In August I wrote about a JetBlue offer where a mere $599 could buy you all the flights you want for a month. I hoped that with all of the nation’s unemployment woes, someone would seize the opportunity to fly to all of JetBlue’s 56 destinations.
Well, it doesn’t look like anyone did. The promotion ended last week, but this Associated Press article does detail the efforts of two guys who at least got some fun out of the deal.
They hit 30 cities in the span of 31 days, covering more than 50,000 miles, according to the article. One thing that may not have occurred to them–and I wouldn’t have thought of–the time they spent at hub airports like New York’s JFK.
You can see their itinerary at their Web site, which also details their goal of spending no more than 12 hours on the ground before boarding another flight.
With the number of flights available to and from major cities, there are a few curious entries in their plans. I do applaud their effort on September 23, when they flew from Tampa to New York in the morning, caught a lunchtime flight to Boston and capped it off with an evening jaunt to San Diego. I’ll even ignore that they wrote “San Diega” on the site.
I think from looking at their list that there was some sort of aversion to using connecting flights. In fact, it seems like they took a lot of evening flights to New York just so they could take a non-stop morning flight to somewhere new. That’s how they spent the last nine days of the trip –San Jose to NYC, NYC to Raleigh, Raleigh to NYC, NYC to Phoenix, Phoenix to NYC, NYC to Denver, Denver to NYC, NYC to Portland, Portland to NYC, NYC to Rochester, Rochester to NYC, NYC to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to NYC.
Having not taken the opportunity to try this out myself, I can’t say for sure there was a better way. Maybe next time JetBlue offers such a deal someone will make a better run at all 56 destinations.
But of course that brings up another question–what did they do with all of their time in the JetBlue terminal at JFK? They took at least one flight from JFK on 22 out of the 31 days, including 29 total flights. Did they make friends with the gate employees? Is there a good sandwich shop nearby? By the end were they acting like snooty JetBlue regulars, or were they completely sick of looking at the back of a JetBlue seat?
So many pressing questions.
That sounds extremely horrible and not the slightest bit enjoyable. Unless you really, really like being in airports.
i saw that they became good friends with the jetblue employees, posing for pictures with the airline attendants and such. they were on ABC world news for their travels, but i don't think the story mentioned the amount of time spent at JFK. I think I'd get sick of it. try some new airports, for crying out loud! my best friend had a less than enjoyable experience at the detroit airport, where she had to race to get on her connecting flight through a terminal with wacky music and crazy lighting effects that she said were straight out of a hitchcock movie. the worst part is that she's quite pregnant and couldn't run like most people did to get through the chaos and reach their gate.
I was really excited when I saw the story, thinking they would have done all of the cities. It seemed like the only logical reason to embark on such a trek. But spending that much time at one airport would drive me bananas.