Crossing the Big Pond

Time for a new post here.  I'm off on a new trip, and the only hint I'm giving you is that I'm heading east across the Atlantic!  More details later.

I want to start with a helpful hint for those who belong to Aeroplan.  Earn points any way you can, but save them until you have enough for a long flight.  Then go Business Class.  Here's why.

Few people I know ever fly on a full fare economy class ticket.  But if you look at the prices on a website, you'll soon see that a full fare economy (Y) class ticket costs only about 20% less than a full fare Business Class ticket.  Well, guess what -- the points table works the same way.  So my take on it is that you definitely would rather fly Business Class on a long-haul flight when you're going to be in the air for 6 hours or more.  That's when the extra elbow room, leg room, privacy and service really come in handy.  If you only need 20% more points for a Business Class reward ticket, there's no reason not to keep saving that bit longer!

The gimmick in this is that you have to be able to lock yourself in way ahead of time because lots of other people have figured this out too.  I usually reserve a long-haul Business Class reward ticket almost a year ahead of time, as soon as seats are available.  Business Class free seats go fast on popular overseas routes.  And I planned this trip on short notice, which is why I am flying Y-class on a paid ticket this time.

Enter the other trick.  For a fee which varies depending on length of flight, you can reserve a premium economy seat with extra legroom.  On the aircraft I'm flying on, I actually booked a seat in an exit row.  Because the exits on a Boeing 777 are full-sized doors, the row of seats ahead has been left out altogether.  Talk about extra legroom -- even in Business Class there wouldn't be that much space in front of me!

One of the curses of long-distance travel going east or west is jetlag.  I find the effects of jetlag are greatly multiplied if I can't sleep on the plane (and usually I can't, for whatever reason).  So here's the next secret: take a daylight flight.  Due to the time difference of 5-8 hours (depending on destination) it makes much more sense to have the aircraft airborne through the night on the eastbound leg, and returning west in daylight.  But every morning, a few flights leave eastern North America in the morning, arriving in a European destination in the mid to late evening.  And that's how I do it.  I get the time switch over with, get into my hotel, get a late snack and a drink or two in the bar and go to bed about 2:00 am European time.  Wake up about 6 hours later, and I'm fully in sync and ready to go.  A nap later that day and I'm completely set.  When I do the more common red-eye, the jetlag can easily last three or four days!

The bad news is that I always find the jetlag harder to work through on the westbound leg of a trip.  But it's definitely too soon to be worrying about that problem!