Back when I was in a booking frenzy a bit over a month ago, I wanted to be sure I booked something for Memorial Day weekend, since it’s usually a bump fest. While it’s not my favorite routing, I managed to book TPA-IAD-SFO-LAX-SAN for Saturday, then get on the SAN-ORD redeye, followed by ORD-SYR-IAD-TPA on Sunday morning.
I just checked the loads for each of my flights, and none of them are even close to full!
What does this mean? Well, I guess I could theorize that less people are traveling for the weekend this year compared to past years, but I’m not totally convinced of that. While it might be a small factor, I will just leave it to pure luck (or lack thereof), and hope for irregular operations. I’ve gotten about five bumps or so in the past couple of years, and only one of them has been when the flight looked full the day before. The others were all due to irregular operations and the subsequent rebookings.
Something I’m excited about this weekend is ORD on Sunday morning at 4:30AM. For flying dorks, it’s the holiest of all experiences. Seeing one of the ORD concourses from one side to the other with hardly anyone there, so quiet that you could drop a pin and everyone would hear it, is simply great compared to the usual hustle and bustle, never-ending noise, and downright yuckiness of ORD. Since I usually take redeyes to IAD, I’ll be getting less sleep than normal this weekend, but I’ll get to experience my single favorite airport situation, despite my zombie-like state at that point in my journey.
Of course I’m not the only one taking the opportunity to mileage run this weekend, and will be meeting up with tons of FlyerTalkers in airport lounges around the country.
Stay tuned.:)
Lucky, have a good time tjis weekend! I'm heading tomorrow on a DCA-MSP-SFO (8 hours on the ground) - DTW-DCA (all on NW). It'll be my first red-eye in a LONG time so we'll see how much I enjoyed the MR come Monday morning, ha. I'm hoping for some irreg. ops too. Enjoy!
Nope, I just started reading a few days ago.
I'm an "ITA software ninja" if you ask my friends and coworkers, so I have no problem 'optimizing' the routing, my problem is finding the destination. I haven't had much luck with Travelocity Dreammaps (site is often broken, doesn't let me limit the airline choice, doesn't let me limit the time range), but the FareCompare tool someone linked to looks great.
Starting in the middle of...
Nope, I just started reading a few days ago.
I'm an "ITA software ninja" if you ask my friends and coworkers, so I have no problem 'optimizing' the routing, my problem is finding the destination. I haven't had much luck with Travelocity Dreammaps (site is often broken, doesn't let me limit the airline choice, doesn't let me limit the time range), but the FareCompare tool someone linked to looks great.
Starting in the middle of the country adds to the complexity, since nothing domestic is far away.
Have you seen my post about how to construct mileage runs?
https://onemileatatime.com/how-i-construct-mileage-runs/
What's your method for finding mileage runs?
I'd like to do one during the DEQM promo (I know, I'm a bit late to be thinking about this), but since I work fulltime I only have weekends available and I haven't had much luck finding great fares.
Best fare I've found is $2k to SIN (~41k EQM with bonus), but I'd prefer something a bit cheaper (obviously with less miles... only need ~25k to secure 1P).