How do you fly?

This is how I fly

Everybody has different preferences when it comes to selecting flights. So in today’s edition I thought it would be fun to write about the sort of flights I prefer and how my day looks when it is time to travel. None of this is about the cabin I choose or the ticket I buy. Rather the attributes of the flights I prefer to take.

Compare that with your own and I bet we will be quite different in some ways but maybe similar in others.

If you feel like sharing, please reply and tell me how the way you handle your travel is similar or different.

Time of day is important to me

Your favourite airline revenue economist is something of a night owl. Getting to the airport at zero dark hundred is something I try to avoid. Normally I would rather fly the night before than leave super early to make a 10am appointment.

On a short-range trip I like to leave about 2pm or 3pm in the afternoon. Slightly earlier if heading east and slightly later westbound, to try and achieve an arrival time about 4pm or 5pm. That way I am home or at my hotel in time for dinner.

I do not mind working later at the hotel if that helps me make my preferred time.

Sometimes such options are not available. I will always prefer to arrive later, sometimes very late, to avoid an early start.

For example when I had the option of a 7.40am or 8.40pm flight to Toulouse in 2022 and those were the only flights available, I chose the latter.

But that does not mean I will pay unlimited fares to avoid an early alarm. Sometimes I play the lottery of same-day flight change.

On the return trip flight from Toulouse the inventory availability was J1 and everything else closed on the nice 3pm flight to Heathrow.

So I bought a ticket on the zero dark hundred departure for around £700 less. Then at the stroke of midnight I was on the app and luckily the airline’s same day change policy allowed me to move over to the afternoon flight free of charge.

My preferred flight had stuck at J1 everything else closed for around a month just waiting for me to make that change!

Sadly the odds do not always turn in my favour so sometimes I await the alarm with trepidation.

On longhaul I take things slightly differently due to the time delta.

Heading westbound I like the 10am to noon-ish flights. These do not get in too late – I would rather handle the jetlag by walking the streets of San Francisco or Chicago than relying on the fluorescents in the immigration haul.

Daylight flights are my favourites. I do not consider time on the plane wasted. I will not pay thousands extra for a daylight westbound flight when a nighttime one is available though.

Eastbound I try to avoid the lunchtime flights that arrive early in the morning. When I took Cathay Pacific’s 1.20pm from Barcelona to Hong Kong the early arrival when I was ready for bed made me feel quite odd.

The exception is Australia – I would rather take the lunchtime flight out of Europe and plough through awake to get to sleep the moment I reach my hotel. The alternative, 24 hours of darkness followed by a 6am arrival when I am ready for bed is just depressing.

On day flights I keep the window blinds open to enjoy the natural light

I love looking out of the window and watching the clouds go by. Countless generations of mankind looked up at the sky and wondered what it would be like to be up there. Now we have the chance it seems a shame to waste the opportunity.

My reckoning is that the person who has control over the window blinds is the person who is sitting next to the window. Not the cabin crew. Not the passenger over the aisle. For this reason I dislike airlines who auto-dim the windows on the Boeing 787.

If the sun is actually shining right in somebody’s eye of course I will be glad to close the blind. But for people who want to sleep, I say that is what the eyeshade is for. Selfish? Perhaps. But insisting on darkness is selfish too. Planes are public transport.

Some highlights of my window viewing experiences are:

1. The River Nile en-route to Kenya and Ethiopia

2. Ice bergs calving off the New Brunswick coast

3. A jumble of roche moutonees, pingus, shallow lakes and peat filled depressions in the periglacial lowlands of north east Canada

4. The mighty Gobi and Taklamakan deserts and the mountains of north west China and central Asia

5. Ulan Bataar, the capital of Mongolia, with it’s thousands of yurts stretching into the distance, impressive mountain ridge and blue sail building, which I have seen in both summer and winter

6. The ocean surface at the wreck site of Titanic, which is sometimes close by en-route to America

7. I always try to watch out for the point where we turn the corner at Mt Bazarduzu on daylight services to and from Asia.

Do you like the window blinds open or closed?

I listen to music but don’t watch movies

For me a longhaul flight is a great opportunity to listen to an artist’s entire album catalogue.