Weekly Countdown: 6 to 66

This week I got the flights sorted. For most people that's simply a case of finding a flight to where you want to go, on the day that you want to go, for a price that you're prepared to pay. However, as an airline employee, things are complicated by the additional choices offered by staff travel options.

With staff travel, employees can get highly discounted fares, and the opportunity of upgrades. The down side is that to get these discounts one has to travel on standby - in other words, you get a seat only if there's one left after all the fare paying passengers, and any other staff travellers with higher priority than you, have been allocated theirs. So if the flight's full, you don't get on.

This means, of course, that you are not guaranteed to get a seat on any particular flight. Great if you can be flexible, but given that I'll have a Harley waiting for me to pick up in Chicago on the 19th April, this is not ideal.

So what to do? Well my route out has to be Newcastle to Heathrow to Chicago, so the first part is to get to London. There are even more options for this, including train, coach and driving, however as I have no hope of getting a flight to the US if I don't get to London in time, so I've opted for a to pay full fare for a flight on the Sunday night, and to spend the night in the T5 Travelodge. Hardly salubrious, but OK for the few hours I'll be spending there, and a lot cheaper than getting the first flight down on Monday morning, the price of which is pushed up weekly commuters making their way down south.

So I know I'll be in Heathrow in time for a flight to the US on Monday. BA has two flights daily to Chicago, so the ideal would be to get one of those. Having been lured by the low prices and the chance of getting into Club (Business) class, I've decided to get a Premium Standby ticket on the first flight, which if I don't get on I can change to the second. As of today, there's plenty of seats unsold, but anything could happen in the next 6 weeks.
I've also bought a backup ticket to New York, as there's loads of flights there so a good chance of getting on one of them if I'm unlucky with Chicago. To bridge the gap I've also got an internal flight ticket between JFK and Chicago. Any tickets I don't use will be refunded.

I've booked the flight back from San Francisco, but to be frank, I'm less worried about getting back on time - there's worse places to be stuck!

Days to departure: 42
Paydays to departure: Just 1.
Funding: $$$No lottery win, so covered by my credit limit$$$