the goodies right away, often this incentive grows as fast as the desparation rises. Play it this way friends....wait a few minutes and/or ask for slightly better compensation...chances are you'll get more than the initial offer.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about hotel rewards programs. You'll notice that most of these programs can be paired with an airline reward program to boost your miles and get you free tickets sooner. As you'd guess, I happen to be a SkyMiles member (email me if you'd like to donate to my account). Each leg of your travel itinerary counts as miles toward your accumulation total. All the major airlines offer such a program. My suggestion is to find the airline that you think you'll fly the most and sign up before your next flight. It doesn't take long before you're answering the question, "cookies, peanuts, or pretzels?" without shelling out a dime. (They'll be the best tasting peanuts ever, promise!)
Mother Nature came into play on the return legs of my trip home. First of all, my flight out of OAK was delayed two hours due to a maintenance issue with our plane. Now it's somewhat difficult to get mad at the airlines for fixing a broken plane. After all, what's worse, a delay or a crash? This particular leg of my trip was on Alaska Airlines. If you've never had the opportunity to fly on Alask Airlines (coach is where I roll), I highly suggest it. There is about 4" more of leg room in coach, and the flight attendants have been overly trained in smiling and being nice (could be worse). The only problem with switching carriers on a trip is that it causes problems if you wish to check your bags...you'll get them back sometime! Anyway, I digress.
Once I finally got to Seattle, my plane was at the gate 30 minutes after my next flight was to take off to Minneapolis. A slight panic set in over the whole plane, which only caused the de-planeing process to take even longer. What was even worse, I had to hop on three different subway shuttles to get from one end of the Seattle airport to the other (that is one interesting airport). Once to my gate, the HUGE mob of angry fellow flyers indicated to me that things weren't quite right in Seattle either. Turned out that my 12:30 flight was delayed until 3:00 due to our lovely Mother Nature (the day after the Metrodome collapsed for any of you who watch the news). Turned out Mother Nature thought that the good folks in the Twin Cities needed to be reminded that it was winter. So one of the main hubs of Delta (like I said, for better or worse, that's my only choice from ATY) was basically shut down. The angry mob at the gate were not the good folks of Delta flight 2114, of which I was a proud member. This lovely mob was comprised of folks that were hoping to get on the 3pm flight to Minneapolis for which they were holding tickets. Unfortunately, we got their plane and they had to wait three more hours for another plane to be flown in from somewhere else.
Once in the air (finally), I determined on flightstats.com that I was going to miss my next flight (and the last flight of the day to Watertown). [WiFi on flights is one of the best things the airlines have done since Orville and Wilber Wright got their glider off the ground in 1900]. Once on the ground in MSP and a mad dash across the whole Lindburgh terminal, I quickly determined that I missed my flight by 4 whole minutes. Apparently begging, pleading, and a few tears from a grown man won't convince a gate agent to move the jet bridge back in place and open the airplane door. Instead, I waved to the pilot and co-pilot as they pushed off. I think one of them might have even flipped me off....but I can't prove it.
Anyway, an overnight stay in Minneapolis and a next day flight eventually got me home a day late. The funny thing is that Delta was bold enough to send me a survey to ensure they were offering the highest level of service. Now I'm a realist. I understand that the powers that be in the Delta organization don't have a weather machine. But I still thought this was an odd touch. So I let them have it in the nicest possible way. In turn, I received a very nice apology letter from one of the Delta marketing staff and was advised that my SkyMiles account had been credited with additional free miles.
In the end, through all the unexpected twists and turns in my most recent adventure in flight, I came out of the deal with quite a few extra miles, all the free Coke products I could handle, and more cinnamon cookies, pretzels and peanuts than I could stand. Next time....I'm calling NetJets!!!
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