I used to travel a lot. I’ve been cutting back because I’ve increasingly come to hate it, but today I just got a double fistful of new hatred.
Mostly, I use online booking services like Expedia and Travelocity (mostly Expedia) because they do a pretty good job of offering you up options that are convenient for you, sorted by price. Now, however, it appears that they’re changing their algorithms to offer you up options that are convenient for the airlines and the traveler is offered a discount based on how inconvenient it is for them. When I went to book my tickets for Stuttgart, I had a couple routings that were offered at $2,500 round trip, and one (SAS, via Copenhagen) that was $1,500 and looked OK.
Well, that is, it looked OK on the outbound. My fault, apparently, for not going over the routing with a fine-toothed comb and looking more closely at the return flight.
Sometimes your bookings will look like this:
OK, yeah, that’s a red-eye flight. It’s nice to have the visual reminder that my arrival will be the next day. Thank you.
But how did this one come without any visual warning?
It seems that, “well, since the flight is not the reason you get there the next day, we’re not going to emphasize that you have nearly a full-day layover.
I book lots of flights and I usually have done pretty well with the recommended layovers from Expedia, but I would not have taken the “See Beautiful Copenhagen Airport By Night” rate if I had realized that a day of my life was going to get hard-flushed down the tubes. I’ve had days of my life a’plenty get flushed down the toilet of corporate convenience, but, damn, I feel like that was sneaky. If they’re offering me what appears to be a normal fare but is actually a discounted fare based on a miserable connection, I’d like to know what the difference was.
Now I have to get more cynical and skeptical and read these things much more carefully. Expedia is not on my side and I was probably stupid to not realize that all along.
Time to make lemonade. At least this will give me plenty of Executive Time to write the presentation for next week in Luxembourg, and I can get some writing and gaming done (which may as well be anywhere) – so, it could be worse. The last “layover from hell” I had was when I missed a flight due to security and United said they couldn’t get me on a connection until 32 hours later – so I camped at the Goethe Bar in Frankfurt Airport for nearly 2 full days.
And then there was the time, back when I had an “executive assistant” and they scheduled me with 45 minutes to make a connection through London/Heathrow airport. (Anyone who knows Heathrow will be laughing grimly as they read that) As it happened I got there and my connection was delayed by a half an hour and I was able to make it by setting a land speed record for moving belt broken running. Me and OJ.
I used to find the glamorous life of the high tech exec to be exciting. Now, it’s just annoying. I want to become a hermit and live in my forge making sharp stabby things that I will never, ever, be able to carry on an airplane and I won’t have to.
Update: my flight to Copenhagen is apparently delayed by an hour. With my 18 hour layover, I think I will still make my connection.
Update 2: A nice Swedish gentleman “guested” me into the gold card club, so I got to hang out someplace really comfy (with tea and cookies) until they chased me out when they closed at midnight.
My own attitude is entirely different from yours. I always pay attention to what I’m buying. I would go over the routing with a fine-toothed comb even when buying a train ticket let alone airplane tickets. The “18h 35m stop Copenhagen” is clearly visible, and I would never have missed something like that. My default attitude is that a significant portion of sellers out there want to screw me, therefore it’s always my duty to carefully examine whatever I’m about to buy. Thus, if I fail to notice the razor blade hidden within some offer, then I perceive that as my own fault. After all, bad offers are all over the place. If I didn’t read the fine print before buying something, I’d end up with ice cream made out of palm oil, clothes made out of polyester instead of better fabrics, or a shitty airplane connection.
In general, I just never trust anybody or anything. Instead I pay close attention to what I do and choose to take calculated risks.
Might give flights.google.com a try. It aggregates across all the various booking services, including the airlines, and has some pretty good search capabilities like being able to set a max flight duration. That generally excludes crazy flights like the one you found.
Marcus wrote:
This post reads as an experienced player owning up to a rookie mistake.
I’ve made them myself – my best one being realising one day before I depart that my passport will expire during the middle of my trip. I had just enough time to fix it before I left, but that was a day wasted that was my own fault.
Re Gold Club: That was nice of the Swedish gentleman!
What a nice Swede. I hope you got some productive writing in and enjoyed the gaming.
Making sharp stabby things would be good, but being a hermit? I am nearly one and I don’t think it’s good for most of us, though I am actually reasonably happy not seeing most other people most of the time.
Oh, is it Worst Layover story time? It is now. Mine was at DFW, on my way home from the beamline at Texas A&M. There was a lot of rain and a 30% shortage of air traffic controllers. 2007, I think. Flight delayed. Flight further delayed. Flight canceled. Spend 3 hours running from gate to gate trying to get a standby flight home. Even though I had taken a shuttle to the airport, which meant I had all three options of IAD, DCA, or BWI, there was nothing left. Okay, fine, look for a hotel. Hah! No such thing nearby. Oh look, some people have cots. Where are those coming from? Over here, okay, I’ll wait in line. “Hey man, this line sure is slow.” “Yeah, I think there’s only one guy up there cutting open the cartons and handing them out.” “Let’s see if he wants any help when we get to the front of the line.” (He did. And we did, until they were all gone other than the two we saved for ourselves.)
