Monday, January 31, 2005
Travel Planning 101
When analyzing two possible flight itineraries, at what point do you take a later direct flight over an earlier 1 stop flight? Let's say, hypothetically, that you have a 1 stop flight that arrives two hours earlier than your direct flight. They're the same price and the layover is an hour long and in a city not known for bad January weather. Is a two hour difference enough to take the 1 stop? I thought so, but apparently I was mistaken.
Jie and I flew out to Denver for the weekend to catch a couple of days of snow skiing while the rest of the family was there. It's hard to turn down free room and food, especially when airline tickets are just $200. We flew there Friday night on AirTran, the 1 stop flight via Atlanta, since it arrived 2 hours before the JetBlue flight. Unfortunately, we wound up spending 5 hours on the runway in Atlanta waiting to be de-iced before we could takeoff. It was painful to say the least, and I was not impressed with the way our AirTran crew handled the whole situation. I don't think I will be flying them again.
Just to make things exciting, we also drove through a snowstorm last night on our way to the Denver airport to get back to Boston. We left 3.5 hours before our flight, and managed to get on the plane about 5 minutes before they closed the cabin door and pushed away from the gate. The 90 minute drive from Winter Park wound up taking about 2.5 hours.
Classes were great fun today, as I struggled to operate on 4 hours sleep. I know that most of my MBA brethren make-do on not much more than that on a regular basis, but I'm a big wimp and don't work well on any less than about 6 hours. My goal is to hit the sack around 7pm tonight and get a solid 12 hours to catch up.
Jie and I flew out to Denver for the weekend to catch a couple of days of snow skiing while the rest of the family was there. It's hard to turn down free room and food, especially when airline tickets are just $200. We flew there Friday night on AirTran, the 1 stop flight via Atlanta, since it arrived 2 hours before the JetBlue flight. Unfortunately, we wound up spending 5 hours on the runway in Atlanta waiting to be de-iced before we could takeoff. It was painful to say the least, and I was not impressed with the way our AirTran crew handled the whole situation. I don't think I will be flying them again.
Just to make things exciting, we also drove through a snowstorm last night on our way to the Denver airport to get back to Boston. We left 3.5 hours before our flight, and managed to get on the plane about 5 minutes before they closed the cabin door and pushed away from the gate. The 90 minute drive from Winter Park wound up taking about 2.5 hours.
Classes were great fun today, as I struggled to operate on 4 hours sleep. I know that most of my MBA brethren make-do on not much more than that on a regular basis, but I'm a big wimp and don't work well on any less than about 6 hours. My goal is to hit the sack around 7pm tonight and get a solid 12 hours to catch up.
