Cleared for Take Off: Flight Efficiency and Safe Travels

Let’s take to the skies with expert tips on navigating air travel like a pro. Whether your’e a frequent flyer or an occasional traveler, learn how to prepare for your flight, breeze through security and avoid common mistakes that can derail your trip. We break down the essentials of safe, efficient flying, from checking in to touchdown, ensuring your next journey is smooth and stress-free. Buckle up-travel just got a whole lot easier.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Stand Up and Redo with Petra Demuse, the podcast where transformation isn't just possible, it's inevitable. If you've ever felt stuck, weighed down by path choices, or like life's chapters have been written in ink, think again. Here we believe every day is a fresh page, and you hold the pen. We're diving deep into real stories, bold insights, and life-shifting strategies to help you stand up, shake off the old, and rewrite your narrative with power and purpose. Ready to rise? Let's get started. Hi there, welcome to Stand Up and Redo. I am ecstatic you are back. Have you ever been in a situation where you have flown to another country? And you get to the other country, and your luggage went to another country. Whoa. Have you ever been in a situation where you left your cell phone in the bathroom on the toilet paper holder at the airport? Have you ever been in a situation where you had a bag of all this stuff you purchased? Like maybe$250,$300 worth of items, and you left the bag on the transport bus that went from the airport to where your terminal was. And then it took off and left you, and your bag was still on the bus that transported you there. Well, if you've made some of these faux pas or even just need some advice on flying in an airplane, this is your show. So Stand Up and Redo is my podcast, Petra Demuse. I'm over 50 years old. I have decided to do multiple topics. I talk about travel, I talk about my truck, I talk about dating. I probably will talk about coffee. I will talk about everything. I talk about major life trauma, accidents, things that have happened to me, things that have happened to other people. And the whole point of this podcast is to help you after you've done something, maybe made a mistake, done something in a way that you wouldn't want to do it. You're gonna stand up and redo it over. Not the same way you've been doing it, a whole new way. You're gonna try something new. You're gonna stand up and redo. Well, I'm gonna talk about plane travel and I'm gonna give you some tips on just booking a flight first, ways to save money, then also a lot on safety and avoiding careless mistakes. Because plane travel can be very nerve-wracking, you've pressed for time, there's a lot of things that might stress you out. And if you're a person who's experienced multiple flights, this is still good for you to listen to. But this is gonna be very beneficial for people who are nervous to fly or who haven't flown much and just are careless because they just haven't had these mistakes happen to them. And I'm gonna help you through it. So the first thing I want to talk about is booking your flight. Okay, I had a group of friends and we were gonna go to Slovenia and we were flying there. We had our trip planned with the tour company, but we had to all buy our own flights. So we started looking at flights, and we found flights that were so cheap compared to the other flights. We noticed that there was one airline we could get for significantly cheaper than all of the other airlines. And I remember we were hesitant at first to book it. We decided maybe we should talk about it a little more. And then what is there to talk about, right? What is there to talk about? We all know that we have to fly there. We all know that we have to get there on the date. Are we gonna look at the flights for another day at the different prices and not get the cheaper flight? Get the cheaper flight right away. If it's like Monday and you're like, well, let's just think about it till Wednesday, nothing else cheaper or less expensive than that least expensive flight is gonna pop up for you. Trust me on that one. As a matter of fact, when you go the next day, I guarantee that less expensive flight is gone. And the reason I know that is just this week, I have to book a flight in July to go to um visit my brother. And I have to go all the way across the country. I went and looked on Monday. I'll just be honest. The flight was four, I found a flight, and there was only like one or two like left where I could fly for$400 round trip. And all the other ones were around$600. And I was like, oh, should I get it? Well, guess what? I kept thinking in my head, am I gonna go? I kind of knew in my heart I was definitely gonna go see him. I knew the dates and everything, and I didn't book that flight. Well, now it's Sunday, and in my mind I'm like, I need to book that flight for July. Well, today, Sunday, you figure last Monday I looked at the flight. Now it's Sunday, I looked at the flights again, and all of those flights were over$600. There were none for$400. So already in one week, I lost out on$200. If I had just booked it last Monday, didn't hesitate, and booked it, I would be golden. When you are booking the flights, before you push that final button, before you decide that final decision that you're gonna fly, make sure you look over one last time every single airport that you're taking off, every single airport that you're landing in, and every every single moment of that flight. If you only have like a 30-minute layover between two flights, and you have a 