Travel Benefits

[Eric Bohn]

How are the travel benefits where you're at? What I'm specifically interested in is how much would you spend out of pocket and what's the likelihood of the below trips working out on time and as planned (leaving weather out of the picture). MSP would be a good base to start from, but anything works just to get a feel for things as I'm not currently in the airline world. These trips would include one other person and I don't imagine we'd be sleeping at the airport at our destination, so we'd need hotel, car, etc.

- Hawaii
- Paris, France
- Sydney, Australia
- San Francisco

 

[BobDDuck]

How are the travel benefits where you're at? What I'm specifically interested in is how much would you spend out of pocket and what's the likelihood of the below trips working out on time and as planned (leaving weather out of the picture). MSP would be a good base to start from, but anything works just to get a feel for things as I'm not currently in the airline world. These trips would include one other person and I don't imagine we'd be sleeping at the airport at our destination, so we'd need hotel, car, etc.

- Hawaii
- Paris, France
- Sydney, Australia
- San Francisco

It varies tremendously by airline, as you probably are aware. If you can non rev on your own carrier it will (probably) be cheaper than using a zed fare on another carrier. As far as the likelihood of them working out as planned... probably low, especially if you are a) not able to use a jumpseat and b) there are two of you. That of course depends on the time of year, the destination (and weather as you said). In general, when you non rev you need a bunch of backup plans, which makes it difficult to forecast costs.

Looking at your list of destinations... SFO is pretty easy from MSP as there are direct flights (if you have travel benefits on Delta). If you don't get on, you just go home and you aren't stuck anywhere. Of course if you get there and then can't get back the costs can add up in hotel rooms, food and possibly having to just buy a ticket eventually.

The other destinations are going to be tougher. Hawaii is always tough, although at certain times of the year there can be lots of seats. Sydney is also hard as there are a limited number of flights and they can become weight restricted and leave with lots of empty seats. Europe isn't so bad, most of the time as long as you are flexible as far as where you fly from and to.