I Don’t Regret Spending $7,000 On A Plane Ticket

Now hold on! Hear me out. My Mom came to Seattle for my birthday and we started talking about money – as usual 🙂 . My favorite. My partner commented that while his values and spending have never really changed – mine have. And he cited as as example me spending $7,000 for a $21,000 roundtrip First Class ticket on the luxury airline Emirates to the Maldives while in my second year in NYC. While we were talking I realized something shocking: I don’t regret buying that plane ticket. Despite it being 35% of my current budget I don’t regret what I did. Let’s go back in time and investigate why.

It was 2012. I didn’t have the goal to retire early. I didn’t even know it was possible. I was living in NYC in a rundown apartment with 5 people and 1 bathroom. I had to take 3 trains to get to work and the transfers meant that I didn’t have enough time to read or do anything really because I would miss my stop. I was working at my second job in 2 years. I maxed my 401K and saw the rest as spending money. I wasn’t making a lot, but I wasn’t spending a lot either (See: cheap, shitty apartment). The rest of that money was supposed to make me feel good and the way to feel good was to spend it on a beautiful tropical beach far away during my 2 weeks of vacation…right? 🙂

For a few years my Mom had the dream to fly the airline Emirates. She set a goal that we could save up and buy a Business Class ticket for around $7,000 and fly to the Maldives, which she only discovered when looking where this airline flies. We had a plan. Save, wait a few years and splurge. One night while I was still sitting at my cubicle working my Mom emailed me a deal Emirates was having that allowed people to buy their regular $21,000 First Class ticket for $7,000…what we were planning to pay for Business Class to fly literally to the other side of the world to the Maldives.

In her email she said this was cool and that hopefully they will have the deal when we’re ready in a few years. I looked at my bank account: $9,000 in cash and responded to her “Forget that. LET’S DO IT NOW!!!” She was surprised. I’m not sure what possessed me to say that. I’m usually more cautious in my life. Maybe it was my shitty life situation. Maybe it was working late that night. I have no idea, but we booked it.

Then our bad luck set in. We seem to have terrible luck with international travel. Something always seems to happen. We’ve arrived at far away airports to be told that our flight has been delayed 12 hours. We’ve received notifications that our flights have been cancelled while already in the far away city it departs from. This time it was something even wilder: Hurricane Nemo. It was so ironic to be because my Mom’s favorite movie is Finding Nemo…but this was not the cuddly clown fish we knew.

My Mom called me two days before I was supposed to leave saying she was worried flights would be cancelled and I wouldn’t be able to get to the Emirates flight in Seattle because of the hurricane. I was still at work and she was throwing out all these options like “Can you leave right now?!” “Can you take a 24 hour bus to Atlanta with 10 stops and not sleep?” I was freaking out. Probably because I don’t like making those kinds of decisions under duress. I remember starting to cry a little in the bathroom (I cry when I’m frustrated, not sad really) and luckily the only person that saw me is one of the two friends I’ve retained from that job.

In the end I didn’t have to take a bus across the country. Instead I worked it out with my job for me to leave a day early and instead of flying to Seattle I flew to Atlanta to both avoid the storm and meet up with my Mom. That morning I arrived at JFK and it was strangely empty and silent. I looked up at the flight board and most of the flights had a big, red “Cancelled” next to it. But not mine…I took deep breaths and thought through alternate plans in my head.

Luckily they weren’t needed. I got on my almost empty plane and watched NYC fade into the distance while rain beat against the window. I made it out. I arrived in Atlanta and while waiting for my Mom at our gate to Seattle watched on the news as NYC got pounded by the hurricane. They had grounded all planes. My original flight to Seattle had been cancelled. But we made it!

