Seriously Thinking about a road trip
 

Sitting here with travel withdrawal symptoms, not having left the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area since my last Delta flight on March 16.

Delta is offering one-way tickets DCA-SEA for $318. Once at SEA, I would pick up a Hertz rental car and drive back to DCA. Hertz has an intermediate car priced (including drop charges) at $344 for seven days, unlimited mileage. I can probably get a President's Circle upgrade. I can probably drive this in four days, which would leave three days for rest.

As far as the flight is concerned, I'm not sure that upgrades matter, since there are no PDBs or adult beverages in either F or C+, and C+ and Y seating is 2 x 2, so I would be comfortable anywhere on the plane.

Am I crazy?

I think it’s a bit early at this point. Why not wait another month, when things are a bit more under control?

Wait 2 more weeks and you can do the RT for the same or less than the one way. Plus things will (hopefully) be more under control

Yes.

Totally understand the withdrawal symptoms!

But the point of staying at home is to not expose people unnecessarily to your potential asymptomatic infection, and not to potentially contract an infection at some point on your trip and spread it along the way. You'll be somewhere near, at minimum, a gate agent, flight attendants, fellow passengers, another gate agent at your connecting point, a rental car exit booth attendant, and several hotel employees, not to mention the person who has to clean your car and hotel room when you're done.

They're still working because there are people who need to fly, rent cars, and stay in hotels. You're not one of those people.

imo that's totally understandable, and I suspect most DL FT regulars can relate

that said, though ...
(yes)**n, n extremely large

it's about the risks YOU may UNKNOWINGLY pose to OTHERS; it's NOT about the risk tolerance you may decide to take on for yourself

Doesn't sound crazy to me. If you're healthy and take precautions go for it, sounds fun.

Not crazy at all. Don't let all of the Corona-Karens drag you down. They can waste the next two years of their life hiding in their house. (The 'Rona is here to stay and not going anywhere) Wash your hands, exhibit common sense, and you will be fine. I wish I had time in my family life and work life to take a low traffic cross country drive myself right now. I have never been able to do that before.

For the airfare...is $318 the cheapest you can get? I have to imagine that is a decent round trip price now...not one-way. I imagine you'd get the upgrade...not that it really matters.

I've been yearning to leave home too and thinking more in terms of road trips by car (both directions) in which I'd mostly be enjoying the scenery and would have little contact with people. I could take a nice day trip where the biggest risk would be filling the gas tank or even an overnight/long weekend excursion with a hotel stay and either self-cater dinner or find a drive-up/pickup place if the hotel isn't doing room service.

I have mixed feelings about flying at this point, although I agree that FC has little advantage over coach or C+ if all middle seats are blocked and there's no F&B service in domestic FC.

I would say not crazy at all! It could be a nice time for road travel as even without people flying, people in general aren't traveling and the journey back east via car could be more enjoyable than usual. If you have the time and the means - I say go for it. This whole thing has been blown out of proportion.

For me I have not left Alaska since mid December 2019 and I am going stir crazy. I had a TON of travel booked on DL this year, all scheduled to begin in late March. That's long been cancelled due to destination issues and DL schedule issues. Many more booked trips I fully anticipate having to cancel for various reasons.

I'm facing a change in employment right now (caused by the 'Rona) and I am waiting to learn a bit more about my future career plans (have an interview next week). If successful, I hope to have a few weeks before a likely new start date in June. If successful (and even if not) I plan to travel from AK to our family home in FL sometime in late May or early June. Routing via DL will likely require an overnight in SEA or ATL along the way due to the severely reduced schedule and connectivity.

If you do travel, please post a trip report. I'm quite interested to hear how things go as people start to fly again.

Extremely short sighted. 'Rona is here to stay, true...but currently without a vaccine OR cure OR palliative if you get it.

That makes it unique among all illnesses taking down 50K people a year (or more) in the US.

Sure, you can roll the dice and decide you're immortal/strong/young/fearless/whatever.

But if you DO get it...then the options start narrowing fast.

Either you're symptom free but shedding virus everywhere you go for several days...or...

You get it but only have "mild symptioms," which in 2020 means symptoms that'll knock you out for several days, worse than the flu, but not quite sick enough to need a hospital...or...

