Spokane to Seattle; The Long Way
A lot of people think I’m nuts. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m crazy like a fox. My weekend was spent flying between Spokane, Washington and Seattle, Washington. Doesn’t sound crazy right? What’s crazy is that what should have been an hour flight on a lawnmower with wings was really a bunch of flights taking me from Spokane to Denver to San Francisco and finally to Seattle. Yeah, I guess I am crazy. That is, until I tell you it cost me $44 before taxes. See, crazy like a fox. The route looked something like below.
All told, I flew around 7,000 miles and rounded out my mileage balance on Continental Airlines. Why? A good friend and I stumbled across the fare a while back and decided it was too good of a deal to pass up. At first I bought a few of them, but ended up only keeping one, figuring I didn’t really have the time or energy to do a bunch of these back to back. The only hiccup in the whole trip was on our positioning flight to Spokane from San Francisco. The plane had a maintenance issue and was delayed, getting us into Spokane a little later than we had originally planned.
What did I do on the flights? Watched some television shows I had stored on my iPhone, caught up on a bunch of reading, wrote a little, and talked to other passengers. Flying is relaxing to me, so I actually got a little bit of rest as well. It was a fun trip that transited a lot of airports and got me the miles I wanted at a price point that is very, very reasonable. I guess I am better at “mileage running” than the guy in this video.
Well Stephan, you are a little nuts.
How many TSA pat downs did you get?
I remember the first time I had to fly from Houston to Spokane for a work assignment (the first of about a dozen trips I took to Spokane over the next 2 years).
The only flight we could get on short notice had 2 plane changes and 2 extra stops.
Houston to Pheonix, change planes.
Then to Vegas, change planes and 2 hour layover.
Then a single “lawnmower” to Spokane with a stop in Reno and some small city near a nuke plant in Washington.
Don’t remember which airline it was.
Afterwards we started doing flights that had just one change – Salt Lake City. I got to like that airport as my changeover/meal location.
Thanks for the comment Brian!
Actually, no pat downs. Number of passengers at IAH was really light and the full body scanner wasn’t being used. At Spokane they had a backscatter and a metal detector in use. One line for each. I chose the line with the metal detector and was through in five minutes.
Your trip to Spokane sounds like it was, um, interesting.