My red-eye flight put me into Detroit at around 5am, my flight to Fort Lauderdale was at 7am. I was in FLL
by 11am. This time I got an all day bus pass which was $2.50, FLL isn't like San Diego where the airport
is actually walking distance to downtown and the beach. Sure, I was VERY tired from walking about 8 miles in SD,
and not really sleeping on any of my flights, but what the heck, time to do more walking after a bus assists me to
the beach :-)
Ummm, I don't really have much to say about Fort Lauderdale. It's your typical East coast beach city. There's
water, sand, jelly fish, cars, air, trees, and acceptance of US currency like any other place. Now I know, Miami
is where you want to go instead.
Back in Detroit I was waiting for my 5 something pm flight to PHL, unfortunately there was a lot of fog which
grounded flights... so that 5 flight turned into a 8 flight. We then boarded, and were ready to go but again we
were delayed. We sat on the tarmac until about 10pm, then went back to the gate to refuel, once at the gate
they cancelled the flight. It was amazing how pissed off people got, they thought the airline had something to do
with it. The F bomb was dropped so much, I thought I was in high school again... and this was in first class!
When I got to the counter for rebooking, I was already rebooked with a confirmed seat, had a hotel paid for by Northwest,
and a meal voucher. Usually people are screwed if a flight is canceled due to weather, as we've seen by watching
"Airline". Yet another advantage of not flying a LCC, and maintaining elite status with the airline.
I would have went downtown and explored, but downtown Detroit at night would probably end with me being shot.
The next morning I went back to the airport, and flew home.
Total cost: Bus pass in FLL - $2.50
My plane ticket for this whole trip was $256.59 + expenses in the cities at $6.75 = $263.34.
Who says a few day trips coast to coast has to be expensive?
Lets do some math to really make things more attractive:
What is the cash value of airline miles?
Award tickets using miles can usually be done last minute, and you can book thousand dollar last minute tickets
for 25000 miles. I'll take an average price found on eBay of $350. $350 / 25000 = $.014 per mile
$.014 * 7765 (miles on this trip) = $109.71
$263.34 - $109.71 = $153.63 for the trip, assuming the eventual use of an award ticket.
Being gold elite I get a 100% mileage bonus, meaning my total banked miles are 15530... lets factor that in:
$263.34 - ($109.71*2) = $43.92
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