If you read between the lines, the employer isn’t happy with the author’s work. The employer supported their travel preferences before, but now the project is

If you read between the lines, the employer isn’t happy with the author’s work. The employer supported their travel preferences before, but now the project is in a hell of delayed progress for all kinds of reasons. The author is missing deadlines and the employer is sick of it. (Paragraph starting with “My fieldwork had been mired in unforeseeable problems”) But on another topic, it might be nice if airlines offered options to fly on odd routes and/or an extended standby system that could guarantee that your flights are being taken on seats that either were unexpectedly unfilled or on routes with consistently low occupancy rates that have to be run (e.g., the kind of trips where the plane needs to be moved from one place to another but there isn’t sufficient passenger demand).