Sometimes I put in silly working titles and plan to change them later. For this one, I am just going to keep it, why not? It has been too long since we did a little loving promotional update on AirlineReporter. What does that mean? Well, a number of things… First off, I am VERY excited […]
The movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of my favorite classics. It never gets old watching how a simple trip falls apart into complete chaos. It might have been a bit odd for me to be excited taking a trip using those exact forms for transportation (in the same order, none-the-less), but I was optimistic that our trip would turn out much better. Brittany (my lovely wife) and I were planning to take a plane from Seattle (SEA) to New York (via EWR); a train from New York (NYP) to Jacksonville, FL (JAX); and then a nice little drive down the Florida coast to Vero Beach, FL.
Brittany had never been to New York City and we wanted to visit my dad in Vero Beach. You probably can tell that I love flying, but I was at a place in my life where the idea of flying back and forth across the country twice in a few 737s was not appealing, so I started to get creative.
I realized that for about the same cost to fly from New York down to Florida, we could purchase a Viewliner Roomette on the Amtrak Silver Service. Of course the travel time would be a bit more… but the experience would be very different. Neither of us had traveled overnight on a train and I was stoked about the idea!
Although the train continued farther south, I wanted to round out the experience by de-training (that a thing?) in JAX and renting a car to drive the rest of the way. The drive is only about three hours to our final destination, but we decided to make it a two-day adventure. We wanted to smell the roses and also stay at a hotel right on the water. We had our quest locked in!
Buckle up… it is time to first start the PLANE portion of our journey!
It has been too long since I have done an AvGeek Pop Quiz. If you are new to these, you are in for a treat! Or in for a lot of frustration. I am going to show you a cropped photo and you have to guess the airline and/or aircraft type. This time I am doing it a bit different. I will show you nine thumbnails below, you make your guesses, and when you are ready, keep scrolling to the bottom of the story and I give you the answers. Then in the comments, let me know how you did (or which ones were the most difficult/easiest)! Here we go:
What do you get when you combine writing about airline travel since 2008, with a few decades of being a sarcastic chap? Unsolicited Travel Advice from David (the Editor-in-Chief of this dog and pony show) — that’s what! There are way too many travel-related click-bait stories out there that give you boring and questionable information from “experts.” This series will be different — I will give you entertaining, possibly less questionable information, while not caring about any sort of clicks or bait. Let me set the mood. Imagine that you and I are hanging out (before all the COVID-19 stuff ), when we have just hit upon an interesting airline/travel topic (free first class upgrade) and I am fired up and ready to spew my thoughts and opinions. When I wrap up, I am hoping that you won’t just awkwardly stare at me, but instead continue the conversation in the comments. Let’s do this…
This one is easy. You don’t. Conversation over.
“This is not what I was expecting,” you might be thinking to yourself. “I have heard people talk about special tricks, some have to work, right?” Okay, okay, this wouldn’t be any fun if I didn’t at least talk about some of my favorite “tricks” that travel “experts” have given over the years. Or at least make fun of some:
Why drive hours to Canada just to take two 20 minute flights on a pair of Beechcraft 1900Ds, on two different airlines? Why not?
Back in February, my friend (and sometimes contributor to AirlineReporter) Jason made a visit to Seattle from his home in New York. He stayed with another friend of mine Jeremy (who is pretty much my AvGeek archnemesis and really good friend — it is how I roll). Instead of doing the normal (and boring) touristy stuff, Jeremy had another idea in mind. He wanted to create a fun little AvGeek adventure, taking two different forms of aviation transportation on an amazing day-trip in Canada. I was down.
He ran through different options and landed on taking two small airlines from Vancouver (YVR) to a small town called Campbell River, BC (YBL). I was told what tickets to purchase and what time to be at his house — that is all I needed. With my passport and GlobalEntry card in hand (yay, I actually got to use it for once), I was ready for our little adventure.
During our drive from Seattle, I started to get a better sense of our plan. We would fly up on a Central Mountain Air (CMA) Beechcraft 1900D, hang around town for a little bit, and then catch a Pacific Coastal Airlines (PCA) Beechcraft 1900D back to Vancouver. Originally our hope was to fly on two different aircraft types, but due to some changes, we ended up on the same kind of plane. That was okay… none of us had flown on a 1900 previously, plus I was interested to compare how two smaller airlines provided service to the same smaller airport.