Flying, away and back
I'd always thought of buying airline miles like 'green stamps' that food shoppers would collect in books for prizes back in the day before stamps were self-stick. A marketing concept developed to train American consumers to become predictable dolts. On the other hand, incidentally collecting frequent flyer miles while working/living as a traveling grunt was OK - like, yes, there is a Santa, a happy 'freebie'. Recently I traveled RT on AA with accumulated miles, paying only taxes & fees (including check-in luggage). (Fees, like taxes & death, grow to consume our lives, creeping upon us like a biblical Egyptian plague.) But I felt like a winner. I saved money, well, I spent less.
So, needing to travel, and flying being the only sane option out & back into this Central American fiefdom with wife & kid, despite the kingly prices, or I should say, because of them, I decided to buy AA miles, thinking I might save over paying straight cash for tickets. Their ads for buying miles were spam in my email, not unlike their notices I wanted to read. I fell for one that promised a 10% discount plus bonus miles, but had to act before the end of the month. I bought what AA suggested I needed for my next freebie. A 'processing fee' and taxes more than swallowed the discount. When I went online to book a RT flight for the 3 of us, "redeeming miles", I learned I needed to buy another 66,750 miles first. I'd thought I could use miles and pay cash for the shortfall - no. But what sunk the whole con game for me was that AA offered no direct flights Miami-Philly - none - when redeeming miles. We'd have to connect thru Charlotte or Louisville or Norfolk, with 5-7 hour layovers - with wife and 4 yr old kid, fuggetaboutit. Booking, paying cash, we'll fly direct, no layovers, just Miami customs, which has greatly streamlined recently.
As it turns out - I did the calculations - it cost me 14% more than buying & redeeming miles. But the aggrevation, delay and suffering we avoid (only a trial jury could calculate that cost) makes it worth it. Flying like human beings, business class, would have cost 300% more than with the herd. That's what the word 'economy' means to us grunts. It would't be so bad if they didn't rub our noses in it, like boarding last when sitting in the tail section, when logically, efficiently those should be the first to board filling the plane with the least disruption. I suspect it's so the first class lot can gloat as we shuffle by. And a fucking bag of peanuts or pretzels - fine for kiddies too young to have known better. But some of us adults were part of the industrial complex that engineered and built those planes, who remember in flight meals with plates and silverwear. Then we got downsized. 'Nuff. That's progress. Why complain?
Our 4 yr old Nica dividend is a dual citizen USA/Nica born in Leon. For his Nica passport we have to spend a day in Managua at Migracion, working with the lawyers under plastic sheet covered 'offices' across the street, to get the stamp of approval that allows him to leave the country. Does anyone know if he can exit directly at the airport using only his US passport?
(I still don't know how to paste his foto here in TRN, or,if I knew, I've forgotten.)
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Originally Posted by dubereyes
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