Flying Silver

It’s been, well, decades since I flew in the airlines lowest privilege category. ‘not a bad thing, but different now that I’m demoted.

The cause is a combination of factors.  I’m not traveling as much overall. When i do, it’s to Stockholm, Budapest, Dubrovnik: Low-cost carriers rather than the majors.  And my long-time loyalty partner, Delta, has changed their program to reward dollars spent rather than mils flown.  ‘not good if I am always looking for a discount fare.

Which leaves me Silver, not Platinum, for 2017.

Differences.  No lounge access.  Half-full wine glasses.. No complimentary upgrades.  Lower mileage matches.

 

But, you know, it’s good.  The day was coming, and the chase was getting tired.  The pre-flight mimosa, the complimentary newspaper, the miso soup and shortbread, early bag unloading, occasional preferred customs, and the speedy wifi, adds up to little.  Really. Being part of the global elite is addictive, but neither necessary nor defining.

 

So I am exploring the airport shops for small gifts, buying a panini and a pint when the mood strikes, and scrounging power from the Witherspoons in exchange for purchasing a bucket of chips.

All good, nothing lost.  ‘just different.  And really, not worth the money or chase.

Even given the cheap wine glass, only half full.

A million miles, and counting

Delta Airlines has awarded me Million Miler status, recognizing my loyalty and resilience.   I’m awarded Silver status for life and my choice of carry-on luggage or earrings.  The airline has tiers up to 7 million miles, but this feels humbling enough as one  measure of my life.

It’s a distance equivalent to two trips to the moon and back, forty trips around the world.

At the normal cruising speed of 500 mph at 35000 ft altitude, I’ve spent 2000 hours, a full working year, sitting in airplanes.

At a cost of Fare = $50 + (Distance * $0.11), I have spent over $100,000 on tickets.

This comes as Delta (and other airlines) are trying to make it more difficult to earn Milage Qualifying Miles, the basis for awards like this.  Loyalty programs used to simply bank miles flown, then added minimum spends to qualify for different levels. 

Starting this year, miles earned base on ticket price paid.

‘Self-financing, I look for bargains where I can find them, and the change means that, where last year I was a Diamond medallion member, this year I will barely clear Silver with a similar travel schedule.

It doesn’t matter much, I don’t measure success by loyalty cards  But I used to qualify for matching miles, complimentary upgrades and lounge access, all very welcome bonuses that I do miss.  A bit like George Clooney in Up in the Air, the game no longer motivates.

The one angle that I do still play is to book the KLM-code flight rather than the Delta-code on equivalent flights.  I like the cachet of flying under a Dutch label, and Delta still credits me with miles flown if their name headlines my ticket.

Stansted blues

I rely pretty heavily on Stansted Airport,northeast of London and about a half-hour drive (or train ride) from Cambridge.  It has direct (albeit7:00 am  Ryanair fights) to Maastricht for 20 gbp each way, and is a nice hub for vacationing.  There aren’t any US flights yet, although they are promised in the near future.

In the meantime, though, the process of flying in and out is becoming increasingly difficult, expensive, and irritating.

• Drop-off fees:  The airport has a drive-by lane across the front of the building, which was limited, then closed, early this year.  Motorists are redirected around to the underground entrance, where a ‘kiss and drop’ loop has been set up.  The problem is that they are charging 2 gbp ($3.00) for even a 3-minute traverse of the loop to drop off or pick up a passenger.  Short term parking costs 2.50 gbp: this is an absolutely appalling fee to extract from every motorist.

• Advertising Captchas: Ryanair has long had ‘captchas’ on their site, assuring that their pricing is only available to customers and not to aggregators.  Recently, they’ve begun to use these for advertising, asking customers to type in the ad copy in order to access the site.  I don’t mind verifying that I’m human, but typing in a promotional phrase is really irritating.  (Although the 50-questions “No Ryanair Talk, luggage, insurance, shuttle, etc, etc” is also annoying.  As is their policy of charging for their Android app.)

• Low-price parking guarantee:  It’s not cheap to park at Stansted, but at least the agents at Holiday Extras offer a clean and simple guarantee.  So, when I found a lower price on my parking within 24 hours of booking, I called.  Although I met the conditions, I also met one of their 14 fine print exceptions, which pretty much cover any conditions where I might actually exercise the guarantee.  Customer service said I’d have to write the company, the company replied that they pay hundreds of people each year so, while there really is a guarantee, it doesn’t apply to me.

