Feb. 12

After spending a late night completing my Antarctic Tourism assignment at 3AM, I didn’t get much sleep. I am sure that it also had something to do with the excitement of starting the adventure. Part of it was a fear of oversleeping and missing my flights.

Left the house at 6AM. Weather was cool, but not cold. There was a fresh dusting of snow on Mount Benson. The drive to the floatplane docks was quiet. Hardly a car on the road in Nanaimo at that time of the morning.

Had a pleasant flight From Nanaimo to Vancouver. Only 25 minutes by floatplane. Saw a lovely orange sunrise, reflected in the water over the Georgia Strait. Check out the photos posted on the photos page. Arrived all relaxed at Vancouver airport only to have a shock when I looked at the departures board and saw that the Continental flight to Houston, my carrier and my route, had just departed. After the initial shock, I started feeling panicky. Had a made an error in planning my route and not allowed enough time between flights to connect? I honestly thought that I had just missed my flight, and the whole trip suddenly at an end.

I thought for a minute and realised I had to ask at the desk if that was the correct information and had I really missed my flight. Upon further enquiry, I discovered that I was actually booked on a partner airline, Alaska Airways, and would be meeting up with the departed flight in Seattle, as previously planned. All was good, but then I had to check my bags. At first they wanted an extra payment for the second bag, and were asking me to pay. However, I had checked these details on the website the day before, just to be sure and  I had read that international travel allowed two free checked bags so when I questioned the clerk she agreed and no extra payment  was extracted from me. It pays to do a little research and to know what the rules are, in case they don’t.

The flight from Vancouver to Seattle was only 55 minutes. I got a great view of the fresh snow on the Olympic Mountains (photo posted).

I thought a lot about our course last year in Introduction to Tourism. I had been feeling the pre-trip excitement for the last couple of days. I am a very allocentric traveler who loves adventure and independent travel.

I noticed the differences in the quality of customer service at various airline businesses. For example, the floatplane staff were really friendly, welcoming and helpful, but the larger airlines offered less personal service.

We also learned about how airlines oversell seats to maximize profits, as they count on a percentage of ‘no-show’. This is called yield management, a concept that we learned about in economics. Well guess what happened on my Seattle to Houston flight – we ALL showed up. Staff were asking for volunteers who would accept $250 travel voucher to catch a later flight. Since I have a layover in Houston, I enquired how much later the other flight would depart, but it would be another 7 and ½ hours wait and too late to make my connecting flight to Buenos Aires. Come to think of it, a $250 travel voucher that is only good for Continental flights would not be much value to me. It would mean I would have to spend more money, in order to get something for free. Hummmm, doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me, I think I’ll just keep my seat.

Departed Seattle and headed for Houston, Texas. This was a five hour flight.