Cross Country Travel Report

I previously geeked out about traveling via Amtrak Acela, so here is my report on air travel to and from the Bay Area

I flew Virgin America on the way out from JFK; I chose them because they had the most reasonably priced one-way ticket out to the Bay Area during frequent flyer blackout dates {$250 one way, on December 27th. Grr.). Perlick’s wrote about his experiences flying them. It was a bit annoying to fly out of the international terminal, which was incredibly busy, and only had crap coffee available behind security.

During boarding, they put on mood lighting, and had some thumping bass techno playing in the background. It was pretty neat to see the ambiance of an airplane changed so much.


I suppose the big draw from VA is their Red entertainment system—a full audio/video/gaming entertainment on demand system, including a fairly large selection of movies (for $8 each). This was below my pain threshold—I finally got to see The Simpsons Movie on that flight.

However, I can’t say that the entertainment system will be a huge draw for me in the future. I have structured my carry on bag to keep me sane, entertained, and as comfortable as possible on a trip in a cramped seat in a pressurized aluminum tube at 30,000 feet. Earplugs, noise-cancelling headphones, iPod, computer, reading materials, ibuprofen. I’m pretty much set if I ever have to fly C-130 air. I feel some pity (but mostly gleeful schadenfreude) when I look at the next seat, and find somebody poring over Skymall Magazine for hours—”Man… you really didn’t put much thought into the ramifications of a five hour flight, did you? That’s pretty spectacularly bad planning, huh?”

Overall, I make my flight choices primarily on price and schedule, and then consider frequent flyer/loyalty programs as a secondary aspect. So I might fly on VA if it is convenient, but I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to do so.

On the way back, I flew Southwest SJC-RNO-MDW-MHT. Yeah, it’s the bus, but I got to burn a frequent flyer ticket and fly across the country for $5. As a business traveler, I have been at a considerable disadvantage previously when flying on Southwest, with their first-come-first-served boarding structure without assigned seats. By the time I straggled back from the jobsite or meeting, I often ended up arriving late enough to get stuck in C group… while the retirees who arrived three hours before the flight were at the front in A group.

Now, however, you can check in over the web, and boarding group is assigned then… so I set my alarm for 24 hours before flight time, pre-entered all my information into the browser, and BAM!!--grabbed it like sniping an auction on eBay. Enjoy C group, all you technophobes!


Heh… funny… just like how SnipeSwipe automated eBay sniping, it appears that third party websites now offer to automate this process a well—The barnacle websites charge $5.95 per flight to automatically log into your Southwest.com account at the moment boarding passes become available and secure you into Group A. (Southwest's no-assigned-seats policy divides passengers into A, B and C boarding groups on a first-come, first-served basis.) In case you’re curious, SWA’s logic behind no assigned seating is that people will board faster, and thus get the plane turned around faster.

Flying out of SJC was nice—a relatively small airport, similar to MHT.


After boarding, I quickly grabbed my favored window seat on the north side of the plane. Incidentally, I am sad to report that the reputed origin of the word posh (as an acronym for “port outboard, starboard home,” from Colonial British steamship travel from home to India) appears to be apocryphal. Flights were basically acceptable, although there was an hour delay getting out of MDW, because the ground baggage crews were short-staffed.

In case anyone has any interest, a table of airline seat pitches can be found here--interesting that JetBlue, Southwest, and USAirways have larger seat pitches. Although it makes little difference to someone of my height—I can stand up in the space under the luggage bins.

I’m now hanging out with Bird & Jen for the day in New Hampshire before heading home on Amtrak tomorrow morning.