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My friend got a very expensive flight diversion flying from Las Vegas to Aruba over New Years. Despite scheduling a four hour layover in Fort Lauderdale on Jet Blue, the plane was diverted to Orlando because of fog. He arrived in FLL about 6 hours later than he was scheduled, and was forced to spend the night in an expensive crappy hotel and miss a day in Aruba.
I suggested that it may make sense to plan future vacations around nonstop flights. If he wants to be warm, he could fly nonstop 6.5-7 hours to Panama City. It is also a 5 hour drive from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta, but in the middle of winter that may not be hot, but probably just warm.
Do you think that is crazy to build vacation plans around nonstop airport routes. Does anyone else do that?
I'm on a thin spoke of the airline routes for most of the year. Saying 'only non-stops' means I would have my choice of Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston as spring break destinations and I'm not feeling inspired to spend a weeklong holiday at any of those places. Go the next airport over, and you pick up Baltimore and Nashville, and I'm still not digging the options.
So silly and insanely limited in my case; I learned long ago to stop worrying about connecting flights and love the ATL.
I'm on a thin spoke of the airline routes for most of the year. Saying 'only non-stops' means I would have my choice of ...So silly and insanely limited in my case; I learned long ago to stop worrying about connecting flights and love the ATL.
Well it's not just think spokes. Las Vegas is a top 10 airport. San Diego is a top 30 airport and it has only two southern destinations.
It's not crazy, it makes a lot of sense to maximize your time at a destination. That said, it can be limiting, based on whether you have a particular destination in mind. If you've always wanted to go to Rome, it's worth a connection to get there. If you're looking for a relaxing beach vacation and one option is a direct flight, I'd favor that over a connecting flight. Length of trip also matters - the longer the flight the less my hesitance of a connecting flight.
Up to a point, it's worth traveling by ground to another airport. Other than PHL, I can be in EWR or BWI pretty easily. That expands my options.
It seems that I never fly to places that have direct flights. But I often save money by piecing together several flights, which added together are cheaper than the to-from fare quoted in websites, For example, I flew Houston to Darwin, Australia, by buying a RT ticket to Bangkok, and a separate ticket BKK to Darwin. Saved about $200 off any published fare from Houston to anywhere in Australia. By doing that, I can also have a free stopover for as long as I want at the intermediate location, which gave me a week to take the train Bangkok to Cambodia. So I got Australia, Thailand and Cambodia, a couple hundred dollars less than the best fare to Australia alone.
I wouldn't limit myself to just nonstop destinations. But I also build in some "recovery" time when I arrive at my destination, so a delay likely just mean less recovery time. I'd soldier through and enjoy my time there.
The same friend booked an air-miles flight from Europe back to Vegas.
He has an 11:20 flight from Europe to California that lands him at 11:20 am, and the connecting flights for the 99 minute flight home are at:
(1) 12:50pm (80 minute layover)
(2) 4:30pm (5:10 layover)
(3) 6:24pm (7:04 layover)
The airline booked him for the 7 hour layover. Since there are three other airlines that fly the same 99 minute flight he is tempted to take a one way flight home and pick up his luggage later.
Perhaps I am paranoid, but I'm afraid the DHS will flag the double booking and at the very lease blow up his luggage.
Why doesn't he just take the airline from Europe to California and cancel the second leg? He's going to have to collect his luggage to go through customs anyway. Then he can then check in to the other airline for the flight to Vegas.
DHS doesn't care. The problem is the airline, which tends to be aggressive with cancelling what they consider to be 'double bookings' and/or can flag him for what looks like an attempt to play the hidden city ticketing game (while this is not strictly a hidden city scenario, there's some fine print about married segment pricing and such that make it close enough to concern airline revenue management)
If he's going to do that, he should use a different airline.
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