Let’s see, this leaves about 3 hours to sleep at most, before I better get up and hit the standby lines again. (Also, due to someone else’s screwup, we had missed the first 4 hours of our beam time, but “fortunately” the next slot was available, so we just stayed up all night testing our chip. So I was already running on 1 hour sleep in the previous 30.) Not the greatest situation. But. Could it be worse? Oh yes it could. Unlike the people on the news, I wasn’t waiting on the roof of my house for a helicopter or boat to come rescue me. (Did I mention there had been a lot of rain?) Not gonna get much sleep, but hey, I’ll take it!
(I got on a flight the next morning, poured myself into a cab for a $60 ride and sent the bill to the government. I don’t know how things turned out for the flood victims. Not well, I bet.)
This post reads as an experienced player owning up to a rookie mistake.
Yup. I came to rely on Expedia making recommendations that were generally good for me. The underlying choice basis changed and, as Ieva says, if I were as cynical as she is, I’d have caught it. Next time I will.
Not traveling so much will be good. Besides – carbon footprint jet fuel something something, but mostly it’s just miserable.
The airlines have also started offering rates in which you get no leg room, no checked luggage, and air costs $50. That set of tricks – parting out the services – I caught immediately. All it did was make me hate the airlines more. I’m always amused when the airlines pretend they think we are loyal customers when they know most frequent fliers would dance on their graves.
Wait, you’re going to Luxembourg next week but flying back to the US now? Are you sure you don’t enjoy suffering the comforts of air travel? I had the impression your schedule was more or less yours to do with as please. If so, were I in that enviable position, I’d much rather spend an extra week in Europe than go back and forth across the Atlantic twice in a row. (Although given that US place names are seem to have been ripped off from all over the place maybe you’re talking about a Luxembourg, Tennessee. Or Texas. Or both.)
I’m also baffled (or, more accurately: annoyed*) by the supposed need for (most) business trips. These days we can set up live press conferences between multiple space centres across the globe and an orbital station circling it every 90 minutes. Yet somehow for non-space-conferences everyone is still being carted to and fro to listen to presentations and discussions in person, while the companies that sent them gripe about how expensive everything is.
Personally I’d be happily skip the misery of extremely early mornings, the wasted travel time and the uncomfortable hotels in favour of a cheap, eco-friendly conference call or webinar attended from my office. Somehow getting the odd hour in [interesting location] after an exhausting day (and sundown) just doesn’t make up for all the downsides.
*I’m currently being forcibly introduced to the concept of business trips. Fun, in the Dwarf Fortress sense, if that’s familiar…
I’m just outright terrified by any confluence of events capable of making Marcus even more cynical…
abbeycadabra@#8:
I’m just outright terrified by any confluence of events capable of making Marcus even more cynical…
As long as I am less cynical than Ieva I think I am doing OK.
How about a week long layover in Manilla in 1983.
I was scheduled to depart one August day after doing some service engineering at Subic Bay. Unfortunately Aquino got himself assassinated before my departure. This led to my ticket being cancelled and rebooked several times each day while all the $$$ bribed their way into my (and many others) seat. And it was tense enough that holing up in the hotel seemed the best option. If you don’t know the story of this event, start with the alleged assassin being shot multiple times on the tarmac with nary a drop of blood exiting his body. Seems he was a cold corpse brought and thrown there to cover the real shooter. Just another day in paradise.
Not my layover but I remember reading a paper where in the acknowledgements the second author thanked the US Gov’t for the one month “layover before she (Green Card) was able to get back to her US university after 9/11. She said it gave her time to develop the ideas in the paper.
Marcus, have you considered using a travel agent? I would think that they would be good at spotting things like this, and keeping up with the changes in pricing systems that cause the sorts of problems that you encountered.
I personally tend to use them for most of my (very limited amount of) travel because I feel the time it would take me to learn to use the various online systems to find good itineraries and prices skillfully enough myself would end up more than eating up any savings I might make by not paying their commission.
Some people dream of traveling when they retire. Some people dream of making sharp stabby things.
komarov@#7:
Wait, you’re going to Luxembourg next week but flying back to the US now? Are you sure you don’t enjoy suffering the comforts of air travel? I had the impression your schedule was more or less yours to do with as please. If so, were I in that enviable position, I’d much rather spend an extra week in Europe than go back and forth across the Atlantic twice in a row.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. In principle my life is mine to dispose of but in practice, it’d tough when I have one client book me to speak 5 months ahead, and the other a month and a half. I can’t be sure how to schedule my travel or when to book it and when one client is reimbursing for travel expenses and the other is paying me a flat amount and I’m taking my travel costs from that, it gets tricky to figure out what my expense report looks like. It’s easier to compartment the problem so I deal with one thing at a time. Granted, I suppose I could have been wandering museums in Paris for two days but between hotels and my tendency to stuff my face with great food, I’d have wound up in the red.
