How you doing? I'm Mike Gatti and welcome to my office at 35,000 feet today. Today I'd like to talk to you about picking the perfect flight. I'm going to break this episode down into a couple of sections. This is the first section. I cannot stress enough that the perfect flight is probably a nonstop flight. Booking a nonstop flight may be more expensive, or it may not. Sometimes it's cheaper. You really want to do it if at all possible. Why? Because you mitigate the problems that can crop up when you are connecting through another city. You heard recently about the Southwest Airlines meltdown and the loss luggage and how different airports were heavily affected because they serve as a hub for Southwest. Well, if you are avoiding those cities altogether during a time of crisis, then the chances are your luggage is not going to fall into that mass trap. So book a nonstop flight. If a nonstop flight is impossible, book a direct flight. A direct flight may land in a particular city. You don't get off the plane and you go on to your final destination. A direct flight is better than a connecting flight, but only barely. Because let's say you're going through Chicago to get to Phoenix from Baltimore. Well, the chances that there being winter weather in Chicago, chances are pretty strong. So pay attention even to those connecting flights and travel through cities which are less likely to have weather related problems. So if you're going to Phoenix from Baltimore, maybe connect or go through, if you have to land somewhere, go through say New Orleans or Houston or someplace that is less likely to have severe winter weather. But even that can go astray. The main reason for booking a nonstop or a direct flight besides the fact that you get to your destination faster is that the airlines have less of an opportunity to lose your luggage. By the way, Apple has those air tags and they are my number one New Year's purchase because you can throw an air tag into your bag and it'll tell you where your bag is. So often you have way better information than the airline does about your luggage. Let me add in a little note about nonstop international flights because if nonstop domestic flights are important, nonstop international flights are the perfect flight. Even if you have to fly to another city in the United States on a separate airline in order to get a nonstop overseas or transatlantic flight from say Washington, Dallas to Brussels, it is worth it. It is worth it even to go in a day ahead. Why? Because when you book a connecting flight through an international destination, you have to go through customs wherever you first land and you have to recheck your baggage. While this process is fairly seamless, it's also a huge headache and where most luggage goes astray. Also, the lines right now, internationally, to get through customs are unbelievable. We were in Brussels prior to the Thanksgiving holiday and we're on our way home. We waited in line for almost two hours to get through customs and that's one of the better cities. There were people in the line trying to jump the line in order to make their flight. It caused quite the kerfluffle and they brought insecurity to ham out to nail things down and keep things running smoothly. So the more you can avoid customs, the better. So definitely for an international flight, really consider all kinds of alternatives including your airport that you're flying out from in order to make that international flight a non-stop and not a connecting flight. I can't stress it in my gauge. Next time, we're going to talk about different class fairs of airfare and how booking economy or super economy, basic economy, may not be your best choice. So I'll see you next time on my office at 35,000 feet. I'll talk to you soon.