With friends and family scattered around the world, I tend to fly pretty frequently. In fact, I usually take somewhere between 20 and 40 flights per year (back off, Greta!) and right now I have 35 advance bookings for flights. A friend brought it to my attention when he saw my flight record.
It seems I got a little trigger happy with booking tickets once travel started opening up. That, plus a couple of irresistible deals, means my travel is all planned through to July 2022! And I like to think I’m not much of a planner…!
Advance Bookings – With Who?
There is one airline that has an unbelievably good book with confidence policy and that is British Airways. All flight bookings for travel up to 31 August 2022 can be swapped for a voucher at any time, no questions asked. Yes, really! Long may it continue!
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- Some flights are on American Airlines – but booked through BA of course!
This policy means that almost no other airlines got a look in when searching for flights. Of course, British Airways codeshare with other airlines, so I am flying on a variety of oneworld carriers, including Japan Airlines for the first time. All the other tickets I bought were for flights where I had no other options. All were cheap short haul tickets, so I don’t lose out if things go bad.
For example, I booked with Aer Lingus to connect to a BA ticket to Hawaii (that was staggeringly good value). I also booked with KLM to fly with friends to Toulouse, and SAS to get me back from Oslo after heading home from Australia.
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- Alaska Airlines has three flights booked, one direct and two through – you guessed it!
On another trip, I’ll be in Hawaii so I’ll be using Hawaiian to go island to island which will be fun. It’s all going to make me very tired though! As much as I love flying, travelling through time zones, overnighting in hotels and schlepping baggage is not exactly relaxing. Luckily I love it!
Overall Thoughts
Having 35 advance bookings is probably a record for me. What I lose with all this is the joy of hunting for flights as everything is done and dusted. All that remains is to get on board and fly.
If the British Airways book with confidence policy was not in play, I would have been far more hesitant to book. There’s a lot of flying in my future and it should be good, because that means seeing friends and family. At last! Not a lot beats that!
What is the highest number of advance bookings you’ve had before? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Isaac Struna on Unsplash.
American Airlines by Miguel Ángel Sanz on Unsplash.
Alaska Airlines by Cody Fitzgerald on Unsplash.
WOW! I plan one trip at a time. Even then things change, I know this year I’ve cancelled 2 trips to Milwaukee (OMG the bratwurst!) because things come up. Having two or more trips planned and booked would cause me a world of fatigue. I just bought a new, smaller house and moved my 86 year old Mom in I just don’t feel right leaving her alone for even 3-4 days. I cancelled my second booking to MKE just yesterday since she had a minor tumble on a fuzzy throw rug and it’s bad enough being at work 40+ hours… Read more »
I would usually one to three trips planned in advance, but this is a little bit crazy for me. Totally understand you staying home at the moment what with your Mum and all. Nice that you have some points sitting there waiting for flying day though. I’m sure they’ll end up getting used. With all those bookings, if they all come to pass (and they should, fingers crossed), it will mean plenty of flight reviews to write. Good times I guess!!
Wow, that’s a lot of flight segments. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than around half that at a single time, although back in my youth as a travel agent I flew standby a lot and had to fly from Miami to Copenhagen standby on Pan Am for a family wedding. I ended up with six segments on the outbound alone, MIA-DFW-JFK-LHR-FRA-TXL-CPH. Ah, remembering when that used to be blissful fun…
Gosh, I non-revved as an airline brat through the 70s and early 90’s and I never had a routing like that. Once we were flying from Peoria to Denver on Ozark Airlines, the flight stopped in Sioux City (SUX). We got bumped in SUX and were re-routed SUX-Waterloo Iowa (ALO) and on to ORD. Then we waited for an evening ORD-ALO-SUX-Denver flight and made it. But your itinerary sounds like an av-geeks dream/tiresome nightmare…depending on your point of view. Great story!
You’ve certainly been through a wide variety of airports in the States. SUX is an airport code I’ve always remembered since I first saw it back when UA232 happened.
Six segments to get from Miami to Copenhagen! That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to me 🙂 Tiring, but fun! I can imagine it was a bit different to today. Great memories you must have of doing things like that.