Road warrior of the air
After the service has been in place now for almost two years, I finally had the chance to try the Horizon Air Eureka to LA flight the week of Feb 13. I admit it wasn't my first choice of air travel. As a VERY frequent flier, I try to keep my business clustered with as few carriers as possible so I can rack up miles and (more important) elite status that comes in handy when I'm flying standby or need other considerations on the road like 1st class upgrades. Still, I enjoyed the Horizon flight and I'm thankful for another flight choice in and out of our admittedly remote paradise.
Part of the Horizon experience flying to either Portland or LA is the "triangulation" with Redding, in which 1/2 of the flights stop in Redding before landing at your destination. Sure, the stop is short, but it's still one more delay and one more complication that could result in canceled flights and missed connections. What's worse, the traveler has to discern whether the Redding stopover is actually on the itinerary, because some travel agents or online booking services don't make it very clear. You have to look closely at the flight duration or the small print, and even that can be misleading. Mine said "1-stop." OK, technically and compared to non-stop, this means the airplane will make one stop before reaching its destination. But to the untrained eye, 1-stop means the plane will take off and make only one stop --- where you want to go.
I admit I'm cranky. It's just that I do a LOT of flying. My personal best was 1997-98 when I made 12 trips to Hong Kong. Trust me, overseas travel with the extreme time differences and extraordinarily long flights is not for the squeamish; these were 15 hours each way. Even though I don't travel nearly this much today, I still fly a lot. Since Jan 1, I've traveled to Costa Rica, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, Chicago and back to San Francisco. Next week, I go to Salem, Oregon. This is only the middle of February for gosh sakes.
As it stands, I'm treated like Norm on Cheers when I arrive at the SFO Red Carpet Club. Maybe, this is why I wasn't totally at ease on Horizon. I don't belong to the American Airlines or Alaska Airline private airport clubs, so I'm stuck with trying to get work done balancing a laptop near the gates. I consider my United Airlines Red Carpet Club membership as not optional. Occasionally, I'll find myself in some out of the way location, such as Biloxi, Mississippi where I went last year, and there won't be a Red Carpet Club. But otherwise, it's a welcome oasis where a road warrior can relax, get a high speed data connection and a nice snack.
And then there are the 1st class upgrades. Some of this may sound hedonistic, but the truth is that traveling first and business class means you arrive refreshed and ready to go to work. Considering that even a mundane trip nowadays seems to take at least 12 hours, it's hard to hit the ground running after flying all day (especially with time zone changes).
Still, Horizon is fun ... when I returned from my trip to Chicago, I connected through Portland and they gave us a free microbrew on the flight to Redding / Eureka. Because Eureka travelers now have more choices in flights, the overall traffic at the Eureka/Arcata airport has gone up substantially. This is good news because it helps us to justify a control tower and even more flight choices. See some of the airport expansion plans at www.RREDC.com.
I love Eureka, but I also deeply appreciate the chance to see the rest of the world. It makes me appreciate the North Coast all the more. Especially when I return from Chicago where it was 12 degrees and snowing. YIKES !!
Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com