Friday, April 4, 2014

Just Me and the Cleaning Crew

I am sitting at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport all by myself, excepting a few maintenance personnel.

Oddly, at this very moment the piece of Muzak playing is "On My Own" from Les Miserables.

I left Buenos Aires this morning on a 9:40 flight that brought me to Miami. From there I had to fly into St. Louis, arriving at a bit after 10pm.

My flight to Chicago leaves St. Louis at 6am, so it seemed kind of silly to book a hotel for about $100 for a a few hours sleep.

I feel fortunate to have been able to use frequent flyer miles--40,000--for this trip into Rio and out of Buenos Aires. If I had to pay cash for airfare I doubt I would've gone on this trip, nor many of my 10 overseas jaunts over the past 15 years.

Bur though the American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flyer program has been very good, it seems that things are now a lot more constrictive in terms of finding mileage flights, especially if wanting to use the minimum possible required miles.

Hence, having to fly into one New York airport and out of another, as I did on this trip and also my European excursion last year.

And the three-legged return itinerary I am now amidst, even though there were a couple direct flights from Miami that I easily could have caught.

Not only were those flights unavailable to book using miles when I made my plans, but in checking several times before my trip, when I checked in outbound, and in both Buenos Aires and Miami in returning, I couldn't get a seat.

So here I am. Although another passenger in the same predicament just showed up.

Now I don't have the whole place to myself. But maybe I'll try catching a few winks.

No comments: