Boston to SanJose
It seems my travel season (normally between 8 and 11 months a year) has started and given recent changes in airline alliances I’ve had to reevaluate my preferred route between favorite points A and B. (For those not paying attention Delta bought NorthWest and there is a strong rumor that Continental will leave SkyTeam in the near future, this is relevant because it affects which routs get upgraded and which don’t.)
My current set of point A and B are Boston and SJC (San Jose, CA). Last year my choices were to change planes in: MSP, or IAH unless I wanted to stop more than once (non stop just doesn’t happen on SkyTeam and 6+ hours in coach on a 757 just isn’t fun no matter how often you do it). Now with the addition of Delta we also have the options of ATL and SLC. If we add in SFO as a reasonable approximation of SJC we also add EWR, CVG, JFK, and DTW so lets look at what this means: (when different aircraft schedule different time the longer is shown) (for reverse directions remove 30min to an hour)
| Point A | Point C | time | Point B | time | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOS | MSP | 3h30m | SJC | 4h02m | time |
| BOS | IAH | 4h40m | SJC | 4h20m | time |
| BOS | ATL | 3h00m | SJC | 5h29m | time |
| BOS | SLC | 5h40m | SJC | 2h04m | time |
| BOS | EWR | 1h15m | SFO | 6h13m | time |
| BOS | CVG | 2h34m | SFO | 5h10m | time |
| BOS | DTW | 2h20m | SFO | 5h13m | time |
| BOS | JFK | 1h30m | SFO | 7h10m | time |
from this it becomes clear that JFK is almost completely useless and EWR should only be used eastbound. SLC and ATL are both marginal at best and both CVG and DTW are questionable westbound, though all four are reasonable eastbound. This leave us with … MSP and IAH, though if IAH goes away I’m not sure what my second choice becomes, I’ll have to try the routes and decide which planes I dislike more. Ahh the magic, wonder, and elegance of modern travel.