This vlog follows Nate and Kara Buchanan traveling from Barbados to Nashville with stops in Miami and Charlotte. They spend long layovers in airport lounges (notably the Centurion Lounge), miss their final connecting flight after misreading the departure board and spending time in Starbucks, and end up overnighting in Charlotte. Nate explains how American Airlines standby works (complimentary standby after missing a flight; $75 to confirm a future seat), they attempt to sleep in the terminal, and ultimately secure two standby seats the next morning.
Chapters
We did just miss our first flight in two years of traveling for the dumbest reason ever. Oh man.
I think this is home for the night.
Our alarms went off at 4:45 this morning because we have an 8am flight to go home. We only get to say that twice a year.
It's always a little bittersweet when we're going home because we're always really excited to go home and see our family and friends. But it also means that we're done traveling and this time we're done traveling for all of 2017, a second year of full time travel.
Our first stop is Miami.
Then Charlotte, then Nashville. We don't get home till 11 tonight.
It's gonna be a long travel day. The good news is there's a lounge in all the airports, right? Probably there's lounge here, there's lounge in Miami.
I don't about Charlotte.
Let's go.
There's t on this flight. It's a three hour flight. So we get to finish the movie. I love tr.
Hello everyone. Thank you for your attention. It's time to get you ready for takeoff.
Hello, St. John.
We'd like to welcome you to Miami where the local time is approximately 10:35.
Made it to Miami. Miami.
Miami. I love having global entry. We get right into the country. We don't have to wait in any lines. But I can never get the photo right. It always takes it right before I can smile.
Hilarious. We look so goofy every time.
It seems like every time we come back to the US we spend a good chunk of time in an airport lounge. Thankfully, we always come back through Dallas or Miami. So today we're going to our favorite domestic lounge, which is the Centurion Lounge. And we'll be there for the next five hours.
We made it to the lounge. The free massages are booked. And now it's time for lunch.
Time to get a massage.
Once again, five and a half hours and the lounge went by super quick. We ate a lot of food, watched a lot of planes take off and there were fresh chocolate chip cookies.
And now we're flying to Charlotte, which isn't Nashville, which is kind of sad. But we're almost. No. We also just didn't work on our computers like the whole time. We really did. And we met somebody who knew us.
From YouTube.
American Airlines, our one world partners.
Thank you for flying with us today and we hope to see you again soon.
It is now 10:30pm we just spent three hours sitting in the Charlotte airport. Not in a lounge because it turned turns out there's only two lounges in the Charlotte airport, and they're both American airline lounges, which we don't have access to because I lost my American airline status earlier this year. But then I got one world status with Air Berlin, so we still had access. And then Air Berlin filed for insolvency a couple months ago, so it's a big mess anyway. No lounge access, so we just spent the last three hours sitting in Starbucks. Let's go to Nashville.
Well, that was our flight. We did just miss our first flight in two years of traveling for the dumbest reason ever because we sat in Starbucks too long. I don't know what I was thinking. I looked at the board. It said 1035. I thought that was when we were boarding. Turns out that's when the plane actually left. So we showed up to the gate a minute before we started boarding, just like we always do. And by that time, the gates were shut and they wouldn't let us on the flight. We're not going home tonight, unfortunately, that was the last flight to Nashville tonight, so we're stuck in the Charlotte airport. We're on the first standby flight that leaves at 8, but they said it was full, so chances aren't looking too good for that. There's another one at 10, another one at, like, 11:30. That was the first one that wasn't full. A bit of a bummer. I've been trying to look for positives. I'm struggling a little bit. This is, like, one of the few airports we've ever visited where we don't have lounge access. You can't stay in the airport. You have to, like, go outside of security. So sleeping here is not going to be super easy.
Hotels around here are pretty expensive, like $150 a night and would only be there for, like, five hours. So that's not really worth it.
Just finished this book on stoicism called the Obstacle Is the Way. Kind of ironic. All about, like, not getting flustered when bad things happen.
You're doing a great job.
So I'm taking this as my opportunity to practice stoicism. Like, I read about the book. My positive is I've never flown standby before, and I didn't really know what that was about. So now I have an opportunity to learn about flying standby.
All right, we're gonna go find a place to sleep.
That light is so bright.
I think this is home for the night. Hoping my positivity is going to rub off on camera, but it's not working.
Thought we would do a little 2:39 in the morning check in.
I'd say we're both holding up extremely well.
Yeah, we got a second wind.
Both been very productive. Kara's been editing video. I've gotten a lot of work done on an income and expense report.
So far so good.
Fading quickly though.
I think the worst part now is not knowing when we're going home. Like the first two flights in the morning are full.
Well, I think now might be a good time for everybody, everybody to learn something from our mistake, which is how standby works. Because I didn't know that before tonight. I don't know if this is how it works with all the airlines, but with American, if you miss your flight, then they'll put you on the next flight on standby free of charge. Which I feel like is pretty nice of them because, like, it was totally our fault that we missed the flight. And if you don't make standby on that one, then they roll you over to the next one and the next one. But if you want to confirm a seat on a future flight, then you have to pay $75 per person.
So we'll be fine. Stand by tomorrow, have a couple hours until the sun comes up, try to get a little bit of sleep and then head back through security.
This light feels like the sun already. I don't know how we're gonna sleep.
Should be way tireder at 2:30 in the morning.
Yeah, me too.
You're looking pretty tired.
All right, let's do it.
Let's do it.
Report any suspicious persons or unusual activity to your nearest.
Thank you.
And have a good play.
Attention all travelers. Boarding passes are now required prior to entering the security checkpoints.
I need you to be closer so I can get focus.
It is 5:30, so it's been like two and a half hours.
For me. It feels like it's been like 10 hours. I think I would have rather not slept at all. This is like a small piece of carpet about this big on a tile floor. And it's about 2 degrees in here. It is really. It turned into the arctic tundra, but we did it. We survived. Let's go home. We go through security and cross our fingers that we can get on the 8 o' clock stand buffet. This is my.
My face guard for the night.
Trying to block the light. Big Kara's was my favorite.
So our Bose headphones come in this fancy case so cares up like this.
It worked.
It is very dark in there.
It's a feeling.
Come on, we're getting on the first flight. I'm so excited.
Our seats are next to each other. Just kidding. I don't even care.
Made it back to Nashville. Sorry, we didn't have time to explain. It all happened so quickly. So we're sitting there waiting. Our names are top on the standby list. I don't know how we got there in the first place, but there were nine other people on the standby list with us. Somehow, our names were at the top. And so I'm sitting behind the gate agent so I can actually, like, see his computer. And as people are getting on the plane, they're, like, checking their tickets. Every time somebody checks in, the number ticks down and ticks down. And so my heart just, like, beating as I watch the numbers sit down. And there were literally two spots left for two people to fly standby. And we got the last two spots because somehow we were first on the West. Finally made it.
Told you you couldn't talk if you're gonna be angry.