I’m also baffled (or, more accurately: annoyed*) by the supposed need for (most) business trips. These days we can set up live press conferences between multiple space centres across the globe and an orbital station circling it every 90 minutes. Yet somehow for non-space-conferences everyone is still being carted to and fro to listen to presentations and discussions in person, while the companies that sent them gripe about how expensive everything is.
Especially since the second conference is about satellite communications. :) Mostly, what I am doing is conference speaking (I’m the afternoon keynote at govsatcom) which really benefits from rubbing shoulders with people. For stuff that can be handled point-to-point that’s great.
The incident response I did in September was all remote, which was a first. The “meetings” were conference calls and all the data I worked on was in AWS. It was nice to be able to just focus on the work and not worry about whether or not I had forgotten my pants. [When I first started doing public speaking I had stress-nightmares that I’d be up on stage talking, look down, and realize I was not wearing my pants. Of all the things I am likely to forget, that’s not one of them!]
Curt Sampson, @12: I tried using a travel agent for a recent 3-hop trip to the other side of the world (and back), on the basis of a personal recommendation. The options she offered me were clearly much worse than I could easily find in a few minutes on the first online comparison site I tried.
Sure, maybe there are better travel agents out there, but you might want to consider reassessing your assumption. I suspect most of them are actually terrible and only survive because of people who don’t even look at the competition…
voyager@#13:
Some people dream of traveling when they retire. Some people dream of making sharp stabby things.
And not traveling! One of the great things about being a bladesmith in the middle of nowhere is that pretty much everything comes to you: my propane is delivered and the post office is a mile from my shop. They love me because I keep bringing chunks of railroad track in flat rate boxes (Did you know you can ship a foot of railroad track anywhere in the US for $13?!)
I’ve been everywhere and now mostly I just want to be home.
Curt Sampson@#12:
Marcus, have you considered using a travel agent? I would think that they would be good at spotting things like this, and keeping up with the changes in pricing systems that cause the sorts of problems that you encountered.
I used to, and it was great until I got so busy that I started having to juggle weird 3- and 4-legged trips and expense reports. If your schedule has good long-term visibility a travel agent is great; in 2007-11 it all fell apart for me because I wound up doing a gnarly series of incident responses back-to-back and my travel got very weird indeed.
I feel like I was just complaining. Generally, travel has not been too bad. It’s a probability thing – you’ll have a certain number of flights go bad – and you just have to deal with it. In 1998 I flew 400,000 miles in one year (a lot of crazy connections like Baltimore->La->Boston->Singapore->Baltimore, home for a couple days then off to Hong Kong…) I’ve had a few notable meltdowns but that’s why they are “notable.”
I reduce travel induced stress by carefully preparing, choosing a schedule that gives me lots of extra time in case something goes wrong, planning for backup options for transportation and accommodation, using a written checklist to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, carrying extra spare cash in case something goes wrong, etc. Thus I’m usually not nervous. The probability of things going wrong is small, so why worry about it before anything bad has happened. My mindset is that I’ll just deal with problems as they unfold in the unlikely event of shit happening.
I deal with public speaking similarly. I think about what I’ll say and do, I plan, and prepare. Usually I don’t prepare very thoroughly, but that’s only because I’m a good public speaker, and I can improvise. Some years ago I used to write my speeches, nowadays I see writing speeches as overkill and a waste of time. I actually feel a little nervous shortly before making a public speech. For me this sensation usually disappears a few seconds after I have started my speech. I’m not sure why it happens like this, but waiting to take the stage makes me anxious while actually speaking calms me down. In general, I really enjoy making public speeches, for me that’s a form of thrill-seeking.
They say that people often desire whatever they don’t have. I have been at home often enough, my job leaves no room for traveling. Therefore I enjoy getting away from home, I desire to be anywhere else except for home. Being at home seems boring for me, and I like traveling for fun.
[maximised sarcasm]Yes, it’s terrible, isn’t it, when you go on holiday and, somehow, end up with less money afterwards than you had before…[/maximised sarcasm]
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Ieva, if preparation actually works for you then I shall have to envy you (or add it to the list of enviable things). Sometimes I sit in a train/bus/… and have to get my itinerary out to check if I’m still in the right place – every ten minutes. (Of course the one time the right train decided to become the wrong one I didn’t realise because I couldn’t understand the announcement). I once missed a train because I joked with someone that maybe I left the stove on – and then had to go home and actually check. The general lack of a flaming inferno I found was, on some level, mildly disappointing. All that back and forth for nothing.
komarov @#19
I never feel a need to do this. If I know where exactly I am, I know where I’m going, I know that I’m on time, and I also know for how long I will have to sit in the train/bus, then I don’t feel the urge to frequently check what’s going on. This is also why I make detailed plans and use checklists—if I already checked once that I haven’t forgotten anything, then I feel no urge to check again.