During my career I flew over a million air miles. Even though I’m just shy of seven feet tall, I mostly enjoyed the experience once I figured out a few key things about flying. I hope these insights help you. 
Attitude is everything in flying
People are attracted to (and want to help) grateful, kind, and pleasant people. Think about your own life. When you have served others, what kind of person did you bend rules and go the extra mile for? When a problem happens, it is very rare that the ungrateful, unkind, and unpleasant person gets to their destination any faster than the kind person.
Consider the alternative
Regardless of how many things go wrong on a trip, flying is so much better than a bus. Until transporter technology is perfected, flying (even with all its hassles) is really your best high-speed choice for transport.
Air travel is like prison, but in a good way
Flying (especially after 9/11) is just about a total surrender of your civil rights and any illusion of control you might have. Realize that when you fly you make a trade: You surrender almost all your rights and they move you across the planet at over 500mph. It is only a good trade if you accept both sides of the deal. If you don’t, then don’t fly because many people will suffer as you hold up the security line.
All airlines are great and all airlines stink
Amongst the people I know who have flown more than a million miles they all have a favorite airline they LOVE and an airline that they HATE. The interesting thing is that they all love/hate different airlines. Even though collectively we have lots of data points (flights) there is no consensus. These love/hate feelings are often rooted in just a few good/bad incidents. On any given day a given airline is either awful or glorious.
Airline employees
Airlines are huge companies so don’t expect perfection from all 120,000 employees. For all large groups there is often a bell-shaped curve of performance. A few do wondrous work, the vast bulge in the middle do what is expected, and a few at the other end take sadistic pleasure in creating a private hell just for you. It’s a crapshoot who you will meet and if they are having a bad/good day.
- Flight attendants have no power to change anything about the flight, but they do occasionally bring you an extra cookie. Help them by staying in your seat during meal times and taking your seat quickly when asked to do so.
- Ticket/Gate agents have almost no power to give you extra perks, but they do have the awesome power of not offering you the help you haven’t specifically asked for. They are the most yelled at employees of any airline. Never yell at them because a flight is delayed, canceled or otherwise screwed up. It is not their fault. Although on general principles I believe in treating people nice because it is the right thing to do, I can assure you that nice people are offered more choices and are sometimes upgraded. It pays to be genuinely nice.
Connections
Almost all flights connect. Choose your connecting flights so you have options and time. If possible, always avoid a connecting flight that is the last one of the day to your destination. When booking a flight, your various flight options are usually sorted so the connecting flight that leaves as soon as possible after your first flight arrives is at the top of the list. Often that is a tight (not much time to run from plane to plane) connection. Why sweat a tight connection when you can leave a little earlier? I personally like a four-hour connection and in the last 10 years of my business flying I never missed a connection. Not one.
It is always sunny at 35,000 feet
If you like to look out the window, the view is much better if choose the seat that is on the “shady” side of the plane – where the sun is behind you. Think about the flight direction and time of day to figure that out. The “A” seats (as in seat 23A) are on the left side of the plane.
Leave early
If (as I have heard so many people loudly proclaim) missing this flight will make you miss some critical event (interview, meeting, wedding, birth, …) then you are a fool for cutting it that close. All airlines have three major partners that they have no control over: the Federal Aviation Administration, Homeland Security, and Mother Nature. If your are traveling for a once-in-a-lifetime, super-important reason, leave two days early. Three days early if it is your wedding. Really.
When trouble strikes
When you fly, and things are not going well, there are a few key facts-of-life you must understand to rationally evaluate what your options are.
- There is no spare plane. The cost of keeping a spare 100 million dollar plane sitting around is very high. Even at huge hub airports there is no spare plane and no spare crew waiting to fly it. If your plane breaks then either the passengers are spread out over other flights or the airline cancels some other flight and assigns the plane to your flight.
- Flight status displays lie right up to the last minute. The airlines typically show the flight status of your flight as “on time” right up to the last minute. To get a better idea of your probability of flying on time look at the arrivals monitor for the flight that lands at the gate your flight is scheduled to depart from. Typically that flight arrives about an hour before your departure. If it’s delayed…the probability that your departing flight will be delayed goes way up.
- Insignificant weather matters. When the airlines say “bad weather at the destination” is causing the delay sometimes it is violent weather. But most times it is just the local conditions that lower the airports overall capacity to move airplanes:
- Unusual wind conditions can force the airport to use a set of runways that has less capacity for takeoffs and landings.
- Visibility can be just bad enough so that they have to switch to a different set of flight rules that either further spaces out takeoffs and landings or it prevents planes from simultaneously landing on parallel runways.
- Planes do not hurry. Once in the air, the captain of a delayed flight will often say something like “We will do what we can to make up time.” What they can do is basically nothing. Fuel is expensive and going just a little faster burns a lot more fuel. Also the difference between the cruise and max speeds, for several commonly used jet aircraft, is less than 10%. If you get in the air late, you will arrive late.
If you think about each one of the above facts of life you might see analogs in the computer performance work you do.
When you are stuck
When a huge storm shuts down the airport… accept your fate. The only rational thing to do is to ride the chaos with grace and style. Stay flexible, stay pleasant, and be helpful to others. Plan to convert this dreary experience into a great story. You can write the story of The Massive Airport Blizzard to read either:
- I yelled at dozens of people to no effect and got home two days late.
- I had some really interesting conversations, helped someone, made a new friend, and got home two days late.
It is your choice. Choose to be happy, because grumpy rarely works for anyone.
I also have many useful hints about doing computer performance work once you land at your destination in: The Every Computer Performance Book which is available at Amazon, B&N, or Powell’s Books. The e-book is on iTunes.
The Every Computer Performance Book is the sum of what I had to pass on to the next generation and this blog contains a lot of what is in that book, plus a few extra goodies. I wrote the book to give back useful things that will always be true about performance work. I wrote the blog to help you find the book and for those that prefer their information in a digital form.
This is a lot like my old job in Professional Services – A customer has a problem, I fly in, find the trouble, and then don’t see them until the next problem crops up.
The Every Computer Performance Blog 