70-year-old mother that you're traveling with, and you have to lug all of her luggage and all of your luggage and push her along to get from one flight to the other, you might want to reconsider that flight. I know it sounds crazy, but I personally have had to physically run, physically get off one plane, heart pounding, breathing heavy, out of breath, run as fast as I could between lay between layovers. And it is, I just have made it. I mean, literally, I've watched people miss flights because they didn't move fast enough. They hesitated and they didn't get from one flight to the other. So think about those things when you're booking a flight. Like look at the layover time. If it's just you and you know you're pretty fast and you're pretty quick on your feet and you're not worried about making that little dash, that mad dash, do it. But if you know you have to travel with maybe like two toddlers or a mom who's a lot older, or a dad who's a lot older, or just anything that's gonna slow you down. Maybe get a longer layover and don't stress out about a longer layover. You just go get lunch somewhere, you sit down, you have a cup of coffee, you relax a little bit, you slow down, you make it about the experience. Don't stress out if you have a two-hour layover. My gosh, don't do that. Never. Okay. So I'm gonna try to like make this very, very story form and I'm gonna go from the beginning right through the whole flight. So we talked about booking flights and just not hesitating, getting the cheapest flight right away, not waiting. I'll tell you, Utah. I went to Utah and I had to fly in to Utah and I was going to um Salt Lake City. So I was flying into Salt Lake City and I got a flight for 300 round trip. And I booked this flight like four months ahead. I was really like, really being proactive here. And my girlfriend, who was gonna go with me, she was meeting me from another part of the country. But her flight was her flight that would have been 300 for her round trip if she got it at the same time that I got it, was well over$600 by the time she got the flight. So, like I said, if you know you're going anyway, don't hesitate. Book the darn flight. All right, so we talked about booking flights. I want to talk about getting a credit card to build up points. I use um an a credit card for American Airlines and I pay it off every month, but I rack that credit card up. I use it for everything. And when I rack that credit card up, guess what? I pay it off every month, and I build up so many air flight points that I actually can travel usually twice a year without paying anything. So, like, and I even took my mom one time to New Orleans, and the two of us, both of our flights were paid for with my points. So I think if you figure out how to rack up points and you stay faithful to one airline, and I like American Airline. I mean, I know United is good, some of my friends go to United, Southwest. I mean, you just choose your airline, you become faithful to it, stay faithful to that airline, keep using it, rack up points on a credit card that's specific to that airline, and you'll fly for free. If you fly multiple times a year, seriously, do not hesitate, do not wait. Get that credit card right now. Don't book your next flight until you have it and book it on that credit card and build up those points and just pay it off every month. You know, you have to be have to be responsible, you have to think like, oh, this is you're putting this money on the credit card, you know how much you put on it, and you know you have to pay it off every month. But that is gonna give you a vacation every year that you don't have to pay for. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna go to Morocco without paying for my flight because I use my points. So I'm really excited about that. The other thing now, when you get to the airport, get your TSA for sure. If you fly a lot, the TSA, I think it was about 80 bucks, and it does get you through the line a lot quicker. You don't take your shoes off. I think it's really nice for older people too, who it's a lot of work for older people to take their shoes off and put them back on, and you don't have to take all of your electronics out. And TSA, you get that priority to go through quickly. So get your TSA um pre-check to get through the line quicker. If you don't have it, big no big deal for a while. Just if you're flying a lot, check out the difference in line, watch those TSA people go through quicker, watch how less stressed they look. I really suggest getting that. And global entry if you travel um, you know, from country to country, then global entry I think is only like not much more. I think it's like maybe$30 or$40 more to get global entry. The only thing about global entry is it's a little more challenging to get because you actually have to go to the airport and you have to physically be interviewed. For the TSA pre-check, you don't have to be um interviewed or anything. And sometimes credit cards will give you like reimbursement for that or pay for that. That's another thing to look look at with credit cards. I mean, I know if you're not responsible with your credit cards, you have interest. That's a whole nother topic we won't talk about. But if you're responsible with them, the credit cards actually work in your benefit to get those. When you get there, your bag usually can only be 50 pounds or less. It depends on the airline, I suppose. But make sure you weigh your bags and measure your bags. The last thing you want to do is get there. And I've had this happen. Now that I'm a frequent flyer, I actually with American Airlines, I've