facejournal and sleep

[jazzfish]

cleolinda explains just what the heck is going on with LJ and Facebook and Twitter: basically, LJ's owners figure the number of people coming onboard LJ through Facebook and Twitter will outweigh the number of people fleeing to other sites such as Dreamwidth. And the fleeing users were the ones who were disabling all the useful (for advertising) privacy-invasive features anyway, so they won't be much missed.

(There's also a side trip through the creepiness of Facebook's new "Stalk this person" feature. Which just ick no. I anticipate that by this time next year I'll have done what I can to purge my Facebook account as well.)

---

Still tired. Still writing up Key West (it was awesome). Likely to go home and faceplant for eight hours and wake up around two in the morning. Sleeping on planes works better when you can lean back in your seat, and when the guy next to you doesn't insist on trying to ram his elbow into your ribs, and when the flight doesn't arrive 45 minutes early thus shorting you out of three-quarters of an hour of uneasy but still much missed sleep. Bleh.

(Lessons learned: first, stay the hell away from Airtran. Second, with transit costs BWI may not actually be all that much cheaper than National. Third, do not rely on transit to get home from BWI.)

Comments

[jazzfish]

Partly their 'assign seats at checkin,' because I have a strong preference for window seats. Partly their horrid 'checkin at airport' setup, because I have a strong preference for not checking in to a flight until I'm actually there (preprinted boarding pass is one more thing to leave behind by accident). Partly their habit of not giving me the can of Coke when they give me a drink: yeah, I can probably ask for it, but, seriously, people? It's all minor annoyances, and rbandrews may be right when he says that first class is better, but I'm not willing to pay for first class. (At least I don't think I am; I've never checked to see what the price difference actually is._

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

For future reference it counts as "checked in" if you check in 23.5 hrs ahead and then don't print until you get to the airport.

[jazzfish]

Hm. That still requires wading through their line of customer "service," which was only "kind of bad" at BWI and "awful" at SeaTac, because they have no automatic checkin machines. At least, not in those places, at least not that were functional.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

yeah, but especially if you're not checking bags it's not nearly so bad as what happened to me, where 40 min before my flight it turned out they had given my seat away for not yet checking in. (you can pay extra to reserve your seat ahead of time and not be vulnerable to that.)

Also, you may well have managed to keep track of the printout, by, say, putting it in your wallet?

[jazzfish]

*blink* Ick ick ick. Honestly, I think the main reason I don't check in ahead of time is inertia: it's not part of my travel routine and I am nothing if not a Creature of Habit. That's enough of a horror story that I may start checking in beforehand.

... you can /pay extra/ to have them not give your seat away? Yeesh. That's skeezy even by airline standards.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Technically you're supposed to check in 45 min ahead. by the time i found my way to figure out how to check in without bags but at the airport it was less than 45 min.

I don't actually know that it would have made a difference to reserve the seat, but you /can/ pay extra to have 12A instead of choosing what's left at checkin time.

[tango.livejournal.com]

Picking seats in advance has always been an option for me, but at the moment I can't remember if that was through their website or Travelocity.

I'm not sure if booking as first class is worth the cost, but I've found the $50 at-the-gate upgrade to be worth it - just be warned that it's per leg. If you have a layover, 1st class might not be available the entire trip. Even if it is, it's $50 per hop.

As for handing the can of soda over, does any airline do that without being asked? I've only flown on Southwest, Delta, and AirTran recently, and only once each on the first two.

[jazzfish]

Orbitz wouldn't do it this time and I tend to book through Orbitz for convenience. I don't think they've let me pick seats for AirTran in the past either. Hrm.

$50 might be worth it when I'm trying to sleep through the redeye back from the west coast; otherwise, meh.

As for "Would you like the cancer[1]," USAir (I think?) did for the flight to and from Miami, and I think United does as well, and I tend to fly United a lot.

[1] "The can, sir? Would you like it?" See "Up In The Air" if you haven't yet.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

why is orbitz more convenient?

[jazzfish]

Because it's where I'm searching for tickets to start with, and there's no price difference so I'm too lazy to navigate a different site's search engine for what may or not provide me with the same cheap and well-timed ticket I just found.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Minor tangent. Andy S. alerted me to this movie. LOVE IT!

[jameshroberts.livejournal.com]

I've stopped using ExpediOrbiTravelocity to actually book tickets. I use them to search, but I always book through the airline itself.

The last time I booked through a service, the airline canceled the flight I'd chosen and rebooked me on another set of flights. But (we'll say) Orbitz also noticed the cancellation and then "helpfully" changed my itinerary again. This time with an extra plane change. There were, however, much better itineraries available, but Orbitz wouldn't give me that without charging a change fee. I had to call up the airline to switch to it. Orbitz then switched it _back_ to the bad itinerary, and I had to get it fixed again. I finally got them to explain _why_ they kept giving me the weird flight plan. They said this was the only way to ensure that I'd still be going through Salt Lake City. It took a surprising amount of effort to explain that I didn't give a good goddamn which airport I changed planes at; I really only cared about the origin and destination.

It worked out and everyone was _trying_ to be helpful, even if they failed. The real problem is the booking agency and the airline not communicating and overriding each other. By booking with the airline, I reduced the number of people that can screw things up.

I've also had issues with my employer's travel agent (whom we're required to use for business travel). They booked my flight twice last year and canceled the duplicate ticket. However, they wouldn't refund the extra payment, and gave me an unusable credit on the airline. Our travel office eventually ate the cost and reimbursed me, but I'm sure we wasted more money in staff hours sorting this out than the ticket was worth.

[jazzfish]

... wow. That's an impressive level of helpfulness fail.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I have friends who booked through orbitzthingie and when their flight was canceled they didn't hear about it. screwed up their honeymoon.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Some airlines will sell unused first class inventory at the gate for anywhere between $25 and $200 (depending on the airline and the length of the segment to be flown), but they also give free upgrades to elites so unused inventory can be rare. I don't know about Airtran's policies.

Honestly, it's nice but I can live in coach too. I'm making a mileage run in a couple of weeks to get myself some transatlantic upgrades, so I guess you could say I'm willing to pay for business class at least, but domestic, as long as I manage a window I'm good. I am, however, long past the point where I know any tricks that don't involve "because you flew last year enough to get status, you have fewer problems in the air this year"...