Originally Posted by
UAPremExecflyer
Your $400 "savings" evaporate pretty quickly: gas for the drive to and from PHL and hotel/parking package. That total: at least $180. Then your time: you have to leave much earlier, drive longer, stay in an hotel, fly backwards to DTW, connect (hopefully your inbound is on-time) and then fly longer to get to your cruise. And then do the same on the reverse. Sounds like you're adding at least 24 hours total journey time to the trip, as well as a connection. Not sure how you see $400 in "savings" here? If you value only your time at $10 an hour, you're already losing money.
First off, your numbers ignore the fact that it would cost me money to get to JFK/EWR as well.
I'm taking the day off when I fly out and it's not a big deal if I have to leave a few hours early. Coming back, I've decided that I will stay in a hotel in PHL that night because my flight only gets in at 7:30pm. But I can do that for $130 including being able to park my car at the hotel for the entire time. I generally rent a car (since I have Hertz on-site at the company I work for). If I went to JFK/EWR it would be around $60 each way; to PHL, $100. So staying overnight makes it cheaper than renting a car in each direction and I get the added bonus of not having to drive home when my body thinks it's midnight. Yes, I will get home later than if I was able to fly into EWR/JFK, but it's a weekend so I won't miss work, and the the cost (other than added mileage and tolls) will be comparable. I have a 1:15 drive to EWR (maybe a little less to JFK but higher tolls). PHL is 2:40. So it's not THAT much further. Extra mileage is 90 each way, so that's 6 gallons of gas = $20 since I can get cheap gas in NJ.
I was able to get a 2:49pm flight out of PHL which gets me to AMS at 8am, which is perfect since it gets me a full day there. I'm arriving 2 days before my cruise.
Obviously if I miss the DTW-AMS flight I am going to have problems, but none of the cheap fares out of JFK/EWR were direct, either.
You forgot the added bonus - more FF miles :-).