The Travelling for the Holidays thread!

We are heading to Tennessee, leaving on Christmas Eve day.  We'll be driving from New Jersey, and bringing the cats with us.  We'll be heading back on January 1.

Let's have lunch!

Ooo!  That would be fun!

We're doing a "circle trip" - Baltimore to Nashville to Montana to Baltimore.  Who knows what airports will be involved along the way.  After trying to book and price optimize 6, 1-way tickets, I stopped caring where the layovers were.

Christmas at home & getting on a cruise ship 1 January for 7 days of I & I.

Kevin

I got home on time, but just barely. My flight leaving OKC was an hour and a half late leaving the ground...because no one had heated the plane up and so they wouldn't let us on the plane. At first it was like, ok, a little delay, no biggie...but they just kept saying "another 5 min., another 15 min, another 5 min"..and then when we got on the plane (which was a little thing), someone had to put a bag under the plane after it had already been closed, so they had to reopen the plane, put the bag under, redistribute the weight, reprint their reports, reclose the plane, and then they were checking the manifest through the cabin. All with no sense of urgency what so ever. No sense of "hey, maybe we should step on it to see if we can get these people to their connections".

So we landed in ORD at 9:43. My plane from ORD-PIT was boarding at 9:40. By the time we got to the gate, it was 9:50. Then we had to wait for our luggage to be brought up to the gangway. Me and another guy going to PIT stood there, waiting, and grabbed our bags just as soon as the little gate opened, and SPRINTED, I mean, FULL OUT RAN, to our gate (up stairs and down 2). We arrived there just as the guy was saying "last call for Pittsburgh" and was shutting the door. That is the closest I have ever come to missing a flight. Me and the other guy actually spontaneously high fived!

Got home to the frozen north just on time.

Haha, It definitely crossed my mind!

We flew from Wisconsin back to Philly for Christmas. Left last wednesday night. Christmas Day as we were eating dinner I got an email (to my phone) saying that our flight back to WI on Sunday was canceled due to the snow storm on the east coast and we were rebooked on a flight monday night. Since neither the wife or I brought computers we got an extra day off for the holiday and my parents got to spend some extra time with their granddaughter.

We gave ourselves 3 hours to get to our gate yesterday. Through teamwork (my wife waited in the baggage drop line while I printed boarding passes at a self serve kiosk) and priority lines in security we got to our gate about 35 minutes after being dropped off at the airport. Of course our flight was delayed an hour and a half.

I feel sorry for the people who didn't get rebooked and didn't have the cut line card. There were some massive lines full of frustrated people in PHL yesterday. I heard several people be told there was no way they were getting on a flight out of Philly before Thursday.

Due to the delay of our first flight, we had 10 minutes to go from one side of MSP to the other. I took off running with my daughter in the stroller figuring I could walk really slowly down the jetway so my wife didn't have to go into labor trying to get to the play before it left. My wife played the pregnant card and got a cart ride. Thankfully they stopped to pick up my daughter and I about halfway across the airport. I don't think we would have made our connection home without the cart. I've cut it that close and missed connections when traveling alone for business, but have never been that short on time with the family in tow.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the smoothness of our travels yesterday compared to what the people around us were dealing with.

ETA My one great frustration from yesterday's travels: For our flight from PHL to MSP we had to get seat assignments from the gate agent. So when our flight finally pooped up on the board as the next flight out of the gate I got in line in the number 4 position to wait for the gate agent to show. Apparently the guy on the cell phone pacing about 10 feet back from the end of the line considered himself to be "in line" and got very annoyed that I cut in front of him. He proceeded to tell me that he was in line before me. I made it clear that I did not consider pacing 10 feet back from the end of the line while on a cell phone as part of the line. I finally relented and let him get in front of me. Since there were two agents at the counter I stepped up next to the dude in time to hear the results of his exchange with the gate agent. Karma took care of me as he was one of the people who wasn't getting a flight until Thursday and I was given boarding passes the second I stepped up to the podium and gave my name. To make it even better they were first row coach seats just behind first class. All the leg room of an exit row, but you can get off the plane much earlier. Not to mention a four year old isn't allowed in an exit row. I gave a giant smile and wave to Mr. "I was in line even though I wasn't" as he walked away. He did not seem amused.

Edited by graceful_dave 2010-12-28 1:40 PM