My mother has been having health issues and one of these days (could be weeks, could be months) a sibling is going to text or call with “How soon can you get here?” Nothing drastic is on the immediate horizon, but I just want to have some semblance of a plan, rather than running around flailing my arms like Kermit.
Some baseline assumptions:
[ul]
[li]I’ll be flying SFO - ORD[/li][li]I will be flying nonstop[/li][li]With no advance purchase and wanting to keep my return schedule flexible, I expect to be paying business class fare at a minimum, and would not be surprised at first class fare/seat availability.[/li][/ul]
The main question is if there’s any worthwhile difference among airlines’ business or first class service from SFO to ORD.
Normally, I fly Southwest out of Oakland, but they don’t go to ORD, and their last-minute full-fare for cattle car class is so close to other lines’ business class, that I might as well go to the right airport in a modicum of comfort. Most OAK-ORD flights are not nonstop. If I’m in “Just get me there!” mode, I don’t want to be wasting time on a connection in Atlanta.
I frequently fly United and that’s what I suggest. Can’t help you about the difference between 1st class and business class though; I travel coach. But UAL has frequent SFO-ORD flights. There may be other airlines that offer more flights per day.
Sorry to hear about your mother’s health issues. I hope she is okay.
I’m sure i could, but how much do I spend, and how long is the unused fare good for? My luck would be she outwits and outlives us and roughly $1500 in airfare expires. And that still doesn’t answer “what airline”?
Just looked up SFO-ORD and United has 12-13 daily flights while American has 5 and Alaska has 2. So if you have to go RIGHT NOW, UA is probably your best option.
Well, the “what airline” would be answered by whatever Airline offers the cheapest price on changeable/refundable tickets. Those types of tickets I’ve purchased in the past had one year to change/refund them.
Both SFO and ORD are UAL hubs. Chicago is probably *the *UAL hub (its a coin flip between ORD and IAH, which was the Continental hub). If you need to be able to get a ticket to ORD that day and have the flight leave as soon as possible, you have the best bet with United.
I’m seeing one-way fares on United between SFO and ORD for tomorrow, either direction, for $499. So round trip $998 with no schedule restrictions. I’d skip the round trip/flexible schedule problem and just get a one-way ticket each way when you need it.
These days, I just bypass the travel and airline sites and google the departure-arrival airports and date/time I want. Not sure how that would work for last minute flight though.
Of course they do, but as I mentioned in the OP, if I can spend a couple bucks more and get a better seat, why not? I’ve got enough hardware in my spine to make anything much longer than SFO-LGB an ordeal in coach.
Also, my ultimate destination would be either Rosemont or Park Ridge. In the past, I’ve taken a hotel shuttle from ORD and then walked a couple blocks to her house. Pretty sure I won’t be able to do that if flying into MDW. Well I could, but riding the Orange line to the Loop, transferring to the Blue line, then through the airport to the ground transport area might take almost as long as the flight itself. :eek:
It’s looking like United will be my likely pick for this semi-hypothetical trip.
To get ready, download the UA app and join Mileage Plus, enter your info and a credit card and you can book your last minute flight on the fly, on your phone.
In a pinch, don’t ignore one-hops. Denver (DEN) and Houston (IAH) are both big United hubs, so they have a lot of fights to ORD, and if the non-stops are fully booked (not unusual in the summertime. I’ve had occasion to have to look at alternatives mid-flight during a one stop that’s looking delayed only to discover all the ORD to [Other hub] non-stops have no seats), you can still get there with maybe an additional few hours of flying/layover time.
For domestic flights, business class isn’t really an option. It’s economy or 1st. You maybe referring to Economy Plus or some variation of that, which is an economy seat but with marginally more leg room.
While this is generally true, there are domestic flights on United that have three classes, even some cross-country flights that have lie-flat seats in first and business classes. Most of the SFO-ORD flights will be two classes, but there will probably be a few with three, especially when you take into account the “positioning” short hops that sometimes occur with the airline’s big jets.
The one time I had to make such a trip (the emergency room doctor strongly recommended I come as my brother was really ill), I booked a one-way ticket home and then had to book another one-way ticket back. (Fortunately everything went well with him.) So that’s an option for you to consider.
On the “important”* cross country flights, namely SFO-EWR and LAX-EWR, United offers “Premium Service” flights on specially configured planes with lie-flat seats in First similar to their international business class. I’m pretty sure those planes used to also have a section that they referred to as “business class” that more more similar to standard domestic first class, but now it seems like they’ve reconfigured them to replace that section with more Economy Plus and standard economy seats.
As far as I know they don’t use those planes on SFO-ORD, but being a hub-to-hub flight it’s almost certain some of the flights will be big internationally configured planes on repositioning flights. Back when United still flew 747s this was known as one of the few domestic flights where you could sometimes end up on a 747.
*That is, flights that tend to have a lot of fairly wealthy passengers.