Flying non-rev
from Sacramento

• Put the Friday in as leave. Friday out, Monday back beats any other shape — weekday schedules are thicker than weekend ones on almost every route out of SMF.
• Count the nonstops per day to your target city, in both directions. Two a day is a gamble; four is a weekend.
• Check the day-of-week pattern, not just the daily count. Monday schedules frequently differ from the rest of the week.
• Look for a second airport in the same metro. Two airports roughly doubles your chances and usually costs nothing in transit time.
• Check what's on in the city that weekend — a convention, a home game, a marathon. It moves hotel rates far more than the season does.

The single best predictor of a good non-rev weekend is not the load on any one flight. It's how many flights are behind the one you want.

• Hotel on a cancellable rate. Non-rev and non-refundable do not belong in the same sentence.
• Note the hotel's cancellation cut-off time and set a reminder for it.
• Book timed-entry attractions for the middle of the trip, never the arrival day.
• Anything genuinely non-refundable — a cruise, a tour, a game — either goes on the middle day or waits until you have physically landed.
• Sort the local transit payment now: the app downloaded, or the contactless card you'll tap confirmed as working.
• Save the guide to your phone's home screen so it opens without a signal.

• Pull the live schedule for your actual date. Published patterns shift by season and by day of week.
• Check the loads on every nonstop, every carrier, every airport in the metro.
• List on more than one. There is no penalty for listing wide and it is the whole advantage of a multi-airport city.
• Note which SMF terminal each departure leaves from. They are separate buildings and you cannot walk between them airside.
• Identify the last flight of the day that still makes the trip worth taking — and the one after it that doesn't.
• Say your bail-out hour out loud now, while you're rested. Decide it sober, not at 22:00 in a departure lounge.

• Carry-on only. A checked bag is the thing that stops you switching flights, carriers or airports at the last minute — which is the entire skill of this.
• Dress to your airline's non-rev standard. Overdressing has never cost anyone a seat.
• Walking shoes. Every guide in this archive is built around not renting a car.
• Battery pack and cable. Boarding passes, transit fares and tickets all live on the phone.
• One layer more than the forecast suggests, and something waterproof that folds small.
• Empty water bottle, and something to eat. A rolled standby day is a long one.

• Check in with the gate agent early and confirm you're on the list for the flight you're actually standing at.
• Be pleasant and be brief. The agent is the only person who can help you and they are busy.
• If you roll, ask to be moved to the next departure before you leave the podium — including to the other airport if you're listed there.
• Re-check loads after every roll. They move all day.
• Cancel the hotel if you hit your bail-out hour. Going home is a legitimate outcome, not a failure.

If the metro has an overnight departure, it is usually the most forgiving seat of the day and it turns a lost Friday into a slightly short Saturday.

• Buy the transit day pass rather than single rides if you'll take more than two — most cities price it that way, and some add an airport surcharge a pass avoids.
• Arriving before check-in? Leave the bag at the hotel desk and start walking. Every guide lists what's free and open early.
• Landing late? Check the guide's late-opening food before you assume you've missed dinner.
• Book the one non-refundable thing now that you're on the ground, if you didn't before.

• Check out, leave the bag at the desk, and use the day. If there are several departures left, you do not need to be at the airport at nine.
• Pull the loads again before you commit to a train or a car to the airport.
• Know whether the airport train runs overnight. If it doesn't, that's your real deadline, not the flight time.
• If both airports look bad, read the guide's contingency page before you book anything near the airport.
• Remember the standard connections home — the big hubs are usually easier to clear than the nonstop.