Winter Air Travel Tips

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! Chris and I just returned from visiting my family in western Canada and have finally caught up on sleep and readjusted to the time zone—although I still haven’t readjusted to the colder weather in West Virginia.

Winter travel can be challenging! Roads are subject to snow and ice, storms impact air travel even if neither origin nor destination are affected, and delays days ago can send shockwaves through schedules of buses, planes, and trains everywhere. Our experience flying from Pittsburgh to Seattle on Christmas Day epitomized winter holiday travel struggles. A few tips and tricks helped us make the best of a bad situation.

First, before even leaving the apartment in Morgantown, we decided we were only going to do carry-on luggage. This meant we had to make a few sacrifices in terms of personal care items and clothing (we had to do a load of laundry in the middle of the trip). But given the flight schedule nightmare we were about to endure, this saved us a lot of hassle.

When we arrived at the airport in Pittsburgh, having already printed our boarding passes and checking no luggage, we proceeded directly to security. While in line it looked like something was unusual about our flight. As soon as we cleared security we proceeded directly to the gate for our flight (despite being 90 minutes prior to scheduled departure) to verify our flight information. Our flight to Washington, DC (Dulles) was delayed by 4 hours. This delay was great enough to cause us to miss our connecting flight to Seattle.

At this point, I left Chris to wait in line to rebook while I called United Airlines. I was able to talk to customer service at United and get rebooked on a flight faster by calling. Once you realize you will not make your connecting flight, you must immediately act to find an alternative. Sometimes the alternative flight leaves a few minutes before your original flight was scheduled, you don’t want to miss out on these options by spending hours in line at the airport. In the 45 minutes it took a United representative to rebook us by phone, the line Chris was standing in did not move.

So we were rebooked onto Delta Airlines at no charge to us. While United cannot control the weather and does not owe us vouchers for the delay, it is still their responsibility to get their paying customers to their final destination in as timely a manner is possible. Had we checked our bags in this situation, they could have still gone to DC and been delayed into Seattle.

While we were flying into Seattle, it was not our final destination. Our final destination was Vancouver, B.C. We had decided to rent a car for this leg of the trip (after realizing two bus tickets cost more than renting a car). This leads me to two points. First, if you are not traveling alone and rely on ground transportation to get somewhere beyond the immediate metro area of your airport, compare that cost to the cost of a one-way rental. Second, rental car companies hate having cars go un-rented. If a car is sitting on their lot, it is not making money. Even if you have a reservation, if there is a change to your arrival time and, correspondingly, your pick up time, call them and tell them you are still coming to rent that car!

We arrived in Seattle five hours later than we had originally planned, but were still able to make it from Pittsburgh to Seattle and ultimately to Vancouver with all of the belongings we had brought with us. It was a challenge but a few tips and tricks made the best of an inconvenient situation. To summarize:

• Travel with carry-on luggage only if you can!
• If your flight is not on or does not appear as printed on your boarding pass on the departure screens in the airport, immediately find someone with your airline to confirm details.
• If you need to be rebooked, it is good to both stand in line and call an airline’s customer service number, time is of the essence!
• If the metro area of you final airport is not your final destination compare the cost of bus/rail service to the cost of a one-way car rental.
• If you are renting a car and your pick up time changes, call to let them know you are still coming.