Thus, I’m excited that Cambridge airport has decided to start Amsterdam flights via Darwin airlines (also to Milan, Paris, and Geneva) on September 2, 2013.  It looks pricy at just over 100 gbp one-way, but I’ll watch how things develop

So far, yet only so near

I flew an amazing (perhaps appalling) number of miles last year, as shown by the summary on the right. This doesn’t include the various bits on Aer Lingus, EasyJet, RyanAir, and United that weren’t eligible for Delta / KLM credit.

The sad bit is that I missed Diamond by only 153 miles: a hop across the Channel by commuter plane instead of Eurostar or Ferry.  It doesn’t actually mean much: there are few benefits to being top-tier (free SkyClub, but no bump up to business on TransAtlantic flights).  And the excess 50,000 miles above Platinum roll over so that I start 2013 with a pre-fattened account.

The goal this year, though, is to get the big business exit and retire to St. Maartens.  The secret to life isn’t found in airmiles.

On the road back

Travel at the holidays Often feels as exiting as the NS train fire on New Year’s Eve.  (Caused by a short circuit,  this one has disrupted service north of Utrecht).

There are always cheap airfare deals available around New Years, so, more often than not, I end up flying back to Europe while everyone else is drinking or recovering.  This year, I visited my parents in Boulder, spending New Year’s Eve at dinner and a party where we successively rang in 2013 in Maastricht, Cambridge, and New York.  Champagne flowed from lunch until late evening – lots of fun.

Tuesday morning, though, I was back on the road and headed to Maastricht.

I’ve been driving a rental Fiat 500 over the holidays: a retro little thing with metal dashboard and Lilliputian seats that tootles nicely into small parking crevices.   My advice to Europeans is always to rent a big car in the US so that you can cold your own among trucks and SUVs, but this was pretty nimble (if not particularly fuel efficient).  The airports were crowded with families returning from holidays, and both the Atlanta and Amsterdam flights were crowded.  Snow in Denver, heavy rain in Atlanta, cased flight delays and my luggage missed the transfer, but the trip was otherwise uneventful.

There weren’t many new movies, so I did some reading and caught up with some interviews embedded in the television feeds.  Brad Pitt doesn’t seem to think too deeply about his craft; George Clooney certainly does.  I’ve felt like he’s been a shadow presence over my expat life, rushing through airports as Ryan Bingham in Up in the Air, smiling down from Nespresso posters. troubled in Michael Clayton. 

It’s interesting to hear his perspective on striking a work/life balance (although he can buy a home at Lake Como to bring him closer to his happy place) and his thoughts on the importance of understand what job you’ve been hired to do.  So often I think of a job in my own terms, revenue, career, personal development, that it’s easy to lose the simpler expectations of the people hiring me.

He laughed that if selling coffee to Europeans allows him to live well, work on projects for scale, and spend time on socially worthwhile causes, then he was fine with the trade-off.  He’s part of an interesting brand strategy with Nespresso: basically its no different from Senseo but positions itself better through his presence, the coffee bars in Bijenkorf, the product framed behind glass like jewelry.  It probably buys them a price premium and customer loyalty (see Wharton and the New York Times).

I arrived in Amsterdam early in the morning and heade into town to pick up the revised and final documents for my UK visa renewal.  Ironically, the Brits re refusing to recognize the legitimacy of my Dutch accountant, requiring me to spend an extra 350 gbp to have them transcribed and stamped by a London auditor (“Is this money laundering?” was his first question to me).  The morning was quiet and misty over the canals, ankle-deep in New Year’s debris.  25 hours on the road: I stopped at a coffee shop and asked for a latte, wearily, and set up my computer on an empty table to look for wifi and update email.

The coffee arrived, I passed 5 euros to the waitress without really looking.  She shifted, a flash of leg, bright red sequined hotpants, startling at 10 am.  I looked around.  Teasers: Beer and Babes.  She flashed a broad smile, I told her to keep the change.  I sighed and went back to work, definitely back in the Netherlands.

Through the mazes

It was a long slog back to Europe.  Thanksgiving crowds filled the US airports, long queues at security and short chance of getting upgrades. The crowds thinned as I crossed the Atlantic, and a rare open seat next to me gave some room to stretch out and read. 

