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Travel by Flight
While I don't mind travel by car or train (or ship or donkey or whatever else), my favorite method of travel is by air. There's just something about hurtling a pressurized aluminum tube through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, a kind of slap in the face of Nature and God that says, "See what I can do!"
I used to fly perhaps two to four times a year, mostly to the beach for summer vacation. Meeting Beth meant adding an additional trip or two to Florida to visit her family. I was nowhere near a truly frequent flier, though I did maintain accounts with no fewer than seven airlines.
However, moving to the Washington, D.C. area put me in reach of three major airports... Now, I fly upwards of eighty individual flights a year, mostly for fun, though my job has sent me to some interesting places as well. Through it all, I've learned a lot about flying!
Frequent Flight
I'll admit it... I simply love flying. If a trip by car would take me five hours and cost me $70 in gas, I'll happily spend $125 to take the same trip by air.
Having moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 2004, I found my air travel options greatly expanded. In the past, I'd had to fly out of Roanoke (ROA), or drive over two hours to Greensboro, NC (GSO) or Charleston, WV (CRW), and none were particularly cheap or convenient for frequent travel. Now, I have three major airports fairly accessible (Dulles / IAD, National / DCA, and BWI), and could drive to Charlottesville (CHO) or Richmond (RIC) if the fare was worthwhile.
Thanks to FlyerTalk, an online frequent flier community, I learned much more about air travel--from my rights during irregular operations / flight cancellations to how to maximize the mileage earned on a single trip and so forth. In 2004, I earned Premier Executive (1P) status with United Airlines, and this year, I managed to eke out 1K (meaning I flew either 100,000 miles or 100 individual flight segments in a year) with United, their highest status (well, excepting the spend-based Global Services fliers) I flew every month of 2005 at least once excepting June, when wedding preparations made weekends precious and left me no time in the sky.
Most of my family think I'm crazy, as did my wife Beth until she got a taste of the benefits of frequent travel, such as upgrades, special security lines, early boarding, better help during irregular operations, etc.
I once read a statement by a frequent traveler who claimed to miss the smell of "Jet A" fuel, and read a news article about a man who'd accumulated well over ten million frequent flier miles and who claimed he missed the feel of flight if he went more than a few weeks without it. Somehow, I emphasize entirely...
As a frequent flier, I quickly learned that it's possible to add connecting flights to a trip without affecting the overall price. Some of my oddest routes--chosen either to maximize mileage earned on a normal trip or simply to earn miles and/or status--are as follows:
- DCA-ORD-MSP-DEN-SBA-LAX and LAX-JFK/LGA-DCA - taken to maximize the miles earned on a trip to Los Angeles for the Episode III Premier in LA, and to fly back in luxury on United's Premium Service flight to NYC.
- DCA-ATL-IAD-ORD-DEN-SLC and SLC-DEN-TUL-ORD-DCA - taken in November, 2004, to earn Silver Medallion status with Delta and Premier Executive status with United, this was an all-day-traveling trip to Salt Lake City and back.
- IAD-ORD-OMA-DEN-LAX-OAK and OAK-DEN-MDW/ORD-CLT-IAD - taken to earn a bunch of miles, make a quick visit to a friend in San Francisco, and help reach 1K status with United in November, 2005.
(Note that most of these flights cost me $200 or less to boot... kind of blows your mind, doesn't it?)
Weird or Interesting Flight Stories
I have both been in a plane for an aborted takeoff and an aborted landing; other than to groan at the delay, I found both to be interesting experiences.
While flying back from Miami (the Atlanta to Roanoke leg if I recall), our vintage 1960's turboprop had made it a good way down the runway at full throttle when suddenly I heard the engines cut back. Seems a maintenance light had come on indicating the fuel door had come open--glad they caught that before we'd reached the speed where there's no turning back (although I'm sure we would have simply circled and come back in for a landing). During that same trip, I counted no less than fifteen other planes in the sky around us, and we landed almost concurrently with two other planes on parallel runways--while a fourth took off.
My aborted landing took place in Cincinnati; flying from Charleston, WV, I was half asleep and felt the landing gear go down on approach. As we descended, the engines suddenly went to full-throttle and the plane took a steep climb, after which the landing gear came back up. Shortly thereafter the Captain indicated that a plane had been sitting on the runway upon which we were supposed to land. Oops...
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