been like a priority. I think I'm elite member or whatever. So now I get two free bags. At first, I got one free bag check for like a whole couple years. Now I'm up to two free bags. So I don't have to worry about checking my bags. If I check them, I don't pay. However, if you do pay, bags are through the roof to pay to have checked. So I suggest don't go over the weight limit. If you're 51 pounds, just 51 pounds, and the limit is 50, you might have to pay a hundred dollars more for that one suitcase for that one pound over. I did that when I first started flying. My flight, the the um my suitcase was 51 pounds. Now I pack a lot of stuff in my suitcase. I like to read a lot, so I have a lot of books. I even had like a sketch pad, I had pencils, I had things that were very heavy in my bag. And I love shoes, so shoes are heavy. I put a lot of shoes in my bag. But my bag was 51 pounds, and the girl said, that'll be a hundred dollars extra. And I pulled my bag off of that thing, I ripped it open, and I took like this. I had this giant like textbook in there because I was studying for a GI certification exam. I took that text bag out. But man, it was hard for me to carry the textbook. I had to try to squish it into my carry-on bag, and it was like a huge deal. But also, I had time to do that. What if you didn't have time? You might not have time to open your suitcase and go through it and take the extra weight out. Don't go even a pound over and always make sure that your bags fit the measurements that they're supposed to. Follow the directions. Be smart, be smart that way. Anything that delays your getting on the plane too, you don't want to mess around. I am a stickler for getting there two hours before the flight time. So if my flight is supposed to take off at 6 p.m., I make sure my arrival time at the airport is 4 p.m. So if I have to drive an hour and 15 minutes to get to the airport by 4 p.m., I'll make sure I leave well before so I can be walking in that airport at four. I am so crazy ridiculous about the time because I have had things hold me up and I have had to rush and I have had to deal with delays in like getting through the um the TSA line. I have struggled with that. I have had just many faux pas that have happened that have delayed things. So getting there for me two hours before the plane takes off, because a lot of places will start boarding. Like if you're taking off at 6 p.m., they board by like 5 30, sometimes even 5 15. And when they're boarding, they don't let you on. After they stop boarding at like 5 45 or whatever time they stop boarding, you're not getting on that plane. I can tell you. They don't mess around with that kind of stuff. So don't mess around with your time. Get there two hours before. Um that is a must. So we talked about checking your bags. I want to go back to checking your bags. So when you check your bag, they're gonna give you this little tiny piece of paper, and on that little tiny piece of paper, it will say where your bag is going to. So if I'm flying from Boston to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I would get my little tag that I checked my bag, and on that little tag, it would say Lancaster or Harrisburg, sorry. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on it. Look at that tag. Make sure that your bag has the location with your name on it, where your bag is going. I was going to Mexico and just so happened, gonna fly to Mexico for a week, and we checked the bags, grabbed the bag ticket, looked it over. The bags were going to a whole nother country. I'm not even kidding you. I'm not even kidding you. That happens. I don't know how it happens, but it happens. Went back, took the tag right to that flight person, flight check-in person, and that person had to correct their mistake. And they made sure our bags were going to Mexico where we were going. We caught it right away, like right away. Don't mess around. Don't even walk away from that desk without looking, even just stand there and look at it. And don't even worry about if anybody feels like you're being rushed or the person in front of you looks irritated that just checked you in, which they're not. They're usually really kind. Just look at that tag, make sure it's going to the airport that you're going to. Trust me on that one. Trust me, I'm telling you, they go to the wrong spot. The other thing, a lot of times they'll hand you back everything at once. You know, you give them your passport, you give them your driver's license. And then what they'll do is they'll hand it back to you and you'll go to put your passport away. Put it away immediately. Do not start walking around trying to drag all of your bags around with your passport here and your driver license or whatever the ticket. Put it all away immediately. Stand there. I usually have I have certain spots that I put everything in. Like I always usually have a zipper pocket somewhere. Like I have a coat with a zipper pocket, or even like a waistband with a zipper pocket, or I my front pocket of my backpack, I have a zipper that goes across and I make sure I clamp it shut really tight with like a another clamp, the zipper so the zipper doesn't come undone. I'm really particular about giving everything an address, but also putting it away right away. But before you put it away, look at it and make sure it's yours. Because I was handed my passport back and I was like, thank you. And I just grabbed my passport and I was getting ready to put it into my bag. And before I put it in my bag, I opened it up and it wasn't my passport. It was some guy's passport. The flight the flight um desk person