As you may know, my mom works for Skywest, which is one of the small, regional airlines that flies United Express and Delta Connect. If you don't know anything about the airport business (like me) it is all rather confusing. There are all these small airlines (some with only a few planes) that contract to do flights for the big guys out of all the small airports like Rapid City and Aspen. So my mom works for one of these companies out of Denver. They do all of the United Express flights out of DIA- to places like Rapid City and Aspen . . . She is a gate agent and I think that she loves her job. She gets to talk to people all day and meet all sorts of different folks, which makes her happy. Occasionally (like with any job) things get tough, especially when there is a blizzard in Denver. But unlike her former profession (middle school math teacher) the stress only lasts for a few minutes or hours and the upset people get on planes and out of her hair- she doesn't have to take work home with her. Plus, the benefits are pretty good- as a United Express carrier, Skywest employees have United flight benefits, although with some restrictions (we'll get to that later). Since my mom started working for Skywest a few years ago my parents have been able to take a few good trips including a visit to me in Albania last year.
The biggest issue with employee flight benefits is that you have to fly standby or space available- basically, you don't know if you have a seat until usually a few minutes before the plane is ready to take off, since you can only get a seat if the flight is not sold out or people miss the plane. This can be stressful and sometimes on busy routes you can end up waiting for several flights until you get on. I have spent a night in an airport more than once because I didn't get on a flight. But usually, you eventually make it to your destination.
I'm telling you all this because when my mom decided to meet me in Norway, it was of course understood that we would fly back to America together on her passes. Since I am no longer her dependent (too old, :-( ) I can only fly on companion or "buddy" passes. These passes have some restrictions. First, I can only fly on United, where my mom and dad can fly on United plus several other airlines that they have agreements on. Second, since my mom works for Skywest, she is technically not a United employee and therefore is considered "other airline employee" even when flying on United. Third, there are occasionally embargoes and blackouts for unaccompanied companions and employees of other airlines.
Originally, we planned on flying to Frankfurt from Oslo since as the biggest United hub in Europe it has the most daily flights back to the US. I even bought a ticket to get to Germany. So much for my planning ahead, United placed an embargo on Frankfurt and several other cities for the month of August- exactly when we wanted to fly. I took the Frankfurt ticket as a loss and got a ticket to Amsterdam, the closest city not under the embargo.
We had no problem getting to Amsterdam- I had a ticket and my mom got on the same flight with plenty of seats. The flights didn't look good out of Amsterdam, but there was nothing to do but go and see what would happen. We didn't get on either flight out the first day. We got a hotel room for the night and went into town, ready to return to the airport in the morning and see if we would have better luck.
In the airport the next morning, we met the standby crew- nearly 40 people waiting to get on the two flights out. The flights were heavily oversold and with the embargo, everyone was trying to get out of Amsterdam. We had not met all these people the day before since when we arrived from Oslo we went directly to the gate- they were still all outside in the check-in area and they would only let people go through security if it seemed like they might get on the flight. It didn't look good. We were on the bottom half of the list (the list is arranged based on seniority) and some people higher than us had been waiting for several days. There was even one mother and son that had been there for nearly two weeks! We weighed our options- my mom needed to be at work on Friday (now Wednesday), a hotel room was $100 a night, plus food and other expenses- a ticket through Iceland was $1000 (cheapest last minute ticket available).
We were going to Iceland.
We were not the only people to have come up with this plan. It turned out that there were about 6 or 7 of the stand-by crew that were on our flight to New York and I think many more that ended up on the flight to Boston. We were lucky to get the tickets at all and really have to thank the lady at the Iceland Air desk in Amsterdam for her magic fingers that got my mom's ticket. We met our new friends at the gate and went to Reykjavik. Unfortunately, the layover was akwardly timed- 11 hours, but arriving in the middle of the night, so we didn't leave the airport. We found a quiet corner and slept a few hours- by the way, the Reykjavik airport is a great place to have a long layover; they have comfortable benches without armrests, they are not too busy, so there are no announcements late at night and pretty much you can sleep. We woke up to find the airport sacked in with fog, but no worries, our plane was a bit late, but not too bad. We got to New York and then had to work on how to get the rest of the way to Denver.
As we arrived in New York in the afternoon, our options were not very good for getting out. But I had planned ahead and called my good friends Will and Wendi (RPCVs Albania G11) who are now living near Columbia where Wendi is going to grad school. A new found benefit of service is that as people have returned to the States they have spread out to the far corners of this great country and now I have good friends to call on in almost every major city . . . So we headed to Harlem and crashed on the couch (and floor). In the morning we got up early and headed to LaGuardia where we tried again. Because of a canceled flight to Chicago (and it being a weekend) we weren't looking too good. After three flights, we started to look at out options. My mom could try to get on a flight with another company if they had space, but this was harder since she hadn't planned for this (how could you plan for this!) and she was supposed to buy travel vouchers ahead of time to fly on other airlines. We headed over to the other terminal to see what we could gather from Delta, JetBlue and Frontier. It looked like there were seats available on two flights to Denver on JetBlue (direct from JFK and one through Boston). I bought a full fare ticket on the direct flight and my mom got a stand-by voucher for the Boston flight (it had more seats open).
