Dave Barry's Money Secrets (19 page)

But the point is that there’s a lot of uncertainty connected with air travel, which is why the first rule for airline passengers is:
Be flexible.
Don’t be hampered by rigid, preconceived notions of exactly when, or exactly where, the airplane is going to go. If you’re planning to fly from Detroit to London on a certain day, be open to the possibility that you will not necessarily leave on that day, and that you might land in some city other than London, such as Milwaukee, which also offers plenty to see and do.

The second rule for airline passengers is:
Shop around for the lowest fare.
Buying an airline ticket is very similar to buying a lotto ticket, only with more of an element of chance. Most airlines offer many different fares for each flight, and the fares are constantly changing. Neither you, nor anybody else on the planet including Stephen Hawking, can know ahead of time what random fare the airline computer will decide to charge you.

Say you want to fly from Phoenix to Minneapolis. You go to an Internet travel site, and the computer gives you a roundtrip fare of $159. So you turn to your spouse and say, “Hey, Marge or Bob, depending on your gender! I got us a pretty good price to Minneapolis!”

But when you turn back to your computer screen, BAM, the airline fare computer—which can see you through your computer screen and loves to play pranks—suddenly increases your fare to $386. While you’re absorbing this bad news, BAM, the fare suddenly drops to $17, provided you fly on a weekday containing three or more vowels. This looks like a good deal, so you try to click on it, but before you can, BAM, the fare changes to a flat $7,000 for nonrefundable coach. If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the airline computer chuckling at the expression on your face.

Sometimes an airline computer will get in a really silly mood and decide to change all the fares for a particular flight
while the plane is in the air.
This means the flight attendants have to pass through the cabin taking money away from some passengers and handing it over to others.

This constant changing of airline fares is very annoying to passengers, but there’s a simple, sound reason why the airlines use this system: They want to annoy their passengers.

No, seriously, there really is a rational economic reason why airline fares are completely insane. I’ve had it explained to me several times, and although I don’t totally understand it, it has something to do with supply and demand and load factors as they relate to the auxiliary deframbulation extrapolator. But never mind the reason. The point is that you can get lower fares if you’re willing to shop around and check for special airline promotions and deals. For example, some airlines will offer discounts if you will agree to sit next to a screaming baby or a large flatulent man with Death Star BO. I get that particular deal all the time.

You also can often get a lower fare by taking connecting, instead of direct, flights. For example, in the case of the Phoenix-to-Minneapolis trip, you can save as much as 30 percent if you don’t mind a two-day layover in Atlanta. Not only will you be paying less, but there’s always a chance that your Phoenix-Atlanta flight will, for one wacky airline reason or another, wind up landing in Minneapolis anyway. Or even London! There’s lots to see and do in London.

Here’s some other helpful information on traveling by air:

Luggage

One option for your luggage is to check it in with the airline. This combines the convenience of not having to lug a bunch of possessions through the airport with the comfort of knowing that you may never see your possessions again. Astronomers using powerful telescopes have detected missing luggage in other galaxies.

The other option is to carry your luggage onto the plane. The key point to remember here is that your luggage must be able to fit into the overhead luggage bin. Let me repeat that:

YOUR CARRY-ON LUGGAGE MUST ACTUALLY FIT
INSIDE
THE LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT.

Or, to put it another way:

YOUR CARRY-ON LUGGAGE NEEDS TO BE
SMALLER
THAN THE LUGGAGE COMPARTMENT, SO THAT IT CAN FIT INSIDE.

I apologize for shouting in boldfaced capital letters, but this concept seems to be very difficult for many airline passengers to grasp. I am a frequent flyer, and it seems as if every time I get on a plane, there are passengers ahead of me hauling a suitcase that is clearly larger than the overhead storage bin. Sometimes it’s larger than my first apartment. It’s the Shaquille O’Neal of suitcases.

When these passengers get to their seats, they grab the suitcase handle and, emitting a grunt like a mating boar, heave the suitcase up to the bin, where
BONK!
it bounces right off, because of course it is too large to fit. It is
much
too large to fit. Anybody with a rudimentary grasp of spatial relationships, including a reasonably sharp gerbil, can see immediately that any effort to put this particular object into this particular space is—like the marriage of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley—doomed to fail.

