Clever Thoughts

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)

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.

Travel continental, delta, northwest, observation

I recently returned for a trip to Austin with my family to discover that the check bag containing the car seats for my children had been lost in transit. I had somewhat expected something to happen as I hadn’t seen the bag on the luggage cart full of bags to be loaded onto the plane while our other bags were clearly visible. I was looking because when we went to check-in in Austin they told me to take the car seats to the TSA Oversized Luggage screening area (and berated me for putting car seats in a bag rather than bringing them unwrapped to be put in the complimentary clear plastic bag they provide). The single TSA agent was already talking to three adults and a pile of kids while checking their luggage, two large coolers and two rifle cases. He told me that “since your bag isn’t fire arms I don’t need you to wait” and assured me that there would be plenty of time to get the bag on my flight.

Getting back to the story after waiting for all the bags to show up I talked to the luggage office who not only filled out the lost luggage form but also provide me with relatively new (< 3 months) loaner car seats of the appropriate sizes and offered an apology.

The bag was delivered the next afternoon and exchanged for the loaners. I think its important to recognize this sort of customer service and planning (having the car seats to loan) as it happens far to infrequently.

Travel continental, good customer service