I absolutely love airplane travel.  The idea of getting from one far-removed place to another in hours instead of days still holds a bit of romance with me.  But a lot of people these days still loathe the idea of getting into one of those gawd-awful plane seats for any period of time.

The problem is that most people just simply don’t know how to do it right.  Simply put, if you know the unwritten “rules” your flight experience will be painless and often the pleasant experience its supposed to be — even in today’s world of airline cost cutting.  If, however, you expect to get to the airport and be hand-held through the experience, you’re going to hate every minute of it.  It just doesn’t work that way.

I was telling a buddy about this today as he prepares for his first ever flight for business.  He’s done travel for pleasure before, but he’s about to start a new job role where he’s traveling around another 5x+ times per year.  After talking with my buddy about this, I figured I’d consolidate what I taught him today into a Top Thirteen list.  Since I exclusively fly United Airlines by choice, these are limited to what I know about their “system” only.  With other airlines, your mileage may vary.  Here we go:

1. Pick an airline and stick with them, even if they’re (a little) more expensive.  I fly United for three reasons:  First, I live in Denver and one of their major hubs is in Denver.  Thus, I generally always fly without the need to connect.  Second, they have a special seating area called “Economy Plus” (E+) that’s exactly the same as flying “No Class” but with five full extra inches of legroom.  As a 6′3″ guy, this is absolutely critical.  Third, by flying exclusively with a single airline I come to learn their little unwritten “rules”.  These rules are different by airline, and learning them saves you time and pain over the long haul.
2. Before ever flying, create a mileage plus account.  Monitor it regularly.  Once created, go into that account and modify all its “advanced” properties.  There’s more to the account than just what you fill out to get your number, such as seat preference (window vs. aisle).  One exceptionally important of these leads me to…
3. In your profile on the United web site, make sure you add text messaging for flight announcements and changes to your cell phone.  Airlines change departure times all the time, sometimes multiple times for a single flight.  By adding this alerting tool, you won’t be caught off-guard when your flight gets moved ahead to depart 15 minutes earlier, leaving you stranded.
4. If you are forced to fly standby due to a missed flight or the desire to switch to an early one, confirm your seat.  It is not well known that United has a way to switch a standby seat to an available “positive space” (confirmed) seat for $75.  Virtually every flight these days operates at almost completely full capacity, meaning that if you’re flying standby, you might not get a seat for many hours or even days.  Hub-to-hub flights are particularly bad with this (DEN, ORD, IAD, and to some extent SFO).  I’ve seriously had a friend attempt to fly standby between DEN and ORD, and it took him three days to get out.  Because he was standby, he had to literally sit at the gate for the entire three days waiting for his name to be called.  $75, cheaper the cost of a nice dinner, is worth avoiding that pain.
5. If you plan to fly 5 or more times in a calendar year, buy Economy Plus Annual.  E+’s five extra inches of legroom can only be obtained by individuals with airline “status”, but what is not well known is that you can buy a portion of that status for $300/year.  By buying E+ Annual at this web site, you’ll always be guaranteed a seat in E+ if one is available when you purchase the ticket.  Considering the airlines tend to put families with crying babies in the back of the plane, your sanity is worth it.  Plus, you get on and off much faster, which will save your kiester when your flight gets in late and you have the chance of missing your connection.
6. Always print out your boarding pass before you go to the airport.  The United web site (like a lot of airlines) lets you print out your boarding pass at home.  Their ticketing lines can be painfully long at times, and this simple act can sometimes save you upwards of an hour.  But there’s a catch here, which leads me to…
7. Never, never, never check baggage.  Unless you’re spending a month in the mountains of Nepal, no self-respecting individual should ever need more stuff than what can fit in a carry-on for up to a week’s worth of travel.  Period.  If you need more, you’re simply not doing it right.  Yes, this holds true for females as well.
