100 Ways to Slightly Improve Your Travel Experience: #24 Selecting the Best Airline

There is more to selecting the best airline, than searching for the lowest price. Often when you add back in all of the niceties to the lowest cost carrier, you are spending as much or more than it would cost to fly a "full service" airline. 

My criteria. 

The airline that has the most flights, or at least a lot of flights in and out of the airport. Flights get delayed or cancelled - not often - but often at the most inconvenient of times. The more flights the airline has, the more options there are for rebooking, the more open seats they will have.  I learned this one the hard way flying in and out of Lexington, Kentucky, a couple of the major national airlines, only had two or three flights a day from there, and if anything went wrong I was stuck.  Delta had a dozen or more flights a day, and could almost always get me where I needed to go. 

What is included matters.  If you are carrying on luggage on, is it included, or extra.  If you are checking a bag (I almost always check a bag) what does it cost, and can you get it free of charge.  I have airline credit cards for a couple of major airlines, in large part because I get free checked bags with them (and priority boarding, and extra frequent flyer points.) 

Is seat selection included, or extra.  Unless you are less than 5 feet tall and weight less than 90 pounds, seat selection matters.  The dreaded middle seat can only be avoided by being able to select a seat.  I am right handed, my right elbow is most likely to move out to my side.  I prefer an aisle seat where my right elbow moves into the aisle, or a window seat where my right elbow goes toward the window, and not the face of the person sitting next to me.  If you have long legs, seats with extra leg room matter, are those seats available and at what cost.  

An added factor for me, is concentrating on a couple of airlines to accumulate frequent flyer miles or points.  I should have kept track of how many trips I have done on award tickets, lots of them.  Earned by spending lots of time and money flying places I needed to go.  When I was working, much of the flying was paid for by the office, but the frequent traveler bonuses belonged to the employee (we actually had a policy on that.)

Kind of the last thing I look at is price in selecting an airline.