was dealing with a whole bunch of stuff. She kept answering the phone. She was talking to me. She was dealing with another guy that was kind of like to the side a little bit. That was his passport. Well, I was about to walk away with his passport in my backpack and of course get through the TSA line. I'm sure when I got up to the TSA line, I would have definitely figured that one out. But then that poor guy, I mean, who knows how that would have delayed us or how how would I even find that guy? I mean, there was just so many things that could have happened at that moment. So I went to put it in. I opened the passport and I went and then I looked around and I looked over to like my left, and here was this guy that it was his passport. And I didn't necessarily just hand it right to him. I just told the woman that handed me the wrong passport, of course, because I needed my passport. I said, You gave me back the wrong passport, so I handed it back to her. So before you put your stuff away, look at it. Always look at everything. Look at that passport, open it up, pop it in your bag, close it up, then walk away. Okay. I don't want to bore you with this, but this is another tip about walking away. I'm a big stickler on counting bags, numbers. So I always know if I have like how many items I'm carrying. So if I'm walking, say I'm sitting on a bench at the airport, and I have a backpack and a roly um bag, and that's all I have is a backpack and a roly bag. I don't have anything else. I will be like Petra, two items. You have two items. So when I stand up from a bench, I will always do two things. I count my items. I'm like one, two. I have two items. Okay. And I also do this weird thing that you've probably heard me say a million times if you've watched any of my podcasts or not watched my YouTube channels or listened to my podcast, call it cell phone keys. And I know it sounds crazy, but I actually check to make sure I have my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, and how many bags I have before I leave anywhere. So if I'm sitting on a bench at the airport, I want two bags, wallet, cell phone keys, walk away. Everywhere I go, everywhere, into the bathroom, before I leave the bathroom, two bags, wallet, cell phone keys. Okay. Same thing with the three bags. If you have three bags, all of a sudden you went shopping and you might have spent$200 and you have a loose bag with you that you're carrying around. So that makes you have three bags. Trust me, people, I've seen them shove the bag under the bench, get up, walk away, and their little shopping bag is left there. I had a situation with an ex-boyfriend. I'm rolling my eyes, ex ex-boyfriend. He had gone shopping. And maybe we were in California and he had gone shopping at the Trump golf club, golf course or whatever. When we were driving through California, we went to Trump's like um golf club. And when we were there at the club, we went shopping at the Pro Shop and we bought like, well, he did, I didn't. He bought like 200 or more dollars worth of pair like golf clubs and like shirts and all this stuff that he was gonna give it to his friends. And we went to get on the shuttle bus from I guess we had to get on a shuttle to get to our terminal. I can't remember how we ended up getting on the shuttle. We got on the shuttle from wherever we got dropped off with all of our luggage. And we ended up, he was so busy helping other people. He was very kind. He was helping people get off and on the um shuttle bus, you know, because some people are struggling to get their big luggage up. So we were like sitting on the bench and he kept getting up and helping them. Meanwhile, he had tucked his trump bag under the seat of the bus. And he had his rolly bag, he had two rolly bags and his little trump bag, and I had my backpack and my rolly bag. So I wasn't paying attention to everything that he was carrying. I was paying attention to my own stuff. I wasn't thinking about him. So we get all the way in. We actually get all the way uh ticketed and everything, and we go to sit down. Oh my gosh, we went all the way through security. We were all the way in the airport through security, and we sit down and we finally relax, and we're just surrounded by all of this luggage because we had taken just so much luggage. And he looks at me and he just has this feeling of like dread, and he's like, I left the bag of stuff I purchased in the tram car, not tram car, the shuttle bus. So I had to like call the shuttle bus. I had to get on the right shuttle bus. I had to leave. This is why you get there two hours early because I actually left. They told me that somebody had taken the bag back. Oh, it was where the car rental place was. Yeah. So we had taken the shuttle from the car rental drop-off to the airport. So then I had to take the shuttle back to the car rental place. He sat there, he was so stressed. I said, Listen, you stay here. I'm gonna figure this out. And I went and took the shuttle back to get his stuff at the car rental place, and nobody even took any, you know, everybody I was so impressed. I was so thankful. I met this, and the neatest thing was I met the shuttle driver. I ended up being the only one in the shuttle on the way back. For some weird reason, it was like the weirdest thing to be alone with the shuttle driver because usually the shuttle The bus is packed. And it was neat because we talked about God. Maybe that was my time to talk to him about God. We talked about Christ and Jesus and all this stuff. And it made me feel really good because I got to talk to this driver about God. It was my God moment that day. And