My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places

Frequent Flierrr#*!

My father-in-law turned 80 this year, and there was a big party in South Florida. A few months beforehand, I decided to use up some frequent flier miles and go. I called United, because they’ve filed for Chapter 11 and I wanted to get rid of my miles before they get to Chapter 12, which is the chapter where they cut out 70 percent of their routes and start serving Kool-Aid and salami ends.

I gave the frequent flier man the date. There was nothing into Fort Lauderdale, nothing into West Palm Beach. Perhaps it was a blackout date. Frequent Flier Plans, as you know, have more blackout dates than Anna Nicole Smith. It certainly wasn’t a holiday, unless you count Bunsen Burner Day. But this hardly merits a blackout.

Bunsen burners may well get the day off, may well wish to go and visit their relatives, but, tragically, FAA regulations prohibit Bunsen burners on airplanes.

There was a flight into Miami, which I said I’d take. I’ll rent a car, I said. I’ve got lots of those free rental car certificates that the frequent flier programs send you to make you feel better about having to fly into the wrong city on the wrong day. Then again, there’s a reason I have lots of these. I can’t find anyplace that’ll honor one. I’ll walk up to the counter and hand the woman my certificate, and she’ll start shaking her head. “Today is Wednesday,” she’ll say slowly and with fraying patience, as though talking to a small driver’s-license-bearing child. “This coupon is for the third Friday of a month ending in E. It says right here it must be used before National Foot Health Day yet after the start of the Tule Elk rut season. Besides, we have nothing left but locomotives, and this coupon isn’t good for those.”

“Oh, one thing,” said the United Man. “The Miami flight is on the day before you want to leave. Is that okay? And I see it leaves out of San Jose, not San Francisco. Does that work for you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Oh, one thing. My credit card is expired, so I was going to pay you in Betty Crocker coupons. Does that work for you? And I’ll be traveling with a family of Bunsen burners. Is that okay?”

The man from United had an idea. He said that if I cashed in 40,000 miles instead of 25,000 miles, there would be more seats available. This would put me in the No Restrictions Category. Unfortunately, it would also put me in the Gave Up a Free Trip to Hawaii Category.

He found me a flight into Fort Lauderdale, and then he said, “There is one stopover. In Chicago.” Unless you are trying to draw Anna Nicole Smith with your flight pattern, you don’t fly up to Chicago and back down to get to Florida. Clearly we had moved on to Chapter 12. We were right on the brink of Chapter 13, where the CEO sells the company to Air Burundi and you’re out of luck unless you happen to be traveling to Bujumbura, and even then you’re going to have a plane change in Chicago.

“Okay,” I said to the United Man. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that I decide to do this. Let’s say I trade in my free trip to Hawaii for the opportunity to spend 12 hours with my knees inside a stranger’s kidneys, eating embalmed chicken and breathing last year’s air. What does the return look like?”

The return looked like an ad for prescription-strength pain reliever. It was one of the busiest days of the year, the man said. All the flights were overbooked. For the Sunday I planned to return was the last day of Spring Break. Spring Break, as you probably know, is a week-long gathering of American college students, similar in many ways to the Tule Elk rut season.

There were no flights at all out of South Florida. I wouldn’t be going anywhere with my frequent flier miles, except possibly to my therapist, where there would at least be more legroom.