The Christmas decorations are out at Schiphol, and it’s so much easier passing through Border Security with up-to-date IDs.

I’ve found a couple of local companies who might be able to give me a refresher for the KVT, and will engage with that after New Years.  In the meantime, I’ve paid my money ad have my appointment with the UK authorities on Dec 19 for Tier 1 renewal.

A major concern in the UK was that I would have to go dual citizenship at the end of 5 years.  But a friend pointed out a path to permanent residency that might also be an option.  The Dutch are till taking a hard line on dual citizenship, but are (so far) easier on permanent residency if I pass the language tests.

In any case 2013 will be my year.

The winding path is almost as stop-go / twist-turn as my subsequent EasyJet flight.

• Wait at H-foyer (no seats) for a gate to post.

 

• Run for the stairs when H2 appears, down and around to the cavernous waiting area (no seats).

 

• Show a ticket; check the size and weight of my carry-on.  Join the multitude (mostly young and / or cheap) crowding the doors.

 

• Admire the picture of the Beach (I prefer the overhead of the labyrinth garden at the other H-gate). Envy the man who paid extra for early boarding, who gets a seat and a newspaper.

 

• Rush into the cold winter night for the plane: I never take the rear entry option.  It’s shorter boarding, longer getting off.  Battle for an unassigned seat.

 

• Kick back and relax all the way to STN.

Hopefully the day comes when the immigration procedures are similarly behind me.

Missing the flight

Ten days on the road is a little long, especially given the intensity of meetings and the many time zones crossed.   So, it was a relief to settle into the flight east from Minneapolis: no upgrade, and older plane without media, but a comfortable seat and eight hours to decompress.  I did a bit of reading, a little Dutch study, a little reorganization of disk files.

We landed in Amsterdam about 2 pm; my onward flight on EasyJet wasn’t until 6.  So I crossed Passport Control (questions about my expired residence permit), picked up my bag, and camped out t Starbucks to sort through emails.  4 pm, check into EasyJet, back through passport control, more questions.   Lots of time,so check into the KLM Lounge, find a quiet corner….

… and fall asleep.

I always dread the thought of missing a flight, so it was horrible to wake, check the monitors and find that my plane was no longer listed.  EasyJet has no transfer desk, so…

‘back through Passport Control (explanations…),

conclave with EasyJet (they can get me to Luton),

sort out how to get my bag (offloaded and adrift in Schiphol).

Offloaded baggage is handled by Menzies, a cargo handling company that resides in Baggage Claim.  So, back through Passport Control (weary explanations), then to four desks looking for the rep.  A walkie-talkie consultation revealed that my bag had been delivered to Carousel 20 where I found it tagged alarming orange.  Back through security, check in with EasyJet (again), back through Passport Control (the agent knew my name as I approached).

I took no chances and propped myself up at the entrance to H concourse to wait for the flight.

It could have been much worse: it cost three hours and 75 euro.  And I took the hint to get a good night’s sleep and take the weekend off.

Back from the travels

…and with a hacking cough.  The combination of airplanes, jet lag, long days, and shifty weather will do it every time.

It was a good visit to the US: a lot of work on the technical and clinical aspects of the T4 project and the first meeting of the whole team in six months.  We had the agendas and prototypes tee’d up and forced decisions on major issues, so there’s consensus and a clear path ahead.  Fundraising should close in the next couple of weeks and that will bring some more people alongside the project, easing the administrative load.

Both Detroit and Chicago were very hot, 95F (35C) under sunny skies.  The UK, in contrast, is still cold, wet, rainy – I suspect that the Netherlands will be similar next week when I get back to Amsterdam and Maastricht.

It feels like everyone’s circumstances have soured with the weather.  People seem to be having a lot of relationship problems, work problems, health problems, life problems.  Most of the time I find out about it on social network status lines:

Life: unexpected things, tough to deal with. The only thing one can do is pray that the lord reveals the path I must take.

I feel badly for friends running into problems of this magnitude, but have no idea of the circumstances or what would help.  Then, too, I think that people forget they have an audience.

