2007: A year of waitlists: Part 1

This has been a year of waitlists. A turn of a New Year is a good time to recall our escapades, remembering that, while planning anything can be fun, seeing it go haywire and then unravelling the mess and coming out gleaming can be more fun.

It all began with booking tickets to visit Florida. Having taken over the portfolio of managing all our travel plans (and more), my wife booked 'special price' tickets to Miami around 120 days in advance.It saved us quite a few greenbacks and I, though wary of perils of nonrefundable tickets, was optimistic of local weather conditions in future(!). Choreographed to perfection - we even had decided on places for dinner and lunch in Miami and Key West, a couple of months before the travel date- we thought nothing could come in our way (somewhat).

Weather gods, meanwhile, had been planning their own little thingy. Six hours before ETD, our flight to Miami got delayed. Two hours later it got cancelled. 30 minutes later United Airlines dumped us, literally, on to the next day, Friday, morning flight at Six with American Airlines. We left home at 3:45 AM to be there ahead of everyone, only to realize we had undermined everyone else's determination. An hour of hoarse shouting at UA and AA, who kept shirking the responsibility about why we were being treated like a football at FIFA, intensely kicked around, only yielded that everyone was helpless; and we were 11th down the waitlist of passengers who could just make it to the 8 AM out of O'Hare.We had an option of taking the 1 PM confirmed seat. In the face of the fact that we had already lost a night's prepaid stay at a 4 star hotel in Miami, the choice was easy.

Being in the thick of things brought us face to face with how airline companies do yield management. They have a few very important tools to beat the holiday season nightmares. One of them is overbooking. Some passengers cancel out (not a statistical impossibility that) and those tickets are sold at a premium. Some passengers don't mind selling their tickets back to airlines in exchange for travel vouchers at the same time delaying their own travel to any of the next few flights out. Lastly, the most important 'investment', a passenger realizes, is to be on the loyalty programs of airlines. Because, when a flight is cancelled, or when overbooked people are moved around Loyalty card holders make it to the top of waiting lists. I will not argue with that, since if I were running the business, I may just run it the same way.

In the next two hours we would count our chances of getting on that plan a hundred times, confirming with each other, every time the boarding gate attendant announced a name cleared for boarding. We were willing to forgive them for mis-pronouncing our names, as long as we made it on board. Not until Six minutes before the plane doors would close, were we told that we were cleared. That was the end of our first waitlist.

But wait, the story has only started!