But that does not stop these determined, spatially impaired passengers. They grunt again, heave again, and
BONK!
the Shaquille suitcase again bounces back. Meanwhile, of course, the boarding process has ground to a halt, because the suitcase heavers are blocking the airplane aisle, the way a dead possum blocks a drainpipe.

Finally a flight attendant*
 
⁵¹
will work her way through the crowd and patiently explain to the passengers that they have to check their giant suitcase. If she didn’t stop them, they would keep grunting, heaving, and bonking it until they weakened the structure of the plane and large chunks of fuselage started to fall off.

True Fact:
I have seen passengers
argue
with the flight attendant that their giant suitcase, which clearly does not fit into the overhead,
should
fit into the overhead, because—and this is a direct quote—“it’s a carry-on suitcase.” What they mean by this, I believe, is that the suitcase has wheels. So, let us note the following fact for the record:
Just because something has wheels, that does not mean you can carry it onto the airplane.
The following objects all have wheels, but not all of them will fit into the overhead storage compartment:

Photography Credits

I apologize for going on at such great length about this, but as you may have gathered, this is a pet peeve of mine. I promise to drop it now and move on with our tips for airline travel.

Airline Security

Before the Age of Terrorism, airline security was pretty relaxed. You could arrive at the airport five minutes before your plane was supposed to take off and sprint straight to your gate. If the plane had already left the gate, you could run out onto the runway, waving your arms. If a uniformed security person blocked your path, you could simply shove him aside and shout, “GET OUT OF MY WAY, YOU FOOL! I HAVE A
PLANE TO CATCH
!” You could carry a flamethrower onto the plane, as long as you were not actively using it to throw flame. Sometimes, if the pilot was in a good mood or badly hungover, he’d let passengers come up to the cockpit and fly the plane. (“Hi, everybody! My name is Harmon Sperkle. I’m a sales representative in the ceramic tile line, but for the next hour or so I’ll be your pilot while the captain takes a little nap. Let’s see what happens when I pull on this
WHOOOOOAAA. . . .
”)

Alas, those carefree days are gone. Today, if you want to travel by air, you must go through a series of rigorous tests designed to guard against the danger—which is always lurking, whether we want to think about it or not—that you might actually make your flight. Here are the security basics you need to know:

•                  Have your photo ID and boarding pass ready. You will have plenty of time to get these out, because the person in front of you—despite passing eight signs that say, in large letters, HAVE YOUR PHOTO ID AND BOARDING PASS READY—will
not
have his or her photo ID and boarding pass ready. This person will also be towing a “carry-on” suitcase the size of a U-Haul trailer.

•                  When it’s your turn, show your photo ID and boarding pass to the security person, who will frown at it in a practiced manner without actually looking at it.

•                  Put your photo ID away, but keep your boarding pass out. With your spare hand, carry your belongings to the X-ray machine.

Note:
The X-ray machine is perfectly safe for photographic film. It will make YOU sterile, but your film will be fine.

•                  Still holding your boarding pass, use your other hand to get a plastic bin. Place your laptop computer, cell phone, flamethrower, dentures, hearing aid, prosthetic limb, and children under two in this bin. Also remove your jacket, belt, shoes, and—if the terrorism alert level is Code Magenta or higher—your underwire brassiere.

•                  Using one hand to hold your boarding pass and the other to hold up your pants and a third hand to shield your bosom, shuffle through the metal detector in the meek and submissive manner employed by Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion when approaching the Wizard of Oz.

Note:
The metal detector is perfectly safe for humans. The fact that it causes the kidneys of laboratory rats to explode like cheap party balloons is, according to a U.S. government study, “probably a coincidence.”

That’s all there is to it! You are now free to get dressed—using the convenient filthy airport floor provided for this purpose—then proceed to your gate to board your flight. Bon voyage!

Note:
Your flight has a problem with the auxiliary deframbulation extrapolator.

But getting back to the topic of this book, which is money, here are some other tips for traveling on a budget:

Saving Money on Hotels

The key is toilet paper. You want to stay at a hotel where the toilet paper in your room looks like this:

Photography Credits

You do
not
want to stay in a hotel where the end of the toilet-paper roll has been folded into a triangle, or—even worse—folded and then sealed, like this: