Last week and the week before I was on Campus in Redmond for some Windows Embedded CE related work. This week I have to be in Las Vegas for Mobile Connections. You probably think the obvious way to go from Seattle to Las Vegas is by simply flying on a direct flight. Well, not for me this time. Unfortunately I already had flight reservations from Amsterdam to Las Vegas when the flight to Seattle needed to be booked. Any person not completely out of his / her mind would probably try to change the original flight, making it a 3 way flight, Amsterdam, Seattle, Las Vegas, Amsterdam. Unfortunately here I am dealing with an airline. When trying to change my original reservation the first thing I heard is that my ticket was not changeable and when cancelling the original ticket I would not get reimbursed. This flight costs approximately € 600. When I tried to make a new reservation from Amsterdam to Seattle, then onwards to Las Vegas and back to Amsterdam that was surely possible, for around € 2000. However, a return flight from Amsterdam to Seattle ran for only around €900. A bit more expensive than the flight from Amsterdam to Vegas, but this reservation had to be made within 21 days from departure, automatically increasing the price of the ticket. However, this is still a much better deal than changing my original flight. Total flight price for wasting 22 hours flying from Amsterdam to Seattle and for wasting another 26 hours flying from Amsterdam to Las Vegas via Paris and Los Angeles is only € 1500. Total flight price for a flight from Amsterdam to Seattle and onwards to Las Vegas before returning back to Amsterdam, total flight time around 24 hours would be around € 2000. Would it really be cheaper for the airline to have me onboard for a total of 48 hours compared to a possible 24 hours? Looking at the price difference you almost think that is the case. I guess I simply don’t understand airlines. So here is how I am spending my weekend. I just arrived back home from Seattle, leaving tomorrow morning early to go to Las Vegas. All in all I left the USA for around 30 hours before reentering. That will be the last interesting part of this flying weekend. How will I explain this to customs and immigration when reentering the USA. Hopefully they know something about airline logic as well. After all, this is not a story I am coming up with. My fantasy would not be sufficient to think about this scenario. This is a real-life example. No wonder some of the airlines are struggling. To make things even worse, I probably earn enough miles with this flying nightmare to get either a free upgrade on my next flight or maybe even a whole free flight all together.

Maarten Struys