maybe that was all meant to be, right? You never know. But what I'm saying is if he had counted his bags when he was getting off that shuttle and in his head thought, one, two, three bags, oh, where's my third bag? I just feel like that counting the number of bags that you're carrying around before you get up and walk away from anywhere that you walk away from will save your butt. It has saved my butt because you do you go shopping. Sometimes if you have a layover for two or three hours or more, you start to accumulate bags. Like you buy things, you know, you might buy a pair of shoes or something. And I try to keep it all in one shopping bag, but sometimes you you can. It just starts to accumulate. So when you're in the airport, count how many items you have. Okay. Pockets. Do not put anything in your back pocket. I have picked up two passports from men who had their passport in their back pocket and it just like sneaks up and plops out onto the ground. And I see it happen. And I run over and I grab their passport. I'm like, sir, sir, you dropped your passport. Me. I lost my plane ticket. I had my cell phone and I had my paper plane ticket. I don't always, I always get a paper plane ticket, usually, even though it's on my, I know it's on my app on my phone, and I have used my app on my phone a couple times without ever getting the plane ticket if it's like a short trip. But if I'm gonna be like switching flights like somewhere, I usually get the paper passed just because what if your phone died? I just always think to be like, why not be doubly prepared? Anyway, I had my cell phone and my plane ticket in my back pocket when I pulled my cell phone out. The plane ticket fell down and I lost it. I mean, I did end up using my cell phone, which was no problem. But if I didn't have that option to use my cell phone, and I have heard older couples, I and when you're in the airport, you get to listen to a lot of conversations. I have heard older couples who have panicked because they're like, where's our ticket? Where's our ticket? And they don't even know that there is an app on your phone that you could use. People are not like phone savvy. They don't all use their phone for everything. They still kind of rely on the old-fashioned way. So they would be have been relying on their ticket. If they had lost their ticket, it would have been a big deal for them. For me, not so much. But never also don't ever ever put your cell phone actually in your pocket with anything like your driver's license or a credit card. Because I can tell you on more than one occasion, and I have lost a credit card when I was jogging. I had the credit card and my cell phone in my I had like running stretch pants on with like a nice slide pocket. And I slid them both because I wanted to go buy something. I wanted to stop and get actually dinner to go after I ran. I was in Fresno, California, which is not where I live. And I had slid my cell phone and the credit card because I thought, well, what after I'm done my run, I'll swing over to that restaurant that I really liked and I'll get like a takeout salad and take it back to my hotel. So I had thought I had my credit card with me. Didn't want to take my whole wallet. Meanwhile, I pulled out my cell phone from my pocket to take a picture of a pretty tree because I'm a big picture taker and there was like some beautiful tree, and I'm all happy, and I'm like, I'm like literally two and a half miles away from my hotel. I take the picture and then I start to run back. And then I go to um for some reason I stopped again to take another picture and I reached in and thought, oh my gosh, my credit card's not there. Here I had lost my credit card back the first time it must have come out with my cell phone. And I called my credit card company to put a hold on it. And already, in like 30 minutes that I lost my credit card, someone had charged$90 for a food delivery service on my credit card and had it delivered to them wherever that was. I don't know. But there were a lot of homeless people on the place that I was running in Fresno. A lot, like laying on the side of the road. Like sometimes I would look to make sure that some of them were breathing. But the one thing that gave me peace is that hopefully that 90 bucks fed someone that was really hungry. That's all I thought. I was kind of like thinking that way. But I did put a hold on my credit card. Actually, I canceled my credit card and then had to but then the inconvenience of traveling, and then you have don't have that credit card to use for your travels anymore because you had to cancel it. So be careful with putting multiple things in your pockets in the airport because lo and behold, like I said, I've picked up two men's passports that fell out of their back pocket and handed them to them. So I think I told you about pockets and checking your documents and always looking behind you at the bench or the seat that you're in to make sure you didn't leave anything behind, counting the number of items that you take, wallet, cell phone keys, always doing that. So those are good things for flight travel. When you're sitting on a flight in an airplane, I always just know what seat I'm going to right away. I put it in my brain because that way I don't have to fumble around and look. I try to get my carry-on above where I am sitting because if you put it behind where you're sitting, it's like swimming upstream. When you have to get your carry-on, it is a nightmare to try to go backwards to get it when you're trying to get off the plane, especially if you have a quick switchover with flights. I don't even usually take