The biggest issue with employee flight benefits is that you have to fly standby or space available- basically, you don't know if you have a seat until usually a few minutes before the plane is ready to take off, since you can only get a seat if the flight is not sold out or people miss the plane. This can be stressful and sometimes on busy routes you can end up waiting for several flights until you get on. I have spent a night in an airport more than once because I didn't get on a flight. But usually, you eventually make it to your destination.
I'm telling you all this because when my mom decided to meet me in Norway, it was of course understood that we would fly back to America together on her passes. Since I am no longer her dependent (too old, :-( ) I can only fly on companion or "buddy" passes. These passes have some restrictions. First, I can only fly on United, where my mom and dad can fly on United plus several other airlines that they have agreements on. Second, since my mom works for Skywest, she is technically not a United employee and therefore is considered "other airline employee" even when flying on United. Third, there are occasionally embargoes and blackouts for unaccompanied companions and employees of other airlines.
Originally, we planned on flying to Frankfurt from Oslo since as the biggest United hub in Europe it has the most daily flights back to the US. I even bought a ticket to get to Germany. So much for my planning ahead, United placed an embargo on Frankfurt and several other cities for the month of August- exactly when we wanted to fly. I took the Frankfurt ticket as a loss and got a ticket to Amsterdam, the closest city not under the embargo.
We had no problem getting to Amsterdam- I had a ticket and my mom got on the same flight with plenty of seats. The flights didn't look good out of Amsterdam, but there was nothing to do but go and see what would happen. We didn't get on either flight out the first day. We got a hotel room for the night and went into town, ready to return to the airport in the morning and see if we would have better luck.
In the airport the next morning, we met the standby crew- nearly 40 people waiting to get on the two flights out. The flights were heavily oversold and with the embargo, everyone was trying to get out of Amsterdam. We had not met all these people the day before since when we arrived from Oslo we went directly to the gate- they were still all outside in the check-in area and they would only let people go through security if it seemed like they might get on the flight. It didn't look good. We were on the bottom half of the list (the list is arranged based on seniority) and some people higher than us had been waiting for several days. There was even one mother and son that had been there for nearly two weeks! We weighed our options- my mom needed to be at work on Friday (now Wednesday), a hotel room was $100 a night, plus food and other expenses- a ticket through Iceland was $1000 (cheapest last minute ticket available).
We were going to Iceland.
We were not the only people to have come up with this plan. It turned out that there were about 6 or 7 of the stand-by crew that were on our flight to New York and I think many more that ended up on the flight to Boston. We were lucky to get the tickets at all and really have to thank the lady at the Iceland Air desk in Amsterdam for her magic fingers that got my mom's ticket. We met our new friends at the gate and went to Reykjavik. Unfortunately, the layover was akwardly timed- 11 hours, but arriving in the middle of the night, so we didn't leave the airport. We found a quiet corner and slept a few hours- by the way, the Reykjavik airport is a great place to have a long layover; they have comfortable benches without armrests, they are not too busy, so there are no announcements late at night and pretty much you can sleep. We woke up to find the airport sacked in with fog, but no worries, our plane was a bit late, but not too bad. We got to New York and then had to work on how to get the rest of the way to Denver.
As we arrived in New York in the afternoon, our options were not very good for getting out. But I had planned ahead and called my good friends Will and Wendi (RPCVs Albania G11) who are now living near Columbia where Wendi is going to grad school. A new found benefit of service is that as people have returned to the States they have spread out to the far corners of this great country and now I have good friends to call on in almost every major city . . . So we headed to Harlem and crashed on the couch (and floor). In the morning we got up early and headed to LaGuardia where we tried again. Because of a canceled flight to Chicago (and it being a weekend) we weren't looking too good. After three flights, we started to look at out options. My mom could try to get on a flight with another company if they had space, but this was harder since she hadn't planned for this (how could you plan for this!) and she was supposed to buy travel vouchers ahead of time to fly on other airlines. We headed over to the other terminal to see what we could gather from Delta, JetBlue and Frontier. It looked like there were seats available on two flights to Denver on JetBlue (direct from JFK and one through Boston). I bought a full fare ticket on the direct flight and my mom got a stand-by voucher for the Boston flight (it had more seats open).
We got home.
Denver at last.
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