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Travel Woes: Avoid Connecting Flights
A friend of mine and a serious global traveler had the trip that almost turned her off air travel all together--and she's a former pilot.
These are the details that I remember from what she recently told me about her return trip from Iceland to Columbus, Ohio. Her nightmare started at JFK airport.
Thunderstorms had paralyzed flights, thus hers to Columbus was canceled. But, feeling optimistic , she thought she might be able to hook up with a Jet Blue flight and headed to the Jet Blue terminal. No luck there either. In her quest for a flight, she left the security area of her terminal and couldn't get back in. Then she looked for another terminal where she could park herself for the night since all airport hotels were booked. No such luck there either. That one closed for cleaning and she was kicked out to the curb again. After another bout of terminal hopping, she found a chair where she could settle in for the rest of the night.
At 4 AM Saturday morning she received a call from the luggage courier who couldn't find her house. Before dawn she was reunited with her belongings.
If you haven't noticed, she didn't get any help from the airline except for the rebooking of her flight on the next available flight two days later. The airline wasn't obligated to do more. The delay was caused by weather.
The flights were full because all flights are full these days. In her words, this summer is a mess. If one thing goes wrong, the whole system slides into chaos.
She also didn't have a cell phone. Since she was traveling internationally, she left hers at home. Also, there wasn't any information to be found on where to get hotels outside of the airport.
Her bit of advice after this fiasco was, whenever possible, fly direct and fly early in the day. Connections mean trouble and flying late in the day means there is no wiggle room when flights get delayed. Here is an article by Sharyn Alden that gives some other tips for avoiding air travel woes.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Moody75 Jul 26th 2007 10:29AM
If you are a serious world traveler, shouldn't you have a Blackberry? That would have provided communication and web browser to get info on hotels and, more importantly, hostels outside the airport.
NYC IYH hostel is a relatively quick ride from JFK and very cheap. That is the first place a seasoned traveler would have gone. Certainly beats a chair at the airport for 2 days.
Jamie Rhein Jul 25th 2007 3:12PM
My friend is an older person who only uses Internet twice a week. I think your recommendation is certainly a good one. The more sped up we become the more technology we need to stay in the game. She did have a hotel room the second night. The other issue is being in a place where one is not familiar with the territory. I think the airport at least felt safer than heading off into New York City. Oh, I also didn't mention, the phones that she finally found to use, didn't work. I'm pretty sure that's what she said.