Would You Say You Have Good Travel Karma?

Some people have good travel karma. You know these people when you see them. They show up at the airport forty-five minutes before departure, sail through security with nobody in front of them, discover their gate is directly across from Starbucks, get upgraded for no discernible reason, and land ten minutes early. Their bag is already circling the carousel by the time they get downstairs.

Me, personally, I have great travel karma. I get princess/rockstar parking almost everywhere I go. My security lines are always fast. The people I interact with are always kind. I've never had to wait for lost bags. I don't see many free upgrades yet, but that's because I couldn't collect points when I was flying. I do think my travel karma got better after becoming a flight attendant.

People with good travel karma travel with the confidence of people who believe transportation infrastructure exists primarily to move them efficiently from one place to another. You know, what it was designed for. People with good travel karma also know how to behave in shared public spaces: they know where to stand. They know when to move. They know that delays happen and aren't a personal attack. They know not to put things in checked luggage that they might require to participate in society upon arrival.

My dad does not have the gift of good travel karma. In fact, I would say my dad has possibly the worst travel karma of anyone I have ever met.

It isn’t even that he does anything particularly dramatic. He isn't the passenger sprinting through the terminal with one shoe in his hand. He isn't trying to carry a full-size bottle of shampoo through security and arguing about transportation law with the TSA. He just has to exist near commercial aviation and eventually something goes wrong.

This became particularly obvious when I was still new enough to being a flight attendant that putting a family member on my travel benefits felt like a troubling decision. I knew I couldn't expect my mother to behave appropriately enough to not get me fired. But, my dad is a class guy, and knew that these travel benefits were valuable — and could be taken away.

Flight attendants don't exactly get “free plane tickets” in the way normal people imagine we do. The primary benefit of working for an airline is getting free flights. Employee travel is usually space available, which means you are welcome aboard if everyone who actually paid for a seat is already sitting down and there happens to be something left over. Seats are assigned in order of seniority.

It is an extraordinary benefit. It is also, essentially, gambling. I understood this because I worked for an airline. My poor dad did not.

He came to Portland for a big event, had a great time, and was attempting to get home using my travel benefits.

He didn't make it onto the first flight.

I'm proud of him, because he didn't freak out. He just stayed calm, called me, and went to the next gate when I got him reassigned to a new flight. Again, reassigned didn't mean he had a seat, just that he was in line for any available seat.

Then he didn't make a second flight, and that set off a sequence of events that caused the entire experiment to devolve into such a stressful mess that I finally just bought him a regular ticket home.

So much for free flights, right? This was my first personal introduction to Dad's Travel Karma. According to him, the signs had always been there.

Years later, I spent something like three thousand dollars flying him from Charlotte to Maui. First class. Actual purchased first class. No standby list. No employee travel shenanigans. I thought I had finally defeated the curse.

You cannot get bumped if you have a confirmed first-class ticket, I reasoned. The aviation gods heard this and started laughing. Somewhere during the trip, my father managed to get downgraded because the airline needed the seat for a deadheading pilot.

Now, there are perfectly legitimate operational reasons an airline might need to reposition a pilot. Pilots have to get to airplanes so they can fly the airplanes, which is generally considered an important component of running an airline. I get it. But still.

Three thousand dollars. Charlotte to Maui. First class. Come ON. And somehow my dad ends up being the guy standing at the gate holding a new boarding pass that says something considerably less exciting. It was only for one leg, but his anxiety levels were through the roof when he finally arrived.

heavy sigh

I'd love to tell you this is surprising. But it's kind of not, because this is a man who once checked his wallet, and not accidentally.

Many years ago (okay, early 2000s), my father was leaving Las Vegas after a convention. He had checked his suitcase and was preparing for one of his favorite activities in the entire world: sitting absolutely motionless on an airplane.

My dad is what the internet would now call a "raw-dogger" on a flight. He just sits there. No movie. No book. No newspaper. No headphones. No crossword puzzle. No frantic organization of photographs on his phone. Nothing.

He likes to get on the airplane, sit down, cross his arms, stretch his legs out as far as the seat architecture allows, and simply exist until the aircraft arrives somewhere else. You can see it now: Ron Swanson at 35,000 feet.

The man does not need entertainment. He doesn't need anything to fidget with. He doesn't even particularly need his own possessions. Apparently.

Because before this flight, he decided he didn't want anything cluttering up his minimalist airborne experience. So he put his wallet in his suitcase. Then he put his car keys in his suitcase. Then he checked the suitcase.

If you are a frequent traveler, you probably just made a noise.

Maybe you whispered a horrified, “Oh no.”

That is the correct response. A voice across the ages whispers: No. Do not do this.

There is an extremely short list of things you should never put in a checked bag, and somewhere near the top — right beside medication, identification, and the only copy of important paperwork — are YOUR WALLET AND THE KEYS TO THE CAR YOU LEFT AT THE AIRPORT.

My father, however, apparently looked at his wallet and car keys and thought, Won't be needing these again for at least a few hours. And onto the baggage belt they went.

Then Dad boarded the airplane completely unencumbered and enjoyed several hours of staring peacefully at the seatback in front of him.

He landed in Charlotte. His suitcase did not.

This was also long enough ago that solving this problem wasn't as simple as pulling out your phone, ordering an Uber, opening Apple Pay, tracking your AirTag, texting your neighbor, and checking the airline app to see whether your suitcase was enjoying an unexpected vacation in Phoenix.

This was the era when technology still frequently involved a pager. A beeper. Most of my audience knows what this is, but if you don't, ask someone. It was THE hit technology before everyone and their nephew had a cell phone.

So there stood my father in the baggage claim area of the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. No suitcase. No wallet. No car keys.

His car was there. His spare key was at home. Which is not tremendously helpful if you are currently standing at the airport.

There are moments in life when a problem becomes so perfectly self-contained that you almost have to admire it. He had successfully transported himself all the way across the country and simultaneously removed every tool he needed to complete the final fifteen miles of the journey. That is art, wouldn't you agree?

This is also why I firmly believe travel karma is real. Not in the spiritual sense, necessarily. I don't believe there is an airport deity somewhere keeping a spreadsheet. Although if there is, my father has apparently offended her.

Travel karma is partly luck, obviously. Weather happens. Mechanical problems happen. Crews time out. Connections misconnect. Bags occasionally wander off to places they were not invited. But travel karma is also the accumulation of hundreds of tiny decisions: Do you keep your medication with you? Do you have your wallet? Do you have your keys? Did you charge your phone? Did you leave yourself enough time to connect? Do you understand that “space available” means the space might not actually be available?

And, when things inevitably go wrong, are you able to quickly adapt?

Flight attendants learn to be adaptive quickly because our entire careers are built around transportation systems behaving unpredictably. Our job is to be a hot, swappable part of the mechanism that gets people from point A to point B.

Sometimes you land early. Sometimes you're delayed four hours. Sometimes catering doesn't show up. Sometimes your hotel van disappears around the corner and won't be back for another 20 minutes. Sometimes the airplane you were supposed to work is still in another state.

You cannot control any of it. You can only develop enough flexibility (mind, body, spirit) that the inconvenience does not immediately become a catastrophe.

Do you think you have good travel karma or not so good travel karma? Has your travel karma changed over the years?