A Quantum Diaries Survivor

Tomorrow I will wake up early, pack my stuff, clean the room I have been using in the Padova University apartment, come to Fermilab to check a few more things, and then leave for the O’Hare airport, where flight LH435 will leave in the afternoon to Munich.

In Munich, on the following morning, I will have just 40 minutes to rush to the check-in for the flight to Venice. Another hour of flight, and I will be at the Marco Polo airport. There, I need to take a bus to the Mestre train station. Then a train to Calalzo. And finally a bus to Padola, where I think I will arrive in the late afternoon.

All in all, a trip a little short than 24 hour.

I still hope for a business class upgrade in the Chicago-Munich tract, but I know it’s unlikely to happen – let’s say a 15% chance, given the heavy traffic of August. However, I have a strategy. Let’s see if it brings me good luck to disclose it here as it did in my outbound flight a week ago…

I have been told once by Lufthansa personnel that the waiting lists for free upgrades they keep in case they have an overbooked Economy Class are filled with their Senator members in the order with which these come to the check-in. So that would imply that a good strategy is to check in quite early. But I doubt that… My past experience suggests the opposite.

And indeed, there is a reason why a late check-in might be more profitable. When the flight is overbooked the check-in personnel fill in the seats in Economy Class as long as they have any left, in the hope that by delaying the solution of the problem they minimize the final adjustments. This will cause them to reassign the seats that were pre-assigned to Senators that did not show up yet (comfortable aisle seats in the front) to regular economy travelers.

Now, if you arrive reasonably late (not too much!) with a Senator card, you have a fat chance to catch them with no good seats left, and still undecided whether they have a problem in Economy or not that needs a solution with upgrades. This way, they are likely to yield and upgrade you, especially if they are under pressure (little time left for check-in, still people to check). The difference with an early check-in is that you have a chance of an upgrade even when they end up having enough space in Economy.

I just called the Senator line at Lufthansa and got a nice aisle seat preassigned. Tomorrow my flight is at 4.45, and I will check in at 3.30 or so… Let’s see what happens!

Being a physicist is a nice job… But there are times when I would rather be a EEC employee as my friend Francesco, who always travels in Business Class. Darn!