For the past two months it has seemed that every two weeks I’m heading down to Boston to board a plane somewhere. In February, we ended the month with our trip to Florida to go on the cruise. Two weeks after returning, I flew to Austin, TX for a national conference of school technology directors. On Easter weekend, Janet and I flew to Denver, CO on a whim to celebrate our friend, Michael’s 70th birthday. And in two weeks, we’ll be flying to Kansas City to visit the kids. That’s a lot of flying for a couple of working empty nesters. Occasionally I include a travel tip in my blog, and this post is dedicated to the tip.

Before I continue with my tip. My trip to Austin was awesome seeing bats fly out from under the bridge and enjoying a little of the city’s nightlife. I tried Texas Bar B Q for the first time and was affirmed that while good, it’s not as good as KC! The conference was fantastic and I got to network with many people all over the country who do what I do.

In 2010, Janet and I booked a trip to London and Paris on a Delta flight out of Kansas City. The first leg was to depart on Friday night to Atlanta, and from there we were to fly to London to arrive on Saturday around noon. Being an international flight, we arrived two to three hours early to make sure everything would go right. When we arrived, we learned that due to heavy thunderstorms in Atlanta, our flight had been delayed. When we finally were able to board a few hours later, we ended up sitting at the gate for over an hour because a light on the plane would not turn off. By the time we got to Atlanta at 1:30 on Saturday morning, our connecting flight to London had already left leaving us to spend the night at the Hartzfeld airport. We’d been issued tickets for another flight that appeared to leave at 11:59 PM that evening. We went online to see if there were other flights that would leave earlier, but didn’t see any. When the ticket counters opened later that morning, we decided to try our luck with an agent. After waiting in line for about a half hour, we were able to speak to a charming lady who informed us that there were no earlier flights to London. She recommended we go back to our hotel for the day, to which we replied we’d slept on the floor here in the airport. I looked at Janet and told her we’d have to go ahead wait until tonight. I was about to turn away when the agent corrected me that our rebooking was Sunday night, not Saturday night. We immediately re engaged with her letting her know in no uncertain terms that this was not acceptable. I asked her if there were flights to other cities like Dublin, Paris, or Berlin that we could get connecting flights to. This redirection turned into good fortune as she was able to get us on a 3:00 flight to Rome, then to Amsterdam, and finally to London only 24 hours after we were originally supposed to land. Throughout the ordeal, I learned a lot about making last minute adjustments on the fly, navigating through foreign airports, and remaining optimistic amid the most frustrating circumstances. The trip was a success and our trip insurance paid for the missing day of hotel fees we’d already paid. We made up for the sightseeing missed and even got to see two West End shows. I shared this tale to say that at the time, we swore off Delta as the airline we never wanted to fly again.

And now another break from my story to share some pictures of our flight to Denver. The mountains were beautiful!! The downtown area is a little more rundown than I’d expected. But, the party was fantastic! Janet and I enjoyed first class seats on both legs of the trip and made our whirlwind trip very bearable!

When I moved to New Hampshire, we decided that we needed to look at a credit card that had rewards points. Knowing that both of us would travel to and from Kansas City frequently, we needed to make every dollar count. I looked at the airlines that serviced Manchester NH and there weren’t very many that flew to Kansas City. In fact, my choices were pretty much Delta and Southwest. As much as I dreaded Delta, Southwest wasn’t on my list of favorites either. I decided to give them another shot and enrolled in the Delta Skymiles through American Express. We began using these cards for almost every purchase in order to build up points and status. From the very beginning I began to see it paying off through miles accumulated. There were some flights that were almost free because of the points I earned. A couple of years later we upgraded to Gold, Platinum, and finally Reserve. With each card came new perks that made flying easier, and many times more affordable. These days we’re automatically upgraded to Comfort+ and often First Class. We also have the use of the Delta SkyMiles club at many airports which saves money on food purchases. Though we switched airports to Boston and have more choices, we’ve remained with Delta for the perks. So here’s my tip. Even if you only travel once or twice a year, get a card with travel rewards. Stay loyal to one airline, cruiseline, car rental, or hotel chain and watch the benefits accumulate. We need to do better with the last two, but the bonuses we’re getting for flights and cruises have certainly made traveling much more enjoyable for these New England tourists.