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.:)
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