Airline Travel Hacks To Avoid Holiday Excursion Headaches

source: technewsworld.com | image:pixabay.com
For those of you who haven’t traveled lately, things have changed over the last couple of years. For example, most airlines don’t take cash anymore, and an increasing number don’t accept credit cards.
Airlines are almost all short-staffed, and at this time of year, there are a lot of mechanical delays and weather events. Depending on the airport, the ability to rebook a flight at the gate may no longer exist. Spending the night in an airport is no fun, and neither is missing a flight because you didn’t make it through security in time.
This week, I’ll share some tips on how to survive traveling over the holidays. We’ll close with my product of the week: my favorite suitcase, which is like a rolling dresser.
Plan for Extend Connection Times
Over the past two months, most of the flights I’ve been on have had a mechanical or airline delay. Generally, the delays have been just short of an hour, suggesting you want at least one hour between connecting flights if you don’t want to be stranded.
If you are taking a cruise and you have to fly to the port of departure, you might want to fly the day before so that any delay doesn’t keep you from meeting the boat. We had first-class tickets on our last flight on United to meet up for a cruise. Still, we were delayed at the departing airport for 30 minutes, then again at the arrival airport (San Francisco) for 30 minutes, which had us arriving at the gate three minutes after they closed it. They wouldn’t let us on the plane, arguing that we should have run faster.
As a result, we lost our direct flight to Florida, lost our first-class seats, and had to route through Chicago, which got us there late at night rather than mid-day. Fortunately, our cruise was the next day, or we’d have missed our departure and had to try to catch the ship at the next port, a very expensive workaround.
The more critical it is that you get to your destination on time, the more extra time you should schedule for transport. You should plan to arrive the day before for a wedding, funeral, family event, business meeting, or tour with a firm start time instead of cutting it close. Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ll miss that critical event.
Take Advantage of Airline Apps
Download the airline app before you leave, and if it has the option to pre-load a credit card, do it. On my last trip, a couple from Australia in front of me couldn’t buy drinks or food because United no longer takes cash or credit cards on the plane. Instead, they pull the card data from the app.
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