People think Space A is an awesome perk. And it does sound good. You can fly for free on a military transport anywhere in the world. Only catch is that they do not publish the flights in advance. And they are not regular flights. Fine. Some are, but mostly, flights are hit or miss and may or may not fly at any given time. Even the regularly scheduled ones are susceptible to delays and cancellations. Plus, there is never any guarantee that there will be any seats available.
So you can roll the dice and give it a try if you are feeling adventurous.
I thought it might be a good idea to try it. I have been terrified to try to travel Space A because everyone has horror stories. But my darling friend April texted me and said her husband was out of town for a month and did I want to come visit her in Iwakuni? It seemed like the perfect opportunity!
My January was mostly open. Kind of. But I had plenty of time to work with and we are so close to Iwakuni and planes fly back and forth all the time, so it should be really easy, right?!
Wrong.
Tuesday January 9th was my "first available" day that I was going to try for it. There was a Monday flight out, but I wasn't mentally ready and hadn't packed or anything. There was nothing listed for Tuesday. (Our Terminal posts flights 72 hours in advance and Iwakuni only does them at 8pm the night before, and they do not update them. Ours will update during the day as changes occur.) So I was looking at Wednesday to try to get out. My goal was to fly out Tuesday or Wednesday and catch the weekly Rotator flight home on Friday. But nothing was showing for Tuesday.
Tuesday morning I was enjoying a leisurely morning and happened to check the Terminal's FB page. Suddenly there was a 1240 roll call for a flight to Iwakuni! It had 7 Tentative seats listed as available. Oh shoot. I had 2 hours to shower, get packed, and see my Visiting Teachers. I managed to do all that and ran out the door at noon. I got to the terminal and the guy at the desk said no seats were released. So no passengers allowed. So I went home.
Wednesday had a 1310 roll call for an Iwakuni flight, so I was all prepared for that one. More prepared, since April had mentioned that I should bring a heavy jacket and blanket since some of the planes get really cold- no temp control on cargo flights. I got there and even though it still said Tentative seats, the lady said she was sure they would firm up and I could check in. She said the flight was delayed and wouldn't come in till 2:30, but no worries. So I checked in, got a tag for my luggage and a boarding pass and hung out with my book for an hour. A little after 2, a guy came up to tell me that I didn't have to wait around, nothing was going to happen for at least an hour an a half, so I could leave and come back around 3:30. As I was collecting my stuff, another guy came over and said with chagrin that the flight never actually left and wasn't coming in at all. So I went home again.
My friend Steph in Iwakuni said her husband was flying to Kadena on Thursday and he said he had seats open for passengers. That flight never showed up at all, which meant I couldn't even try to get on it. So there were no flights I could take that day. I didn't even try on Friday since I wouldn't have been able to get home until at least Wednesday, and I didn't want to miss Sunday.
There were no flights on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday at all. There were two flights listed for Wednesday morning. Yay! I prepared to try to get one of them. Alas, Tuesday morning, those flights disappeared. I figured Callie had prayed them away since she had a dental appointment and wanted me to take her. So I readjusted my thinking for her appointment and not for a flight out. Callie was relieved and pleased.
Tuesday night after the kids were in bed, a 0955flight suddenly showed up for Wednesday morning. Aaack! Trip is back on! So I mentally recalculated my morning to try to get on that flight. Wednesday morning at 0600 the flight is still there with TBD seats. Okay, this might actually happen. After walking Callie to the bus stop, I look at the FB page and the flight is gone. What is happening here?!! I can't keep up with the on/off, going/not-going stuff here!
I did take Callie to her dental appointment and it was quite unpleasant. In case you were wondering, if you shake your head while getting a shot, you get stabbed multiple times. But she got the broken tooth pulled, and it only took 45 minutes of drama, rather than the 15 minutes it should have taken. I'm so glad it is done.
There were ZERO other flights out the rest of the week. Thank goodness the weekly Rotator, also called "The Patriot Express" comes weekly. It flies from Seattle to Iwakuni (via Yokota) and then on to Okinawa on Fridays and does the reverse on Saturday. It is the main flight that the military charters to bring people here, so it is not a military craft, but a regular passenger aircraft. And there were 70 seats listed to Iwakuni for Saturday morning. This was really going to happen this time!
It was down to 20 seats Saturday morning. But at 5:50am, I was in the car and on my way! Whoopee! I got checked in and there were a lot of other folks waiting. That flight goes all the way to Seattle, so it is a hot ticket item and I think everyone else was headed there. They started Roll Call at 6:30am and everyone got on the flight, including me.
The flight landed in Iwakuni at 10:45am. I walked off the plane, and into the terminal and that was all. Easy Peasy. And it only took me almost TWO weeks to get there!
I had a marvelous time with my amazing friend April.
However, there was that silly Government Shutdown. And that grounded pretty much all the flights. Nothing was available to take me home. Every day we checked the flights posted. But Iwakuni doesn't like to post stuff because they think it violates security. So April drove me over there every day to personally ask if there were any flights to Okinawa. Nope. Fortunately, I love April and we had a very good time.
Thank goodness the Government Shutdown ended quickly and Wednesday there were 5 flights going to Okinawa, but only one into Kadena. The rest were going to Futenma. Futenma does not fly passengers out so I was concerned about them allowing passengers in. Plus, my car was parked at Kadena! What to do?! I talked to the Iwakuni Terminal and they said no problem, I could fly into Futenma. Dan asked me to take the earliest flight and he would pick me up at Futenma. (Josh had an orthodontist appointment at 2pm and Dan really did not want to miss an entire afternoon of work.)
The earliest flight just happened to be piloted my my friend Steph's husband. It had a 7:30am Roll Call and I was assured that he had a seat open for me. My darling friend April got me to the terminal in plenty of time and they checked me in no problem, because I was the only passenger wanting a ride that morning.
The Patriot Express flight that got me there was a regular passenger plane. This flight back was a C12- what Dan lovingly refers to as "The Barbie Jet". It has 8 passenger seats on it and was a tiny plane. It also was double the time to fly. We took off at 9 and landed just after 11:30. I got a truck ride to the terminal and Dan picked me up, no problem. I had time to get Josh from school and up to his dental appointment (which started an hour late. Grrrr. so good thing it was me and not Dan).
So sure, when it works the way you want, Space A is awesome. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out magically.
Cost of Flying Space A
* Keeping my days open, in case I'm gone. Then I'm still here and feeling empty with nothing to occupy myself. I have done a lot of sewing!
* Conversely, if I have something I want to do or hope to do and then have to shuffle my brain when flights show up or disappear. It scrambles my brain! the Wednesday when the flights were there, then gone, then back on again, then gone- I had to replay my day 5 times, and ended up picking Callie up 30 minutes early for her dental appointment because my brain was so pickled.
* You have to be ready all the time just in case a flight suddenly shows up. This means you have to be half packed all the time and have plenty of clean laundry to put in your suitcase all the time! I was doing laundry every 2-3 days.
* Once you are where you wanted to go, you have to get home. So you have to have a lot of time available to do that, in case nothing is flying where you want to go. And again- you have to have tentative plans for if you are there or not.