8. If you don’t have status, always choose a window seat.  United boards their plane by groups.  Groups 0 and 1 are the frequent travelers with status.  Group 2 are all the window seats.  Group 3 are the middle seats, and group 4 are all the aisle seats.  With so many people carrying on these days because of the baggage fees, if you aren’t at least in Group 2, there will usually not be any space for carry-ons by the time they board the later groups.  This being said, bring your carry-on anyway, because if it doesn’t fit they’ll gate check it — which means you’ll get your bag back at the gate instead of baggage claim, which is still faster.
9. Keep up on news and tips using the Internets (they’re a series of tubes, you know!).  There is a huge group of well-traveled people with big opinions over at the FlyerTalk web site.  Visit that web site from time to time to get the straight scoop on new unwritten “rules” as they happen.  Here’s the direct link to the page that’s exclusively their United forum.  For advanced travelers, also keep an eye on this page for the count of seats by booking class, which is a handy way to determine which flights are going to have the cheapest fares and best chance for upgrades.  This page is also particularly nice as it shows you the seat configuration by airline for each airplane chassis as well as which seats to avoid.
10. Game the mileage points system, because you have to.  These days, United hands out frequent flyer miles like candy.  Heck, today you can get 30,000 miles by just signing up for a new credit card, more than necessary for a free ticket.  I have and strongly suggest that others get the United Mileage Plus Platinum Class Visa, a $140/year credit card that comes with some incredible benefits that make the cost worth it if you’re the type to pay off your cards in full every month.  Seriously.  But don’t stop there.  This web site shows you all the current promotions for freebie miles.  Watch it regularly, and sign up for every single promotion.  Here’s the reason why:  United wants 25,000 miles for a free “saver” ticket to anywhere in the continental United States.  But the inventory on these cheepie “saver” tickets is so small as to be absurd, especially for intra-US travel.  These days (right, wrong, or indifferent), you virtually have to spend the full 50,000 miles to get a free ticket for the US.  Conversely, International travel tends to have a lot more “saver” ticket options, mainly because people who are traveling internationally for pleasure are more likely to take odd routings.  Odd routings = more options.  These odd routings are not always exposed through the on-line interface, so always call to book award travel.  The operators have much more options at their disposal than United’s on-line system.  My advice:  Save your miles for International Business Class, which is by far the only way to travel for pleasure on long-haul flights.
11. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never connect through Chicago O-Hare.  In fact, never connect ever at all if you can.  But if you must, ORD is another of United’s main hubs and it has one of the worst on-time ratings of anywhere in the country.  Coupled with the horrible weather they often have there (especially in the winter), you’re virtually guaranteed a delay.  Making matters worse, ORD isn’t the most pleasant of airports to be caught in.  Not great options there for food, drinks, shopping, entertainment, whathaveyou.
12. Go buy a set of Bose noise-canceling headphones.  You don’t even have to plug them into anything.  Just put them on, turn them on, and listen to the wonderful sounds of silence.  They’re the perfect tool to completely shut down the annoying traveler sitting next to you who wants to show you pictures of their kids.  And, they’re an absolute piece of technological art.  They are, however, also $300, which isn’t an insignificant sum of money.  But isn’t a little cash worth your sanity?
13. Get a CLEAR card.  Do it.  Now.  Don pushed me to get one for something like a year, and I finally buckled a month ago.  With a CLEAR card, no matter how long the security line is (you hear me LAS, ORD, FLL, DEN [sometimes], IAD, and most especially MCO [god I hate MCO]) I’m guaranteed to get to the other end of the line in four minutes flat.  Guaranteed.  CLEAR requires a background check, fingerprinting, and retina scan, but heck, these days the government already has that info anyway.  Considering CLEAR?  Use the Refer-a-Friend code DSCAM1175510 to get a free month (Full Disclosure:  If you do, so do I!).

Yea, some of these options are a little expensive, but if you’re the type to do anything more than one or two flights per year this is the new reality.

Honestly, it is my opinion that if you’re complaining about the pains of airplane travel, you’re just not doing your homework.  Hopefully this little list will help get you started.

Have your own tips?  Drop them into the comments field below…

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