TSB-security went psycho on me in Detroit.  I opted out of the full-body scan and was struggling to keep track of my equipment as it went through x-ray belt.  Before getting frisked, I asked to inventory my things: the security guard took offense, challenging whether I was accusing him of stealing.  I make 50,000 a year: ‘you think I need to be stealin’ your stuff??  I tried to wave it off, he took further offense, and finally another guard had to came over to intervene.

Maybe it’s the heat, but people forget they have an audience.

The UK internet connection is, once again, broken.  BT says that it’s an “exchange problem (we regret the inconvenience)”.  They expected it to be solved by Wednesday, then Friday, now Sunday. I tweeted displeasure and BTCare picked up on it quickly (unfortunately, their solution was to ask how many blue lights on my modem).

Meanwhile, I’m slurping internet off the coffee shops while ordering double-mocha-frappa-somethings.  ‘Hard to run a business from the mall.

It seems part of a larger trend of Things Not Working.  Three of my Delta flights were delayed due to maintenance (3 hours coming back from Detroit because of a clogged sink).  The trains are still having problems with overhead wires.  The rental car agency had to check us in by hand because the computers went off line.  Even the Cambridge Library is having to post what services are up and which are down.

There’s lot’s to catch up on in the coming days – in between midsummer weekend celebrations, now coming into full swing on the outskirts of Cambridge.

A foggy time in Eindhoven

The week ahead was beginning to fill with UK-based meetings and most matters Dutch had been settled – it was time to hop back across the Channel to Cambridge.  Ryanair  offered fares that were half the going rate on Eurostar (43€ vs. 80€), so I booked my seat…well, a slot… and packed my 10 kg/single bag to head north.

Uneventful hour up to Eindhoven Airport, the trains were on time (even if the do divert to Heerlen ahead of Sittard on Sundays, adding half an hour to the journey) and the airport bus was running regularly.  The Big Board showed only one cancelled flight to London City,  a localized weather problem.  No worries; I settled in.

The call came to passport control, where the officer dug into the 5-month delay with IND (now approved, dank u wel) as the grumbling line swelled behind me.  A brief wait, a boarding call, and we walked out into the gathering dusk,

and the pea-soup fog.

No planes on the tarmac; ground crews settled on silent tugs and luggage tractors.  Not good.  We were diverted through baggage claim and back into the main terminal to wait for bus transportation to an alternate airport.  A quick check confirmed the Ryanair got caught by surprise and it was at least two hours before busses could arrive.

After the mess with the volcanic ash 18 months ago, Ryanair has become more attentive to European Regulation 261/2004(8)  - they even hand a copy to every passenger- and the deal is clear: U kunt de vlucht omboeken of restitutie vragen …er bestaat ook een mogelijkheid de vlucht om te boeken in de terminal.

Cool.  I jumped onto the Viggo Servicedesk to see if there was an alternate, and they swiftly booked me onto the 9:30 flight the next morning. 

No fees; no hassle – it was a whole new Ryanair experience.

I unwound the journey and got a good night’s sleep, printed my new boarding pass, and headed back north at 7 am.

and back into pea-soup fog.

There was no fighting it: I joined the refugees boarding waiting buses and headed to Dusseldorf – Weeze.  The local television station sent a camera crew to take pictures as we shivered in the fog.  It’s an hour-and-a-half journey to Germany, I dozed and listened to the back catalog of BBC4’s Analysis (iPlayer or download: seriously the best half-hour on radio if you want to understand contemporary social and economic issues).  They dumped us off of the buses and through security onto the planes within 30 minutes of arrival, I suspect there must have been folks left behind looking for food or duty-free gifts.

All in all, a delay of 18 hours and 20 euro additional train/bus expense.  But the new policy gives choices when the weather gets bad: no-fee refund or switch, take the bus when it suits, and expedited handling in Germany. 

‘Lots better than it’s been, but it may still be a better idea to take the train if temperatures are likely to drop during high humidity.

Traveling among the Dutch

I headed back to the US this week, business meetings, my daughter’s 21st birthday, the run-up to Thanksgiving.  For the most part, it went smoothly: neither the holiday nor the terror alerts in Germany caused a noticeable increase in crowds or delays at security.

I was hearing a lot of concerns about the new TSA screening procedures: either get cooked in the body scanner or groped in the body search. In my experience, the scanner is time consuming and embarrassing – I’ve found that being singled out and ‘assuming the position’  attracts a lot of curious stares (and I have been asked to complete a brief survey about the experience after the scan).  So, I planned to ‘opt out’ of the scanner and take my chances with the pat-down, but the opportunity never came.

