e-mail format for flight info sent to friends
 

I'm curious how much effort people devote to formatting flight information when sending it off to friends/family that you are visiting. I've noticed that I often take a bit of time trying to present the information in the most readable format, so that my friends can quickly see flight times and connecting cites.

Or do just most people say: "hey John, I land in SFO at 10pm" and leave out all of the potentially extraneous info like airline, flight number.

The other option of course is to just e-mail the itinerary from the airline website, which I'm sure the greatest majority of people do, and I may just be the sole weirdo out there who still attempts to boil it down.

I sent off an e-mail today to a friend who I'll be meeting up with in 2 different cities, flying at different times on different airlines, and formatted the info like this:

--------------
Date: Wednesday, May 2
Flight: NW 820
Departs: IND at 1:52PM
Arrives: MCO at 4:09PM

Date: Friday, May 4
Flight: NW 427
Departs: MCO at 9:46AM
Arrives: DTW at 12:28PM

Date: Friday, May 4
Flight: NW 386
Departs: DTW at 1:30PM
Arrives: BOS at 3:26PM

--------------

on another occasion I just sent something like this:

--------------
Mon 3/20
Arrive SEA 7:08pm
Mon 3/27
Depart SEA 10:35pm
--------------

and the last example is:

--------------
12/14
IND->MSP 9:30am-> 10:22am NWA #221
MSP->LAX 11:25am-> 1:18pm NWA #91

12/17
LAX->LAS 10:30am-> 11:37pm NWA #628

12/20
LAS->MSP 1:00am-> 5:57am NWA #434
MSP->IND 10:03am-> 12:40pm NWA #498
--------------

So how do you do it?
Duane-O

Its need-to-know basis here.

Just flight number/arrival time/terminal if someone's meeting/expecting me. If I'm staying with someone then a rough time I would be leaving them.

With family giving them the whole list would only cause them to start fussing at every point of departure/arrival needing confirmation that I'd "made it OK".

With a selected few - usually those who might actually be involved in changing a flight for me or whatever - I'll give a PNR number. They also get key insurance data too.

I go out of my way to HIDE departure flight information because sometimes I like to turn up later than recommended knowing that "there's never a queue" or earlier than recommended because I want to sneak off and do some shopping first or get free grub in a lounge. I really don't want people planning to "see me off".... just leaves me stuck with all the plebs the wrong side of security.

And I NEVER tell booked taxi drivers when my flight is. This can cause them to take it upon themselves to turn up late if it suits them on the basis that "we've still got plenty of time". Yeah right.... and are they going to compensate me for missing my flight?

we have to tell family overseas all the time. Language is different and so are times. I generally do it by giving them the whole itin something like this:

14 mar 06 - 22 mar 06:
BOS-AMS-BOS
NW/KLM

(so the Dutch understand it)

14 mar 06
BOS
18:05hr
NW#38

+++

15 mar 06
07:45 hr
AMS

+++++++++++++

22 mar 06
AMS
14:05hr
NW #37

+++

22 mar 06
15:30hr
BOS


We told them on one occasion what it means in order... For example, my codes mean this:

14 mar 06 (is the date of flying out of...)
BOS (...which is the city where we leave from...)
18:05hr (...at this time...)
NW#38 (...on this flight.)

+++

15 mar 06 (is when we get there - due to time change...)
07:45 hr (...at this hour...)
AMS (...in this, the home airport for them.)

If it's an American, I change the times to non Euro/military but I still do the dates that way to be cool :D

Great post, doconner.

Your first method is pretty much an exact duplicate of the way I do it. I find that forwarding the confirmation e-mail too often results in a garbled message. They don't need to know that I can "get a great rate on a rental car" or the other nonsense airlines include in those things.

I understand jimbo99's concern about revealing too much info about connecting flights, etc. I usually save that info for parents/spouse only. Mainly in case of a tragedy, they will know--at least to the extent of my original itinerary--whether I was or was not on the flight in question.

I copy and paste from the website into a text editor like Notepad to strip out all the HTML code, and then paste that into an email.

I forward the itinerary. We know all the acronyms, but our friends and family aren't always as savvy. Not everybody understands HP86 MCO-EWR.

I agree that it is a need-to-know.

If it is someone meeting me at the airport, then just the flight inbound and the arrival time. But even with family, I don't just forward the conf email because often those have details about price, etc--I don't really want to advertise to my sister, for example, how much I paid for the flight. So I usually cut and paste just flight info, clean it up so it is legible and send only that on.

-ww

actually, this time I just printed the AA itinerary emails I just got to PDF, easily and quickly cropped out everything except the actual list of flights we are on with record locator on it, and sent a short email to family with that attached. None of them use PDAs but they have computers and so in this day and age, anyone who cannot read or accept attachments should not be using email anyway.

:)