You get it as a severe case, meaning you're off to the hospital, where you now have a 50/50 shot of needing a ventilator - IF the overrun hospital you're at has one available - and then an 80% chance that you'll never come off the ventilator. That is a gentle way of saying you die.

But hey, YOLO. Head on out. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones. And if you do go positive and start shedding virus, hey, too bad for every person you come in contact with in four days across the country.

This. Do whatever you want with your own health, but the "every person you come in contact with" for four days for the OP will be Delta flight attendants and hotel housekeepers.

And other hotel staff. And restaurant or drive-through workers. And convenience store workers.

I don't blame you one bit for feeling withdraw. I haven't got ~3 million miles under my belt, but the ability to hop on a plane and go see a friend for a weekend, or a game, try some new food, or see different scenery.. I've been missing it so much over the past weeks. I had an essential(domestic) trip the first week of April. I've got another coming up the first week of May.

It was, to me, a bit surreal - nearly empty aircraft, three or four cars in the hotel lot, dusty rental cars with dead batteries.

Like you, I've spent hours browing Google Flights and a raft of other deals sites. The temptation is so strong, and travel costs so low, right now. At first I thought about an air round trip, either same day or overnight, somewhere. But there's so little that's open - even parks and such.

I looked at something similar to what you're talking about - a one way flight and driving back. In my head, that drive would be the "trip" in itself, and would scratch that itch I've been missing.

I don't have an answer for you - it's an ethics question, not a travel question. I tend to think of *myself* as fairly invincible - my emotional brain trumps the rational one on that. OTOH, I'm well aware that me taking the trip has risks not just to me - but to lots of unwitting innocent people along the way.

For me, I've scratched the itch by booking over a dozen trips for June all the way through Feb of next year. The earlier ones are domestic - and if they get cancelled cause of conditions, oh well. The later ones become more international - Brazil for a BJJ camp. Thailand for a week of kickboxing. Diving in Belize. Looking forward to that stuff is helping me with the current drought.

That said - I have a serology/antibody test on Friday morning. My *hope* is that it returns a positive antibody result - and many peers I've talked to feel the same way. If a doctor/epidemiologist/scientist wants to correct me, go right ahead - but my understanding is that a positive antibody test makes one far *less* likely to infect others. One day I'm betting that will affect the permissions *given* each of us. But, for now, I'm hoping a positive antibody result happens, and that it can give me some (well reasoned, accurate) ethical assurances about travelling without harming others.

EDIT: To address one other point you made - yeah, I'm not worrying about C+/J/F for any of those trips. Normally I'd book C+ or better depending on flight time. Now, though.. planes are mostly empty.. early boarding doesn't matter, space isn't an issue, and no meal/bev service anyway. If things are looking more crowded/"old normal" once the flights happen, I can always upgrade. Not earning 100% mileage or whatever doesn't worry me since I haven't been a loyalty shopper on this little "spree".

This is a worst-case scenario for the virus. You would be stopping in small towns and areas with little or no hospital care. It would be irresponsible. You would be OK, you'd be in DC by the time you had any symptoms. But others might be in trouble, the areas you could infect might be 'clean' and so nobody is testing or checking there. The guy at the grocery goes home to his elderly parent and they die. it's your fault.

The whole purpose of these staying home orders is to reduce movement. You would be going just about as far as you possibly could, and starting in an airport, where you'd be mixing with others from all over. It may be better to start driving from home and fly back, although still IMO irresponsible.

A day trip in the car is quite safe, but staying in multiple hotels, finding food in multiple places, multiple fuel stops, etc... it's a huge amount of contact points when the world is asking people to minimize them

Not saying you can't do it, you can, but you asked for an opinion and that is mine.

I won't be weighing in on responses to this, so if anyone wants to argue you will have the last word...

I completely get the OP, I haven't flown since February and I get to travel for free. With all these open seats, it's killing me not being able to travel.

I'm not going anywhere as long as a "stay home" order is still in place in my home state and wherever I intend to go but as soon as they lift it, I'm joining the OP and getting back in the air.

At the end of the day OP you are an adult and can make whatever decision you want. If you ask 100 different people their opinion on this you're going to get 100 different answers. So do what you want to do.