a carry-on. I have to be honest, I check a big bag and then I take a backpack. And the backpack, I make it so it's not so big that I slide the backpack under the seat. So I don't even put anything above the seat usually. I usually just have my big check bag and then my backpack. Now I'm gonna be going to across country a little more, like out of the country, I should say, not across country. When I'm traveling in the U.S., I usually check a big bag. I don't mind. Now I'm gonna be traveling to Morocco, and when I travel to Morocco, I will just take my carry-on and a little backpack. I will not take my full, I won't check a bag. I just won't check a bag. So I will be and same thing when I traveled once to Costa Rica. I didn't check a bag. I just took like a little roly bag and I took um my backpack and I just managed to get everything in those two for out-of-the-country travel. I just feel more comfortable having less things when I travel out of the country, and I feel more comfortable having everything with me pretty much all the time. But in the US, I do check my big old bag, and then I just have a nice backpack. That way I'm not lugging like because I I like to hang out in the airport and shop. And if I'm gonna be shopping in the airport or there's like a long layover or working, because I work a lot between I carry my little laptop with me and I work. I don't want to be lugging a roly bag around. I hate taking them into the bathroom. I I'd rather just have my backpack. Um, so for me, that's better. I don't want to tell you right now how to pack light or heavy. I think every trip is an individual trip, every place you go. It just depends on where you go. I could do a whole topic on packing and a whole like episode on packing, and I'm kind of excited about doing that. But when I do the whole episode on packing, I really want to like make it more like where you can actually watch me pack. I'll have pictures, I'll show you how I pack my suitcase. I love that. But just for talking about air flight and safety. Okay, the next thing to do. This is really important. When you get off the plane and you have to go to your next gate, you're switching flights, you're gonna be having a layover and you have to get to the next gate. Even if you have like two hours between, I do this mental thing, and I'm gonna tell you it's beneficial because it is. I walk all the way to the next gate. Even if I have two hours, I walk over and I put my eyeballs on that gate. H A eight. Okay, put your eyeballs on it, know where it is, kind of gauge your times of how long it took you to walk from point A to point B, figure out the um layout of the airport, you know, look at things like that. And once you know where your gate is, you can deflate a little bit because you know that you have to get to that gate by the time they board the airplane. So you can like go to the restaurants near that gate if you want. If you have two hours or three hours, you really could walk away from the gate. But if I only have like an hour, I really kind of just hang out around that gate. The other thing, this is really important. And I learned the hard way, and I actually learned that this is this is actually true. This is my lived experience. My phone, I take it off airplane mode when we land. Bing, bing, bing, everything pops up. I I go to my little American Airlines app, which I absolutely love, and I look at my American Airlines app and it says Petra, your next flight. Well, it doesn't talk to me like that, and it doesn't say oh Petra, but I'll see that my next flight, the gate is eight. Okay, so that's pretty far away. It's like a 10-minute walk. Put everything away and I start walking to gate H. I've done this. Boom, boom, boom, walk, walk, walk. 15 minutes. Get to eight. Look at my phone, says H eight still. Look at the gate, it's going to some other state. Far from the state that I'm going to. Why does my phone say H eight? I go over and I look at the board and it says L. And then a couple minutes later on my phone, it'll pop up and say that the gate has changed on like a text. Meanwhile, I've walked all the way to the wrong gate. If I had paused for a moment when I got off that other flight, and I had looked at the board and not just relied on my phone, I would have seen that it switched to L. And I would have known to go to L and not walked all the way to gate eight eight. And I found out that your phone has a lag. Sometimes it's a five-minute lag, and the gate is more instantaneous within 30 seconds. So the gate is constantly changing, where the phone, before they put it on the app, I think they're really trying to verify, correct, make sure that it's the right gate. And then they put it on your phone. So my words of wisdom to you are to look at the board when you get off the plane if you have to get onto another flight. Truly, truly believe that is an intelligent thing to do. Trust me on it. It will save you a lot of time. Trust me. Okay. So we talked about the gates. We talked about getting to the gate. We talked about hanging out at the gate. Super smart thing to do. When you get on your flight and you get to your seat, get cozy, lock in, and courtesy. This is my own opinion. It's totally Petra's words of wisdom from Petra's experience of what annoys me on a flight. Don't talk to the people next to you excessively. I always do say hi right away. Like if I sit down and someone is in his other two seats, I go, hi, how are you? Just to break the ice, because it can be awkward. You're on the flight for three hours. If you've never even made eye contact or said hi, it's really uncomfortable. And then I sit down