Lesson learned: fly nonstop, or don't fly.

[yewberry]

Please, learn from my mistakes.

This week, my husband and I took a trip to visit my family in New England. I bought the tickets in April, and managed to get them for $340 a piece--afternoon flights, one stop. It can be pretty expensive, and given the price of fuel, I thought that maybe we might be looking at the end of cheap flights and so we went.

We were supposed to fly out Tuesday afternoon, change planes at JFK (1 hr turnaround), and arrive in Portland later that night. The return was the following Tuesday 29 in the afternoon, change planes at JFK (1 hr turnaround), then back to Seattle. Well. Things did not go as planned.

The flight out of Seattle was a little late--nothing much, the kind of 'late' that they make up in the air. We got to JFK, though, and had to circle a few times before we could land, so we were about 20 minutes late, but still time to make the connection, right? Uh, sure, except that we had to wait for an hour on the tarmac before our gate was clear. And "there will be gate agents to help you with your connecting flights," right? Well, no, not really. We missed our connection, obviously, and then stood in line for an hour and got listed on a flight at 10:05 pm the next night. No hotel, no food, because the delay was somehow weather-related (?)...somehow. We tried to get a hotel ourselves, but there was nothing available any closer than Newark, and we tried to get a car, but there were no cars. Argh. So, yippee, we spent the night at JFK. We were able to call Delta and get listed onto a flight at 3:45 pm the next day, though--better than 10 pm, for sure.

Overnight in JFK is no fun.

Next day: we were ever-so-on-time for our next flight at 3:45, but it was delayed and then cancelled. We managed to get listed on a flight later that night out of LaGuardia, so off we went to LaGuardia. You guessed it, that flight was delayed and then cancelled. We reserved tickets on a train out of Penn Station at 3:15 am that would arrive in Portland at 11:30 am (11+ hours from NYC to Portland??? For $260???) as a backup plan. Incredibly, at about 7 we found a car that we could rent one-way out of the city and drove to my brother's house outside of Boston. So, we bailed on that leg of the trip and drove. Phew. It only took about hours, and we had a real shower and a bed.


So. Visit over, and it was time to head home yesterday. We were on a 6 pm flight out of PWM to JFK, then an 8:00 to SeaTac. And yes, the flight out of Portland was 10 minutes late. Then 30. Then an hour. When we hit an hour and a half, the gate agent agreed that we shouldn't even bother trying to get to JFK and set us up with a hotel room for the night and $7 meal vouchers apiece (Yay!) and got us onto a 6 am flight out. The only stipulation was that we had to be at the airport by 4, and we'd have to connect out of Atlanta the next day with a 35 minute plane change. Well, at that point, what can you do? I called my office and let them know I'd be another day at least.

We did manage to get up at 3:30 and make the 6:00 flight. It was late, of course, but only about 20 minutes, so we did one of those epic runs from terminal C to terminal A and made it to the gate as they were giving away our seats...but we did make it on our last flight home.

So. Eight days of vacation when we'd alloted seven, and we actually blew a solid three of those days in transit.


My friends, never fly through JFK if you can help it. Fly nonstop if there is any way to do so. Always get seat assignments as soon as you can and fly first thing in the morning.

I'm going to bed now. Work is going to be awfully early tomorrow, and I expect that the stacks of stuff that have built up on my desk will be pretty deep.

[JCMach1]

1. Just getting over the jetlag from my Tulsa to Dubai trip via United/Lufthansa- 33hr

in transit for what should have been a 16hr direct flight.

This included a 6hr catering delay in Chicago/O'Hare which caused me to arrive 20min before my flight left in Frankfurt. I ran all the way across the airport and DID make the flight. I was the last person on as they closed the doors. However, my baggage took 2 more days to make it!

Of course, I had to wait around in Dubai and file all of the missing bag paperwork for a grand total of 33hrs.

Did I mention after running, my economy seat was middle seat between two fat people for 5.5hr?

So yes, the OP is correct.

[Redstone]

2. Drive. At least you get to see stuff along the way.

Redstone