My Dad, being a former employee of a large airline, gets travel pass privileges. They come with a double caveat, though: you must dress up while flying, and you must fly standby space available status. For those who don't know what SSAS is, it means that you have to wait until all the ticketed passengers are on board before you can hope to get a seat. Sometimes this works amazingly well, especially if the grumbling airline has "no choice" but to place you in business or first class, where all the empties are. But more often than not, flying SSAS means getting bad seats or, worse, getting bumped.
The latter happened to my parents tonight. They're stuck in Tokyo/Narita, and they have to find a place to stay for the evening. It appears the final leg of the journey, from Narita to Incheon, was fully booked, and all the passengers showed up to claim their seats. Here's hoping Mom and Dad can actually leave Japan tomorrow.
My brother David, who's too old to get pass privileges and is therefore flying in separately on a normal ticket, will be arriving tomorrow evening. It'll be cool to see the family all together at once. Keep your tentacles crossed in the hopes that the 'rents don't get bumped a second time.
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Tuesday, October 04, 2005
curse you, standby space available!
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Heh. Sounds a lot like the Air Force Space-A system which we used quite a bit while we were on Okinawa to fly over here. You sign up with tem, then show up at the terminal whenever there's a flight and hope for a seat. Of course, there are different levels of priority and people on ordinary leave (like we were) are towards the middle whereas retiress are on the bottom of the foodchain. Some days we got out on the first flight, and other days we'd have to come back several times till we were finally able to make it out.
ReplyDeleteBeing able to see the entire family - now that rocks.
LOL, next time I'll type slower and/or check my post before hitting publish.
ReplyDeletetem = them and retiress = retirees