I've missed a flight once. From Europe to home Cost me $4K to get another.
If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done.
If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done.
Why did he stop at flights though, surely there are other things you do more frequently you can save time (and therefore money) on? Why did he not say "If you’ve never shit yourself, you’re spending too much time walking to the toilet"
And you're spot on, why isn't there a Umeshism for "if you haven't shat in a bush..."
> > If Umesh can wear the cost of missed flights, well done.
Well, he might be balancing it against the time saved, no? Over 20 flights, missing one is a $4k cost, but being early for 20 flights is also a cost.
Assuming you're 30m early for each flight, you "lose" 10 hours by being early.
Comes down to personal trade-offs too (maybe missing a flight means you miss christmas with the family, in which case the $4k is irrelevant anyway).
My personal method is, the more important the journey, the more safety margin I assign it in terms of time.
Going on a 60m flight for in-office days to a destination with frequent flights throughout the day? If I miss it then no problem, I'll take the one 30m later.
Going to a destination with two flights per day, and it's for a court appearance? Cannot miss it unless i want a warrant of arrest issued against me.
You can be late for some things with small consequences as a result. Being late for other things might be a life-changing moment.
But as I'm out of APAC and was working for people in EU, all my flights were very bad ones to miss, as in, the next available flight will be tomorrow, if you're lucky.
For my $4K example, I missed an Emirates flight (due to a calendar fuck up, entirely my fault, got timezone differences wrong) that ended up in my home city via Sydney, usually took about 19 - 21 hours, depending on delays in Dubai and Sydney.
The cheapest next available was an Etihad flight that involved a very long layover in their very badly designed airport in Abu Dhabi - there's bugger all space to sit and wait, so people just sit along the halls leading to terminals, but worst of all, it's shaped like a giant hamburger, and so are the terminals, and the dome ceilings amplify noise amazingly, at one point I thought people were going to lynch the parents of a 4 year old who wouldn't stop screaming, just because the terminal's design amplified the screams so damn much.
And then it was followed by a long layover in Brisbane (I think? I was somewhat in a fugue state by then, all I wanted was a shower, and I had no towel, Australian airports provide showers, but not towels, unlike Changi or München Airport do), so by the time I got home, it had been 36 hours since leaving Munich.
So, anyway, long rant done, I can conclude two things: 1) Umesh is privileged to have enough wealth or earnings that rebooking a flight isn't a significant cost for him, unlike the majority of air travellers, and 2) Umesh isn't flying half way around the world.
I'm not big on taking life advice from people who are more privileged than the general population, because well, life advice implicitly predicated on privilege isn't really applicable to the general population.
[0]: https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-ii...
Professors tend to fly the way I was flying, between major cities and frequently. Miss a flight, fine, but that extra 45 minutes of sleeping every business trip can't be made up at the gate, and they really add up.