Sorry, back to the Dutch.

I was taking a break in Detroit, a family chattering away next to me while I worked.  One leaned over to ask me a question, and the accent had a homey familiarity.  Turns out they were, indeed, from the Hague, headed to Las Vegas.

What surprised me was that I hadn’t noticed all of the Dutch being spoken prior to that moment: either I’m just wholly accustomed to it or I’ve grown way too good at tuning out people around me.  Once I knew they were Dutch, though, I was surprised how much easier they were to understand than people from Maastricht.  I hadn’t realized the difference, or how my ear was still more tuned to the Northern ‘Queen’s Dutch”. Blame the Nuns.

The next day, taking a taxi into the city, the driver’s card had a familiar ring as well.  Another Dutchman, this time from Roermond.  He had an interesting story: came from the Netherlands 15 years ago and became naturalized, but had to give up his Dutch passport in the process.  Now he wanted to re-activate his Dutch citizenship and re-emigrate.

We had a good conversation about the IND and various immigration attorneys, whether a step-parent conferred natural citizenship, whether he could retain his US naturalization.

It been unusual to meet a lot of Dutch along the road: they’ve been nice enough to compliment my accent and to speak slowly when I’m parsing their vocabulary.  Good practice for the return trip (we’ll see if I hit a scanner…).

The cost of connecting

Business travel is expensive.  My goals are to be on scene, on time, and not to inconvenience my clients. As a result,  there’s often little choice of dates, my hotel must be convenient to the site, and meals tend to be either very fast or very expensive.

So I’m always looking for ways to better anticipate and control my expenses.

I can generally keep airfares down by getting a general fix on dates and times with a big travel site, then call the airline to see what an agent can find.  For my present trip (LON-CHI-SEA-LON) Orbitz showed a $1200 fare, rising towards $1500 if I jiggled dates a day either way.: Delta’s agent got the cost down to $900 (via LHR-DTI-ORD-SLC-SEA-MSP-LHR…that’s my life in a nutshell).

A similar approach often works for hotels, checking the big sites for value priced rooms, then calling the hotel directly for deals.  If it’s not a chain, then I make a further check of Tripadvisor to make sure that there aren’t any terrible negatives.

So far, so good, but I discovered a tradeoff between hotel costs and transport costs that really hit home this week.

The St. Giles Hotel is dramatically lower priced than others near Heathrow, and has reasonable traveller reviews.  It is six miles from the airport, close enough.  The problem I didn’t anticipate  is that Heathrow is gigantic, so the hotel is actually around the far end of the airport, 12 miles from the terminals.  The Hotel Hoppa doesn’t run out there, so it was a £25 fare to catch a taxi, almost exactly erasing the savings on the hotel.

I asked the clerk how to get back to Heathrow more cheaply, and she suggested the bus, stopping just across the street and running every 15 minute.  It worked great: just slap the Oyster card and go.

A similar thing happened in Chicago.  O’Hare is also gigantic, and the Marriott Courtyard Wood Dale, while a dozen miles from the airport, is a long drive around the perimeter, adding up to a $37 taxi fare. (Irritatingly, that was half again as much as the $22 metered fare because Wood Dale is considered a ‘suburban’ destination).  The clerk suggested a cab with a fixed $23 fare at to get back to the airport, but it still cost $65 (each way!) to get into the city for my meetings.

These are astronomic cab fares, approaching $150 per round-trip. And, no, thee were no trains or alternatives: the airport is a huge object object cutting  me off from Chicago.

And when I added things up, the excess fares almost exactly balanced my $150 savings on the hotel.  I think that owners must take this into account, pricing the rooms to take account of the location .

In this case, the only sensible alternative would be to rent a car, although the savings are probably minimal.since the car+gas is probably also just over $100.

Overall, the cost of connecting is probably the biggest hidden cost in travel,, and one of the least predictable or controllable. It crops up when going from airports to cruise-ship docks, from convention hall to dinner spot, and from the RyanAir’s budget airfield to the city center.

So my suggestion is to realize that (particularly with airport hotels), overall cost is likely the same no matter where you stay: room cost is balanced by transport costs.  ‘Best idea may be to call the clerk and ask for the best connecting alternatives.