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UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin already dreaded his team’s flight back home to Los Angeles shortly after his team lost to Tennesee on Saturday night.
The Bruins were eliminated from the NCAA basketball tournament after falling to the Vols 67-58 in Lexington, Kentucky.
I imagine flying home after a tough loss isn’t exactly fun. But Coach Cronin has some choice words about Allegiant Air, the carrier some college teams use for charter flights.
Right now, guys, it’s 12:40 AM. And our season just ended. That’s it. You’re gonna ask me about next year? Right now, my biggest concern is how bad the seats are on that Allegiant flight, on that terrible plane we’re gonna have to fly home tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, I noticed a GlobalX flight flew nonstop from Lexington (LEX) to Los Angeles (LAX) on Sunday morning. Was that the team’s charter? Did Coach Cronin get his airlines mixed up? Did the team get put on a different airline because of the seats? (I highly doubt that.) Was it a fan charter and the Bruins flew home commercially on Allegiant?
Would the seats still have felt so bad if the team won?
A few other travel-related stories caught my attention this morning.
Catch Me If You Can: Air Marshal Edition
According to the US Justice Department, an air marshal is charged with scheming “to defraud a major airline carrier of nearly $70,000 in free or discounted flights by claiming to be on military leave for years after he retired from the U.S. Marine Corps.”
The defendant, who worked for an unnamed airline, “took free first-class flights to Los Angeles, London, San Diego, St. George’s, Las Vegas, and Dublin, and dozens more standard class flights to destinations including Antigua (five times), Aruba (three times), Bermuda (three times), Curaçao (twice), Barbados (twice), Belize (twice), the Grand Caymans (twice), Grenada (twice), Guatemala (twice), and a variety of other destinations including Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Peru, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, the Dominican Republic, and St. Maarten.”
It seems he neglected to tell his airline that he retired from the Marines — and falsified documents saying he was on leave.
Oops.
A Nightmare Come True?
I’ve literally had dreams about forgetting my passport.
They usually involve me landing somewhere foreign, my wife looking at me and saying, “Where’s your passport?” and then me waking up. Or I’m already in the air when it suddenly dawns on me that my passport is still at home. (This is why my passport is always in a certain travel bag I always bring with me.)
Welp, someone forgot their passport recently — a United Airlines pilot flying an international trip.
Can you imagine that “OMG!” adrenaline rush when the pilot discovered the passport debacle?
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For the NCAABB tournament the teams do not get to choose who to fly. The NCAA sources the charters, and they use a wide range of (generally speaking) not great airlines. Looks like they flew in on Allegiant and then out on GlobalX.
At least they didn’t have to make a stop, I remember last year SDSU had to fly from Boston to San Diego on some old generation 737 (forget the airline) after losing by 30 to Connecticut and got stuck making a fuel stop in Kansas, as if losing by 30 wasn’t bad enough.
Thanks for the insight! I imagine that for a tournament involving 68 teams, the NCAA looks for whoever gives them the best deal. (Not that the NCAA isn’t flush with cash. Some of my friends played D-1 sports have a few things to say about the NCAA.)
I’ve noticed Sun Country is really getting more active in the sports charter market, as is Allegiant.
The NCAA sets up the flights, and during march madness, they don’t assign teams to flights but rather games. Loser flies home on the airline assigned to the game. I doubled the work when I was at a supplemental carrier by having to plan two different flights, but in return, I got to watch basketball at work so I would know which plan to go with and be ready by the time the team showed up.
Oh, man. Imagine being the “loser” airline!
Thanks, Mitch. This kind of stuff absolutely fascinates me!