After my experience with yet another canceled flight out of SFO and the frustration that followed [SEE: My epic battle with LifeMiles and how I was finally (sort of) victorious], I had to wonder why I even thought booking a flight to Arcata crossed my mind. I’ve now been burned so many times, that I literally prefer driving 4.5 hours instead of 45 minutes to fly one-stop out of Sacramento rather than two-stop out of Arcata.
I’d felt rather smug booking the short hop very last minute for only 7,500 LifeMiles and $30.60. But it turned out to be yet another repeat of this one mistake I keep making: banking on the SFO-ACV flight to get me home.
Yet another canceled vacation
One thing that came out of the trip was that I finally found out why our little airport has the code ACV. Simply, it stands for: Another Canceled Vacation. At least, this is what a United employee told an acquaintance of mine.
You’d think with a history of 18 segments flown between San Francisco and Arcata that have included 4 flight cancellations and 5 more major delays, I would know not to bank on this option. It sounds super convenient to avoid the hours of driving and Bay Area traffic, but I’d rather be in control of my own destiny than at the mercy of United and SkyWest.
Learn from your travel mistakes
I guess this is the point of this post. We all make mistakes as travelers, some small and inconsequential, others large and potentially costing us a vacation, such as not renewing a passport in time (SEE: How to get a passport in one day). I’ve fortunately not made too many over the years, or caught them in time that they weren’t catastrophic.
I made “mistakes” early in my award travel adventures as well, such as redeeming Southwest Rapid Rewards points for a rental car for our trip to Canada, or not using booking portals for hotels countless times because I didn’t realize you could get cash back for that. These are small mistakes, but mistakes nonetheless.
In this case I just keep being lured by the potential convenience of flying out of our local airport. I can talk about how amazing it is to arrive at ACV just before boarding and literally be in San Francisco and literally touch down 60 minutes later. But I can also remember trip after trip where this has been nothing but headache.
I’m sure I’ll fall for flying United yet again, especially since they offered me a 18,000-mile Mile Play offer for flying twice, and I have one or two work trips lined up in the next two months. I might just chance it. But I better not. It’ll almost certainly be a mistake.
How about you? Do you have any travel mistakes you’ve made multiple times?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
At MFR, we have a few more options than ACV, but that connection through SFO is always so tempting. It always seems the be the cheapest and fastest. On paper. The reality is that my last three trips through SFO have been delayed 12-24 hours due to weather there.
But I’m dumb, so I’m doing it again on Friday.
I totally hear ya! I’m sure I’ll make this mistake yet again.
As a fellow ACV flyer we do it because when it works, it works great. It’s one less day I need to take a vacation day. Or I don’t have to worry about paying for parking or an expensive SFO hotel. Of course I try to time flights to avoid the hotel. What if the there’s a slide and the 101 is closed. I once had to take the 299 to get to SFO. Of course it very often doesn’t go well out of ACV. I’ve missed appointments, work, vacation time due to unreliability. I too recently flew down on a lifemiles ticket. A separate ticket from my trip. It’s great value. I was white knuckling it all day looking at one way car rental prices and the greyhound just in case. That trip left on time. Coming home not so, much. Even still if I had a choice I’d always fly out of ACV if I can. Though usually I don’t because of cost, the miles I have, and lack of award availability.
Always great to hear from another ACV flyer! The Lifemiles option is great…just know what you’re dealing with if you need to cancel. I have such a love/hate relationship flying out of here.
I have the same temptation problem here in St. George, Utah. Fly locally: no TSA lines, show up 30 minutes before the flight, almost free parking. Or…drive to Las Vegas (2.5 hours) and put up with congestion, high parking fees, long walk to the terminal (from economy parking) and long TSA lines. Because of clogged traffic on I-15 parallel to the Strip, add and extra hour so you don’t miss your flight. Yet again, last month, the Vegas option proved better. A 7 am flight turned into a rolling delay that lasted all day. Our aircraft, that was parked overnight, became unserviceable. Mechanics sent down from SLC later in the day, could not fix it. With only a few flights a day, there is no spare aircraft lying around. The airport is isolated with no food concessions. Finally, after 8 hours, Skywest (dba the Delta Connection) gave up and rebooked everyone…out of…Las Vegas). Never again, that is until next time.
That is awful!! I’ve always had to take matters into my own hands and sort out refund and compensation later. Eight hours is pretty unmanageable.
Well, they did provide catered pizza at noon and promised to ferry in another aircraft by 3pm. However, that plane had problems in SLC and that is when they gave up and book everyone through LAS. What was really unacceptable is that they provided no immediate compensation for the cost of the St. George-LAS shuttle bus (a regular scheduled hourly service); sort of “get there the best way you can”. Either that or wait several days until they can filter you into the limited amount of seats for SGU-SLC. Of course, if you absolutely, positively have to get somewhere in a timely fashion, the drive to LAS is a must. I feel your pain in considering the AVC option!