Non-rev/Buddy Pass flyers beware! RANT

[Anonymous]

Oh, I'm so frustrated right now, I hope I can make this make sense! I'm mostly just Bit&^#ing right now but I'll try to convey my lessons learned too.

We live halfway across the country from my whole family. We decided to use our Buddy Passes to bring first my neice then my nephew (almost 16 and almost 14 respectively) to stay for a few weeks with us. Its not ever been an easy trip non reving up there but I've never had too much trouble if I took the 6am flight. Well, who would have thought they'd take THAT one off the schedule for the summer!?! Now there aren't any flights until after 10am which makes the connection really tough in terms of getting seats.

(Of course, I'm traveling with a two year old that needs his own seat and I'm 5.5months preg so we've got to keep this as simple as possible).

It just seemed so overwhelming to try and make it happen that I decided not to go. So, I call home and tell the family (on father's day) that my son and I aren't coming (for all of two days-the plan was to fly up, spend a day and fly back the first day possible to insure my neice would be flying midweek) to pick up my neice but that my husband is. After all he can fly jump seat if he has to. Well, my Mom starts crying. And, she's not a crier-at least not in front of me. She's almost 70 and fell recently putting her in the hospital for a few days so I know that is part of it. But now I feel SO BAD!

Meanwhile, my neice HAS to fly only DH's regional's flights and they are limited out of that area AND it looks like they've reduced their flights from ORD to our area. So, they'll have to come into to a small regional airport an hour and a half drive away. Of course that was the norm to me growing up but still! Three flights into east bum%$@ and only one into a larger metro area? How does that work!!??

Some perk! Do you know that recently the VP of People for DH's regional published a letter talking about how we as families of airline pilots should be prepared to lose our flight benefits? She literally said something to the effect that the families of GAP employees don't get free clothes so why should airline families get free flights?! WTF! First of all, Gap employees don't spend days and weeks away from their families and secondly flying non rev DOESN'T COST THEM ANY MONEY!!!!!! Ohhh my blood boiled at that one!

ARRRRGGGGG! So, a few lessons I've learned today. First, flights change drastically with the seasons. Don't get so comfortable with one route that you wait until the last minute to list. Second, buddy passes are a pain in the neck. Not only is it still costing us $120 to get her out here and back ($30 per leg) but again, she can only fly DH's regional. She can't even fly on the other regional which DH's OWNS! Under these conditions the flight options are pretty limited. I think I would only recommend Buddy Passes for one leg trips for parties of just one person. And lastly, today I've been reminded, if you have the opportunity LIE! I should have told my Mother that DS was sick. THAT she would have taken better.

ARRRGGGG again. Sorry for the rant. Now maybe if the fire alarm will stop going off here at work (on a psychiatric unit no less) maybe I can get some work done and forget about making my mom cry. Real Nice. What a day.