I was surprised as well. My guess is that he thought the time saved by flying the non-stop on the next leg (all three of us were going to DCA with L and I returning home from there later) combined with the drive down needing to be done solo made it better to spend time in a Sky Club rather than on the interstate, but under the circumstances (unexpected trip after the second recent family loss) I'm not going to do any min-max second guessing when the essentials were covered.