I flew with Mom to Seattle and had a day to explore the city. It was actually my first time there and the beginning of my love affair that led me to move across the country and live here now. Then the madness began. Included in our First Class tickets were all kinds of amenities that I’d never heard of or experienced before, such as:

A Personal Chauffeur: A black town car picked us up from our hotel and took us to the airport

First Class Lines: We approached the check-in area and saw a long line in front of ours until we realized there was an empty First Class line right next to it…First Class only has 6 seats so I can imagine it’s empty a lot. We were checked in in no time

First Class Lounges:

• Seattle: In Seattle there is a separate lounge for the 6 people in First Class. We were the only ones in it. I ordered a free cocktail and looked out at the plane that would be our home for the next 14 hours.
• Dubai: This is the wildest place I’ve ever seen in my life. It was multiple stories with spas, showers, nap rooms, full restaurants and a wine cellar. We ate like queens and drank Green Apple juice for the first time. It was exquisite.

Express Security Pass: In Dubai we received a First Class express pass to help us into a shorter customs line. We were out in no time.

Free Hotel: A hotel in Dubai was included in our ticket. The room was weird and I loved it. There was glass that showed the tub from the main bedroom (Why? So curious) and there were TVs in the tub and bathroom mirror. Food was also included and despite being full we gorged. It was delicious.

Now for what we originally paid for: the flight. It was the wildest plane I’ve ever been on. I stayed up all 14 hours of the flight except for maybe 1 where I tried out the flat sleeping bed. You could even call other seats from a full sized phone on your chair. I chatted with Mom that way. We received a full menu and could order at any time so I ordered basically everything on the menu: 5 courses or so at a time with wine pairings. I watched movies from the hundreds of options they had and reveled in this alternate dimension I’d stumbled into.

After our stop in Dubai we got on a smaller plane that was also wild. The leg room was out of this world. In both I had at least a foot between my fully outstretched toes and the back of the next seat. Both had giant TVs and the smaller plane had food on carts that we could pick off what we wanted. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

This is the part in the story where our bad luck catches up to us again 🙂 . After a week in an overwater bungalow in the Maldives snorkeling with tropical fish we arrived at the airport for our return flight. It was delayed. We waited there for hours. We finally got on the flight and were nervous the whole time because we would have to sprint to make our flight home.

We rushed off the plane to grab our bags and were told our flight had just left the gate. We missed it. We were stuck on a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and lord knows I didn’t have the money to buy another flight like that home. We went to the lounge to talk to someone and see what could be done. Shockingly we were told the tiny Maldivian Airline would pay to get us home (Did we bankrupt them?!). We looked up Emirates flights and I don’t know why, but I took a picture of what they were showing us. I’m so glad I did since that picture saved our asses later.

We were given a room in a little hotel in Male, Maldives and waited to hear our fate. “Would we be in coach? Would we be on Emirates? How long will we be here?” After leaving early I had to tell my boss that we were stuck for another day at least. It was a stressful time. We didn’t have working cell phones and as a result were scared to leave the room in case we missed the airline’s call.

After a few chats with them we kept being told there were no Emirates flights, or no First Class flights and by the afternoon I was fed up. I let the mini pit bull that I’ve been cultivating to be good at my job out. I asked the person if they had actually called Emirates. They had not. I told them to 3 way call Emirates right now. They did. I spoke to the Emirates person and gave them the flight numbers I’d taken a picture of. There were First Class seats on a flight the next morning to JFK, which worked even better for me since that’s my final destination and it’s only 2 hours from Atlanta instead of 6 like Seattle. Crisis averted. My Mom told me after that she’d never seen me like that and I reminded her of my stepdad: firm, direct and not taking any shit.

Shockingly after all that drama the flight turned out to be worth the stress. Instead of going back on the same planes we came on we were flying on an A380, the largest consumer plane in existence. It was my first double-decker plane and had a fucking SHOWER that we used at 40,000 feet! Life dream complete. We arrived home shocked at the wild world we had just experienced.

Despite the very high cost of that ticket I think it was worth it. It opened an entire world we didn’t know existed: Where you can be as excited, if not MORE excited about a long haul flight than the destination. Instead of feeling dread you’re filled with anticipation. That’s a huge leap: Arriving refreshed at a new destination instead of angry and tired. I think it was worth it – not just for the flight, but also all the amenities I talked about that we had no idea were included. This revelation led me to figure out cheaper ways to fly this way and enjoy traveling to far off places with crystal clear water. Travel hacking to the rescue!

Until next time coral reefs…