and then I just zip it. I do not engage unless it's like something so small, you know, something courteous. Or if they really do engage and start talking to me, I will talk back and I will engage in conversation, but I don't initiate it. If it's an interesting person, sometimes it can be really fascinating to talk to them for a little bit. Sometimes it's even fun just to listen to other people's conversations that are really interesting when you're like just sitting quietly there. But for the most part, I've learned just to let other people be. And then I want to be left alone too, because sometimes I want to watch a movie or I want to read a book or I don't even want to do anything. I just want to sit there and I don't want to talk to anybody. So out of courtesy, give people their space. I mean, you don't know what's going on in their life. Definitely say hello to them, definitely smile at them, definitely be warm. Just don't be overly talkative. There was out of all the at I noticed that sometimes at the very end of the flight when you're all just waiting to get off is when people will engage and they'll say, Oh, well, are you here for work or fun or pleasure? And I sometimes do that too, just because if someone's looking at me and I could tell that they're comfortable with me talking to them, I will ask them some personal questions, questions after we finally land while we're just sitting there waiting. It's like, oh, but for the whole flight, I don't, I give them their own personal space. And I really am thankful when they give me their own personal space. There was a woman about a week ago, actually, I was flying home from Minnesota, and I met her on the plane, and we met up in in O'Hare, and I told her what the two of us were like nonstop. Like, and I just wondered if everybody on the plane was listening to us. We just connected and the two of us just talked and talked and talked. She lived in California and I just love California. So we were just talking and talking about living on the West Coast versus the East Coast because she was a PA girl who moved out west, and it was just fun to talk to her. And I told her at the end of the conversation, I said, You were the first person I have ever like spent so much time talking with. But my gosh, she was like just the most interesting, interesting woman ever. So it was fun to talk to her. So I mean, there might be those like occasional times that you do connect with somebody and you do end up talking to them the whole time. But just out of respect, what I'm saying is give people their space. Okay. So we talked about switching flights, we talked about getting your listen for your carousel so you know where to go get your luggage. Don't panic. If you know, don't rush to get your luggage. You have time to go to the bathroom and everything, usually. And I think I pretty much covered a lot about flight travel. We could talk about Ubers, we can talk about taxis, we can talk about car rentals, we could talk about all that stuff, but it's taken us out of the airport. Honestly, enjoy the airport. I love flying. Slow down, enjoy the experience of flying. Just take your time, be ready, be smart, pause between doing things, count your bags, put your personal ID away quickly. Always, always look at your identification, always look at your ticket, look at your bag ticket, and always double check everything. And always remember your wallet, your cell phone, and your keys, and your passport. And thank you for listening to me talk about my stand-up. My standup and redo for airplane travel is gonna be not to delay so much in getting my ticket because already I should have gotten my ticket for California last Monday and I didn't. And it's now$200 more. So my stand-up and redo is that I'm gonna stop doing that little delay thing and just get that ticket right away. And I could talk about so much more with flight travel, but for now, we'll see how many people listen to this. Please like and subscribe. And also, I would love it if you would share in the comments like just crazy stuff that's happened to you at the airport. Please, I really want to hear about it. I want to hear about what happened to you at the airport that was insane because it's only going to help other people too that read the comments or that watch this. And also, please like and subscribe because I have some great podcasts coming up and I have some good ones from the past. So if you listen to it, I hope that you enjoy it. And I want to just thank you for being part of the group of people that listen to Stand Up and Redo with me, Petra Demuse. Thanks and have a great night and happy f happy full travel. This podcast is a work based on the personal experiences, reflections, and memories of the speaker. The events described are true to the best of the speaker's knowledge and recollection. Some names, locations, identifying characteristics, and timelines have been changed or altered to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. In some cases, composite characters have been created or dialogue has been reconstructed based on memory. The intention of this podcast is not to defame, malign, or harm any individual or entity, rather it is to share the speaker's journey with honesty, vulnerability, and integrity. Any opinions expressed are solely those of the speaker and are not intended as statements of fact regarding any person, group, or organization. Listeners should keep in mind that human memory is inherently subjective and selective, and while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, this podcast reflects the speaker's perspective and truth. Thank you.