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Summertime Space-A Air Travel

Any empty seats here as we cross the Atlantic?

By, Marv Feldman, Col, USAF (ret)

and Carole Feldman

Jacksonville, Florida

Marvfeldman@yahoo.com

We have been warned ‘never” to travel Space-A when schools are on vacation!  Experienced travelers told us that all the passenger terminals have hundreds of active duty military families sleeping on the floor for weeks in line ahead of us (for few aircraft seats).   We do not worry about these dire horror stories, continue to travel and have fun and “Travel on less per day...the military way”.

How is this done?  Simple:  We avoid the “choke points.”  

While it is true that often there are often hundreds of families sleeping on the floor of the Travis AFB terminal dreaming of a vacation in Hawaii, we bypass Travis and go to Hawaii (and other Pacific destinations) through North Island (San Diego) or McChord (Seattle).  On a recent trip to Europe (yes, in the summertime), we were told that there were nearly 500 people at Ramstein trying to get back to the States.   Naval Station Rota (Spain) told us that they were moving retirees and had several flights each day back to the USA.  We bypassed Ramstein and took Ryanair to Seville then bus to Rota.  Within hours of walking through Rota’s front gate, we were on a C-5A flying to Kentucky!  By the way, on this flight Rota offered 73 seats and there were only 15 of us on the plane, so we stretched out and got a comfortable night’s sleep.

Don’t let the naysayers get you down!  

Get out there and have fun!

Carole in a nearly Empty C-40 Elmendorf to Jax

Carole relaxing on a nearly empty C-5A Rota, Spain to Kentucky

Marv, 1 of 2 passengers on NATO C-17, McGuire-Ramstein